Well I was in for a treat. Before I begin with the detail I had the pleasure of meeting the owner of this fine vehicle. The owner phoned me up and brought the vehicle over for me to look over. First impression is always important and this vehicle looked mighty fine…minus the swirls and buffer marks on it :shrug: but that’s normal, I’m used to that and that’s why vehicles are brought to me :thumb: Any who, owner and I chatted for a bit and the owner was rather disappointed with the swirls and most of all the orange peal on this vehicle. When he said orange peal I knew what was coming, owner said he would wet sand all the orange peal of the vehicle him self. Before, the owner left I decided to get my PosiTector paint gauges out and took some quick readings. As expected vehicle had plenty of clear coat averaging about 138microns. Well owner was going on holidays for a week or so and the vehicle was brought to me, here is the vehicle: Lovely brake dust: Front bumper had some bugs on it, owner had to travel a reasonable amount of distance to get to me. The vehicle was covered in this: Well like all vehicles I start with the shoes, so first up Red P21S Gel: Red P21S Gel hard at work: Wheel wells received a healthy coat of Meg’s APC: Along with the tires: Everything hard at work: First up with the help of my EZ brush I agitated the inside of the rims: The face of the rims were taken care of with my Zymol brush: Tires were scrubbed with my Meg’s tire brush, wheel wells were agitated with my downgraded Zymol sponge and here is how everything looked after all that scrubbing: Well this process was carried out to all rims, tires and wheel wells. Once all the shoes of the vehicles were taken care of the rest of the vehicle was washed with the two bucket method, the shampoo of choice was Meg’s Gold Class with my Natural Sea Sponge. Well once I was done washing the entire vehicle it was time to take some paint gauge reading, first up my PosiTector 6000: As you can see by the chart readings were quite low, much, much lower then my first original readings when I first laid my eyes on this vehicle :shrug: Next up my PosiTector 200: Well now that I knew how much clear coat I had to play with it was time to inspect the surface with the help of my 3M Sun Gun: :nod: yes, owner did wetsand all lower panels of this vehicle. He even wet sanded the door handles. Now when I saw this all I could do is :shakehead: So to those that don’t know what this dark line is, that’s what happens when you remove too much clear coat and paint. This is called burning through the clear coat, paint and as most of you know edges are the worst spot to wet sand as they are normally thin compared to the rest of the vehicle. Not sure if you’ll be able to see this but there were some very deep wet sanding marks left behind. Now this area had the lowest readings, they were in the 80micron range reason I bring it up is because owner requested to remove the orange peal on this area and when I saw the readings I decided not to. Well as you can see I had my work cut out, good thing the vehicle was checked in for a week or so :thumb: Well judging by the year of this vehicle I’m expecting ceramic hard clear coat so I decide to start with this combo first: Before I started polishing I decided to tape of all near by edges, after seeing how much clear coat was removed I was a bit paranoid with edges: Well I tried Intensive Polish with my Black 3M UK Polishing pad and as expected it did absolutely nothing, not even a dent….I expected this so next combo: Menzerna Compounding pad with Menzerna Power Gloss. This combo actually delivered good results regrettably the owner wet sanded a spot or two on the trunk so two passes were not enough to remove all the deep wet sanding marks: Well had to move up on the aggressiveness scale, next up: Menzerna wool pad partnered up with Menzerna Power Gloss. Then followed up with: Leaving me with: White is hard to get a reasonable 50/50 picture, but I don’t give up easy. Well that’s the combo, now for the rest of the trunk, here are some action pictures the misses took: Well it’s been a wile since I’ve had to use a wool pad and I enjoyed my self. I continued on with the trunk and for tight areas I decided to go with: Small four inch wool pad. Well here is a before pictures: After one pass of Menzerna Power Gloss with the small wool pad: Not perfect, so another pass was given followed up with: Power Gloss with a small Compounding Ultimate pad, then finished of with a small polishing Ultimate pad with Intensive polish giving me the following results: Before: After: Before: After: Before: After: Before: After: Before: After: Well I decided to continue on with the rear bumper, the bumper was also wet sanded and there were some very deep wet sanding marks on the bumper so I decided to refine the wet sanding with the help of my: Well the bumper took me a bit to say the least…now my DA sander worked great, regrettably my current air compressor is not big enough to meet the CFM demand from the DA sander….I’m still waiting for my 60gallon air compressor to arrive :waiting: Any who here is how the bumper finished off: Not completely done but it’s an improvement. Well moving on Here is a 50/50 pictures of the rear pillar, driver side: Rear pillar passernger side: 50/50 of rear passenger door: 50/50 of front passenger door: 50/50 of passenger fender: 50/50 of driver fender: 50/50 of driver door: A closer look: 50/50 of the rear driver side door, this was taken using the lighting on my wall: With 3M Sun Gun: Driver side front pillar: Passenger side door pillars, before: After: Driver side door pillars 50/50: Well that about completes the correction portion, lots of dust was left behind though: Seeing as I wasn’t done yet I decided to remove the dust with my Zymol duster: Now I had to refine the finish, for this I used Intensive Polish with a Black 3M UK Polishing pad followed up with 106FA with a Blue 3M UK Finishing pad. Once I was done refining the vehicle I decided to wash the vehicle as dust got into all tight areas. Next it was time to protect all that hard work, first up: Then a healthy coat of Vintage was applied via foam applicator. The next day the vehicle was given a final wipe down with Zymol Field Glaze and here are the end results. Oh before I post the end results, exhaust tips were polished with the help of Autosol, rims received a coat of DG#105 sealant, windows were cleansed with Stoners Invisible Glass all exterior plastic was given a coat of Black WOW, tires were dressed with Optimum Tyre and I beleave that about does it…now for the end result pictures: Regretably, there was nothing I could do with these: Paint is very, very thin. Well here are some pictures outside and vehicle is ready to be picked up: Sorry but I just couldn’t get enough of the front stance on these vehicles: Well that concludes this vehicle, wish I could say this vehicle finished off 100% flawless but regrettably as you saw not only was too much clear coat removed there were so many deep wet sanding marks (mostly on the rear bumper) that I couldn’t remove them all, not with out the risk of going through the clear coat and burning the paint, I mean I removed approximately 19.7microns of clear coat, some areas I removed more and that's on top of what ever the owner wetsanded off the vehicle :shakehead: Well hope you enjoyed the detail, I sure did..some parts were frustrating but still enjoyable.
Awesome job as always Carlos. What was your process to polish the pillars? Those things don't have much cc.
Thank you doc...boy your quick...the pillars, if I remember correctly I used Menzerna Intensive Polish with a Blue Polishing Ultimate foam pad followed up with 106FA with a Red Finishing Ultimate foam pad, sorry I should have put that in the write up :doh: Oh and the pillars have lots of clear coat well more so then the bumpers, if I remember correctly their the last two readings on the PosiTector 200 chart were the readings of the pillars.
Cool, thanks! Wow, you actually use IP? You must be one of the few. Mine is just sitting on the shelf - brand new.
:nod: I use Intensive Polish quite often, good stuff depending on the vehicle I can use Intensive Polish as a one pass and it gives me great results...I've noticed it behaves a bit different with the Menzerna pads compared to the 3M UK foam pads....but I enjoy using both pads and like I said it depends on the clear coat of the vehicle.
I agree, Vintage is such a versatile wax....except that it mutes flakes, so on vehicles loaded with flakes it will add warmth/depth or what I call carnauba glow but it will mute the flakes. But it enhances the solid color look to the vehicles and like you said even on white it adds a little extra. Glad you enjoyed it eace:
Amazing job with that horrible clear. Such a nice car, I have my cousin's 2010 C300 coming into my shop soon
I never understood why people Colorsand factory finishes. The risk of striking through the clear coat is too high. I'm not saying you can't do it, but if you do attempt it use caution, and do so at your own risk. Nice job Carlos, as always great work.
i have tried powergloss only once and i did cut very well but the dust in the garage was up to my knees and all ower the place.. Great job by the way! :applause: to bad the owner screwed up :doh:
Did you walk around the car with the owner and point out the spots he sanded through? I would hate for the owners mistakes to try and end up falling on you. I think overall though the car came out very well!
Well not sure if I personally would go about wetsanding the entire vehicle my self but some people really want show room quality, so to each their own :shrug: Having said that, it was the owner who was kind enough to let me know what he had done, but yes I always do a walk around with my 3M Sun Gun with the owner prior to the owner leaving me with the vehicle. For the most part the owners are quite honest and tell me what's wrong with the vehicle or what they would like for me to concentrate on, well at least I've made it a habit to ask what the owner would like me to concentrate on. Despite the burnt marks/missing paint the vehicle still turned out great and for most areas orange peal is gone :shrug: Not one of my best details but you make due with what your given to work with, glad you guys enjoyed it and thank you for the feed back. Oh and yes, Power Gloss dusts quite a bit..but dust doesn't bother me I'm used to it by now :shrug:
Ew... Did someone like bust one out on that? Amazing turn around though, I'm always impressed Carlos. :applause:
One word. Knob! Why would someone wetsand their own car without knowing what they are doing? How long was he driving the Merc with the matte finish? LOL Fantastic save Carlos!
Thank you Rocket glad you enjoyed it, to be honest I got no satisfaction out of this detail...I mean sure it was fun wet sanding using the wool pad and all but I got robed with the burt paint...just took some of the glory from me :shrug: Thank you, glad you enjoyed it :hippie: Yea I'm not sure why he felt the urge to wetsand, he said it was because he didn't like the orange peal and that he had wetsanded other vehicles in the past. He did admit though that he did not have adequate lighting to visually see how much clear coat he was removing...which goes to show how important proper lighting is :graduation: any who because he didn't have enough lighting he just kept on sanding and then realized he had gone through the paint :shrug: The owner is a nice person and all but I warned him about wetsanding the vehicle but he did it anyways. Not sure how long he drove with the matte finish to the vehicle though but yea the car just didn't look right :shead:
