I'm up a bit late tonight and thought I'd end 2007 by posting my first detail on DB. The detail was carried out a few weeks ago now. It's a new experience for me posting over such a vast expanse of ocean! Background Having done some protection details over the last two months, I was missing some good proper machine polishing stuff. Two paint correction jobs called off hundreds of times due to weather and lack of a garage. Along came a local car enthusiast and offered his 2005 Arctic Grey Porsche Cayman and his double garage for me to play with. He loved his car but complained that no matter how well he washed the car it always looked flat. Applying Super Resin Polish did not seem to do the trick. The biggest gripe was that his wife’s Boxster was always glossier than his car. So, as you can imagine I was under a lot of pressure to tip the balance in his favour and to stir up a wee bit of household ribbing! When I carried out the paint inspection the previous week, I could not pick out many swirls at all under the Brinkmann. A combination of dirt and SRP was probably masking them, but we both felt that the SRP may well be contributing to the flatness in the fine metallic nature of the paint. Paint thickness levels were 115 – 165 microns throughout. Owner had it from new, so factory levels were confirmed. The owner provided all the Before pictures in this thread, for which I’m grateful. Here is how the car looked to begin with. Wash and Clay Snow Foamed through Autobrite HD Lance, 6/7 mins dwell, pressure rinsed off. 2 bucket hand wash with lambs mitt and mixture of Megs Shampoo Plus and Safe Degreaser. Pressure rinsed and pat dried. Lowers de-tarred with Autobrite tar and glue remover Wheels washed as above. Then the tar and glue remover was applied to various sizes of tar spots and left to dwell. Then washed again with Menzerna 7.5 wheel and tyre cleaner. Job done. Car clayed with the usual Sonus Green and Last Touch. Car rinsed and pat-dried again. Machine Polishing I was trying out for the first time the combination of the 3M backing plate for rotary and their black and blue 6 inch polishing pads. I had used the backing plate before and felt good about its increased flexibility over the Megs one. I was also looking forward to finding out how the slightly smaller pad size and thickness would affect the smoothness of the machining process. Turned out to be superb. I had two full days to work on the car and my first plan was to use Menzerna 106FA Final Finish polish (cut 4/10, gloss 9/10) to attempt to remove any swirls. Spreading on the rotary at 600 rpm for a couple of passes (weight of machine only), up to 1200 rpm for 2 passes (weight of machine only), up to 1500/1600 for 3 or 4 passes (light pressure) and down to 900 to refine (weight of machine only). This was found to be extremely effective in removing the swirls and oxidation and any other chemical contamination left behind from the wash and clay stage. 106FA is a cracking polish if worked well on the rotary, and indeed DA. Taking time with it and really allowing the particles to work properly certainly paid dividends on the Porsche paint with the defects that it had. The car and its appearance were already transformed after the 106. Others have reported that they have noticed some very light marring, possibly inflicted by the 3M black pad in combo with 106, but I looked very hard for such an outcome and could not find any marring at all. I made sure of working the polish slowly, allowing the panels to become quite warm. Once the whole car had been 106’d, I repeated the machining with Menzerna 85RD Final Finish polish (cut 1/10, gloss 10/10). This allowed me to tease out more gloss in the paint and hopefully get it looking very liquid. With 85RD I spread for two passes on 600 rpm, up to 1200 for two, 1500 for two or three, 900 on two to refine. The polish residues were still quite viscous at times due to the temperature and most of it came off well. I gave the whole car a Last Touch wipe down to catch some more of the residue that may have been still there. Bonnet Before Bonnet After NS Front Door Before After Boot Before After Metals and light clusters were corrected and refined with the Makita. The bumpers were corrected with the PC (+106FA) and refined with the Mak (+85RD). Cleansing and Protection I was trying Dodo Lime Prime cleanser for the first time. It contains micro-abrasives that others have found introduces micro marring if not worked for a while, thus requiring another hit with 85RD. Well, I was not going to be doing that! I decided anyway to apply the LP with the PC. I spread it with the machine off and worked it in, breaking the micro-abrasives down at speed 3. Wiped clean with Poorboys DMTs. Absolutely brilliant product on this occasion and no micro marring at all. It really didn’t take that long to apply by PC and I only worked it into the paint for one pass until I could see total coverage. The pic below shows the LP having been worked by PC: Final protection was Glasur. Love it! The finale was a Field Glaze buff. Haven’t used it for a long time and I’m keeping it for special occasions only. This car deserved it. Wheels cleansed and sealed with my usual Jeffs Prime Strong Acrylic all-in-one. Another great product. Then given a coat of Collinite 476s high-durability wax as extra protection. You may notice some little black spots in the After pics, but they are small levels of pitting and not dodgy cleaning! It was very important to have these well protected for the owner. External Plastic Trim and RubbersDressed with 303 Aerospace Protectant, applied with red side of German applicator. WindowsDeep-cleansed and sealed with the Jeffs, as above. Here are some pics after the car was completed. With the main garage lights off, I moved the halogens slightly to change the level of reflected light from the car. Hope you don’t mind the duplication of a couple of panel pics. Afters Inside These similar pics with different light angles: Outside Pics Before and After Comparisons And finally: A fantastic 2 days and a fantastic car to machine. The Glasur suits this car very well I feel, after the level of fine machining that was done to create the perfect base for it. Those rear quarter curves were a pleasure to machine with the 3M plate and pads too. Hope to share more with you in the near future. Thanks for taking the time to look. Your comments and suggestions are very welcome. I'm going to have me a wee whisky now, Scotch that is - the real stuff. Cheers, JOHN. :thumb:
Bloody hell it's a small world LOL! Yes I did, on Detailingworld in the UK. You reckon that's where you saw it? If not then someone must have done something similar. Hope this helps.
Gorgeous, just gorgeous :applause: that deserves an appluse John :applause: :applause: Gorgeous vehicle and a gorgeous detail, talk about a great way to start posting :thumb: Thank you for sharing and look forward on seeing more of your craftmanship :thumb:
i think it was(i troll all the forums i find). i have a photographic memory! just trying to make sure no one takes someone else's pics for their own. beautiful detail, i love those cars.
Outstanding job! It looks awesome!! He can't say his paint looks flat anymore! Thanks for the write up!
Amazing work and I love the steps you provided for this detail. Allows me more insight on how the Porsche paint is. :applause:
Question, what camera are you using? What lense? I saw a tri pod in one of the pictures did you use a tri pod when taking all of these pictues? I'm assuming you used some with tri pod some with no tri pod. Just curious that's all.
I saw this a few weeks ago on detailing world....still consider these photos detailing pornography....almost makes me wanna try zymol....not really but maybe so so so so nice!
Thanks to everyone for their comments. As you progress in this game, things start to click into place; technique and decisions, where car is being detailed, lights, weather, photos etc. For me, this was my favourite finish and account of two days of my work, in 7 months of machining. I hope I get all the Qs answered in one go here. As for the camera, it's just a Kodak 6meg DX7630 (I think, not at hand to check) - £120 on Amazon. I used a tripod for all of the indoor shots and most of the outdoor ones. I experimented with Photoshop with the background on a few of the close up pics - I added a little Gaussian blur to the background, for some photos this technique works well. This therefore blurs the background and emphasises the foreground i.e. the paint finish you've achieved! These are my fave photos so far. On the Q of Porsche paint - this was original factory paint and was corrected with 106FA, being worked until the metal panels were quite warm, it's fair to say the polish was well exercised. I found the paint to be an absolute delight to work with, not too hard and not too soft. It does not need sledgehammering anyway! Even all the wiping at the end was checked for possible introduction of micro-marring - none whatsoever, brilliant. Hope this answers some of the queeries. Thanks again, JOHN
