So I'm going to say that I'm a MINI freak...Mini obsessed if you will. On top of that, I enjoy keeping my MINI as clean as possible and as shiny as possible as well. My future brother-in-laws brother also owns a Mini and is a huge Mini freak like myself. However, there is one major difference. He drives his Mini through the winter, where I do not. In his line of profession, he doesn't exactly have the time all the time to upkeep his Mini in the condition that he wants it to be in or what it should be in. And so, a recent visit to me and a conversation about my MINI and detailing led him to ask me to spruce up his baby Lucy and get her back into the shape she deserves and originally was. I agreed without inspection. However, I quickly learned the following. Foreword: * Lucy had never been waxed since he took delivery of the car * Lucy has never been hand washed * Lucy only received a washing through touchless and the wax the drive through puts on * Lucy's once purring engine has never been cleaned * I didn't have to spend to much time on the tires and wheels since Lucy is getting outfitted with new ones soon Some lessons learned: * Going to buy myself a creeper seat. Sitting on a case of beer just doesn't do the job I want after a while * You can always do with more Supreme Shines When I got the car I evaluated its condition with the owner and went over a few details about what was to take place. Products Used: NXT Car Wash with two bucket and Chenille Mit 2 Water Magnet Blue Clay with Last Touch 1:1 M80 2 x W - 8006 for M80 M83 1 x W - 8006 for M83 M66 W - 8006 for M66 M07 Foam Applicator for M07 M16 Foam Applicator for M16 M21 W - 9006 for M21 Supreme Shine Microfibre Meguiars Terry Towel Meguiars Glass Microfibre Hyper Dressing 4:1 APC 4:1 and APC 10:1 Rain-X Process: Wash with NXT Car Wash Soap Clay M80 with W - 8006 M83 with W - 8006 M83 with W - 8006 M80 with W - 8006 M80 with W - 8006 M66 with W - 8006 M16 with foam applicator M07 with foam applicator M21 with W - 9006 x 2 Black exterior plastic dressed with Hyper Dressing 4:1 Tires dressed with Endurance High Gloss x 2 Interior cleaned with #40 and then dressed with Natural Shine Rubber Mats cleaned with #40 and then dressed with Hyper Dressing 4:1 Engine Cleaned with APC 10:1 and 4:1 and then dressed with Hyper Dressing 4:1 All windows cleaned with Windex and then topped with Rain-X with Meguiars Glass Towel and Supreme Shine Microfibre Start Time: 8:00 am End Time: 9:00 pm The end results were AWESOME!!! A smooth glass like finish and one sweet shine to this Chilli Red Mini!!! And now, here's your writeup and pics for you. Step 1: The MINI's finish was inspected from top down. BUGS BUGS BUGS is all I found. Nothing but BUGS!!! Nothing Gold Glass Bug And Tar Remover can't handle!!! Works Great!!! During my inspection, all I found was SWIRLS!!! Take a look for yourself. Gotta love that dealer job. Full of streaks and hazing!!! If only you could have seen this pillars in person. Much worse. I couldn't believe how bad they were. "I only go to touchless so the swirls shouldn't be to bad..." Really... It used to be clean. It used to purr. It used to shine. You used to be able to show it off. How's that nice and dirty engine for you? So those are suppose to be black wheel wells!!! Those chambers should be a Chilli Red. Where did the MINI go? One final shot before I begin. The hood. Look at that poor colour and shine. In the lower (bottom) portion of this pic you can see some hazing marks left behind from the previous detailer. Not cool!!! Some more hazing for your viewing pleasure. While viewing the hood from a different angle (flat across) this is what I saw. What a lovely site to see before I began. Step 2: Wash the car. I could tell that Lucy had been neglected. Touchless or not, it hadn't had a hand wash and it made a huge difference. It was its first hand wash using the two bucket system and NXT Car Wash Soap with my classic Chenille Mitt. And boy, can I tell you how dirty it was. Brutal. I have four buckets so I'm okay, but the buckets that I use for the tires were completely black and brown and full of philth. I did think at one point that I was going to have to change the tire water it was that bad. But I finished before I got to that point. Even after a wicked wash, the finish still felt rough, but not nearly as bad as it was before the wash. I captured a picture below that show the hood before I clayed. If you can tell through the lens, the water on the hood isn't beading at all. I guess I was a little shocked, but really, I should not have been since it'd be a couple years since Lucy had been waxed. After claying the car with Meguiars Blue Clay and Last Touch 1:1 you can see a difference already. The water started beading and it started to feel smooth as glass. Post clay job, I dried her up using two water magnets and let it sit for a while to let it dry even more. Once I felt it was ready and I was ready to tackle her, I got my test spot all prepped up to see exactly which products and what method I was going to use. Or as I say, my weapon of choice. The only problem with the Minis is that if you tape, it feels like you're taping forever because there is so much taping. Alone, for a Mini, taping takes approx. 1 hour or so. Once I finished with my test spot, I had decided that the best method for me to go with that would achieve the results that I would be happy with would be M83 with W - 8006. You always go least aggressive first, and I know that and I tried with M-80 and W - 8006, and after one pass, it just didn't cut to the results that I wanted that I felt were good enough for myself. I even tried two passes of M-80 and stuff, although it helped a great deal, it just was up to the standards I have set for myself. And so out comes my M-83 and on to it I went. The entire hood required two passes M83 followed by two passes of M80. I found though that M-83 was leaving behind some lovely streaking and hazing marks that I knew I would have to take care and surely I did as I already had marks to clean up from a previous detailer. M83 was leaving some nice streaking and hazing marks that I had to take care of. Throughout this step, I was constantly inspecting the finish at every possible angle using a variety of lighting. One was my handheld Noma Zenon and LED light and the others were two 500 watt Halogen Lights on a stand. This helped me see if I was achieving the results I was after. Through this stage I went through one backing plate and two pads of M80 and M-83. Lucky for me I had plenty of extra. I stopped as I always do, every four product applications to clean the pad off of product build up, but I still knew that a cleaner pad would better help me achieve those results I wanted. Remember all those marks on the hood a while back??? Bye bye bye... This is a hood shot after I passed M66 to help clear it up even more. Awesome results here!!! How about them pillars. I had to hit them hard and even spoke with Richard about them. Not these exact pillars but other pillars that I had to solve and he gave me some pointers !!! I hit them M-80 but didn't cut it. So out comes my M-83 and BOOM after some hammering down, all GONE!!! Once I finished with M-83 and M-80, I gave this Chilli Red a good coat of M07 with a foam applicator and taken off with a Supreme Shine MF to help with the shine and gloss that the Classic Mini deserved. And after taking it off, I think I achieved that exact result. Reflections are already starting to show up. I remember, when I first picked it up and looked it, there was barely a reflection on any of the panels. After M83 and M80, I decided to give the classic M07 a go and add some nice richness to this Chilli Red Mini Classic!!! And that is exactly what it did. You can see some reflection already. At first, when I got the MINI there was barely anything and now I was starting to smile!!! I had to take a break here to just relax a bit and get some grub to chow down. Was getting tired and hungry in this heat. And so during my break, I decided what I wanted to use. I orginally talked about using NXT to a friend who stopped by, but then figured I didn't have enough to do two coats so after looking at all my weapons of choice, figured I give it a go with M16 and a foam applicator. And so I went. I was after a nice deep reflection and after using M16, I got exactly that. I was happy with that M16 achieved and will def. be using it more often in the near future. Some M16 results!!! How about that engine. Remember how dirty it was. Well the below pictures are the results of 1.5-2 hours of hard work!!! Combine some APC 10:1 and then APC 4:1 for those stubborn stains/grease spots, a MF, some soap and water, and some fine detailing and you get the results you're after!!! How? I first started by spraying the entire engine down and NOT covering a single thing. Did I have any problems? NOPE. Lucy started first crank as I expected. Once I finished cleaning and detailing the engine, I gave all the painted parts a coat of M21 while the rest got two coats of Hyper Dressing 4:1. He told me that he wanted his engine to shine and that is exactly what I did for me. With two coats of Hyper Dressing, I let the second coat sit for about 1-2 hours and then just went back and wiped off the excess dressing!!! Worked AWESOME!!! Have a look!!!! M83 - Check. M80 - Check. M66 - Check. M07 - Check. M16 - Check. Now after completing the above, it was time to top it off with my LSP favourite as of now: M21, until I switch to Prima Epic. But WOW what awesome results!!! Door shot!!! The Classic Reflection Banner SHOT!!! HELLO!!!!!!!!!! ps. I tried this prior to waxing and was all a blurr!!! SUN SHOTS!!! Just so you remember it was a MINI I was doing!!! Polished out the chrome boot handle and MINI emblem!!! Kiss those streaks GOODBYE!!! Shot of passenger side!!! Hopefully one day!! All done. Cheers everyone. Time for a break/drink!!! The End. Thanks for looking, Buff N Stuff Detailing Calogero
Great writeup! I can tell you were really having fun in this detail. I just can't believe how awfully filthy that engine bay was. Awesome work
Some people just don't care that much. When I did the Honda Accord, he really didn't want the engine done either but then eventually said yes. To this day, he says, when you do it again, no engine this time, it didn't improve my performance...hahahaha... I was trying to explain to him the benefits of a clean engine aren't going to be 25hp but it will help to show leaks, looks nice etc...
Excellent write up. You have shamed me into cleaning the engine of our 06 Cooper S. It's only a year old and not that dirty, but if I start down the right path now, it'll always look good. Thanks for the detailed descriptions. BTW, is there an acronym de-coding post on DB somewhere? I still need help with all the M-80, w-8006, etc. Thanks.
Thanks for the comments. You have to start somewhere and if you stay on top of it, it'll only take like 15 minutes not even each time you want to touch it up.
Great job and excellent write up. My wife's DD is an 06 astro black MINI s. I feel your pain on the taping job. Even though these cars are small, a full detail takes me as long or longer than a much larger car.
The taping a lone if done carefully and to every part takes a solid hour. Its so time consuming. Astro Black that's with the tint of purple in it I believe at night right?
astro is black with a LOT of blue flake. looks like a dark blue are at times. too bad we couldn't get jet black. i really prefer solid black over our metallic black cars. MINI engines get dirty easily. I detail her enging twice as often as mine.
Yes its the same colour I was referring to. I wanted the Jet Black but they didn't offer it so I turned down the Astro (in some lights it looks a little purplish right - but a sweet purple - the ones around here anyways) I opted for the Metallic Space Blue on mine Mini S JCW.
