Hello friends - Long time since I've posted on here, (I'm sure you're thinking - who the hell is this guy?) decided that school wasn't for me even though I'm 6 classes shy of completing all of my upper division maths and sciences just to transfer. I love working on cars and don't want to be cooped up in a cubicle my entire working career, so I took a leap of faith and started a paint correction + coating business. Anyways, here's my first customer with his new to him 2004 JBP STi that was decent condition for being 13 years old. Upon further inspection the only original paint was the hood, everything else had been resprayed, and very poorly. Total time of correction was 23 hours, I broke out the big guns for this one using 5.5" pads all the way down to 2" in some areas. Machines: Rupes 15 Mark II - 5.5" pads Griots Garage - 2" pads Porter Cable - 3" pads Products: Meguiars Hyperwash for foam baths Adams Car Shampoo ONR for clay lube Clay magic clay bar (surprisingly the paint was quite clean and didn't require much claying) Sonax Perfect Finish Menzerna FG400 Lake County Green Pads Meguiars MF Cutting Disks Gyeon Q2M Prep GTECHNIQ Crystal Serum Light After doing several test areas I was very content with the results using Lake County Green Pads and Sonax Perfect Finish. The more severely swirled areas were taken care of with FG400 on MF cutting disk. Onto the photos: Decon - http://i.imgur.com/juDZbvf.jpg Inspecting the paint, the readings were all over the shop with 72 microns all the way up to 200. I found it very difficult to capture the defects using my DLSR, partly because I'm a photography novice and the LED work lights + gold flakes threw off my camera. Driver's Fender 50/50: Passenger Front Door Before: After: Sideskirt Before: And the only thing detailers want to see - Sun Shots! First time seeing the paint in the sun after two days in the dark garage, ha. This new car owner was my kind of guy, loves the OEM look of the 04-07 STi. Thanks for looking! Anthony
It's a Karcher but I can't remember the model number, I've had it for close to 6 years now and it's still going strong. Normal use is foaming/rinsing, depending on how filthy the car is. With the quick disconnect system I can jump between the pressure washer and regular hose for rinsing, so the added time is negligible.
