Bstp - 1994 C180 C Class 20 hours non stop exterior correction The owner of this car called me to get this car that he had just purchased prepped for a national Mercedes club event on the weekend. I received the call on Thursday morning. Basically he wanted me to do the best t I can to the exterior of the car in a time frame that was between Thursday afternoon to mid day Friday and he wanted me to do it at his workshop since the guy operates a small auto shop. I got to his place at around 1.30 PM, after lunch and upon inspection I immediately realize the extent of the operation ahead of me. The car was mostly on its original paint sans the right rear quarter panel , the bumpers and the engine hood. There were heavy to crazy swirls all over the car, with the engine hood being the area where the swirls we most severe. Mercifully water marks / etching was minimal as this car was not driven daily by its previous owner. I then had a discussion with the owner , taking him though the the state of the damage of each panels, available paint thickness, and what I think I can do in the available time frame. He understandingly told me that I would only need to worry about the paint job and nothing else. My plan was to get the most correction as safely possible on the car and I had to do it in 20 hours or less. Here is how it went , and considering the time available to me to carry out the detail I didn’t had much time to spend on taking pictures, nevertheless ihope the following would be sufficient in conveying what I managed to do to the car. My decontamination stage consisted of an ONR wash, a megs body solvent application with 20 minutes dwell time, another onr wash and then claying with ONR diluted at qd ratio as lube. This was how my clay looked like after I did the rear quarter panel, not too bad eh? My girl said that I need a haircut badly as my hair is starting to look like a chenille washmit, what do you say guys? Here are some pics of the paint thickness measurements I took on the car, the results varied between 100-200 microns , except for some panels which I suspect had been repainted. The right rear quarter panel is the one panel where the quality of the respray was significantly worse, I even joked with the owner that what that panel had was not orange peel but more like pineapple peel. Some pic of the measurement Initial paint inspection showed that the paint was swirled quite badly, with the hood as the panel with the worse swirl. I tried to capture it on camera but since it was afternoon and the sun was shining quite brightly, the lights that I had didn’t allow the camera to capture much of the defect. In an attempt to show the real extent of the defects present I intentionally left 50 percent of the hood untouched in hopes to get better pics come night time. Anyway here are some before after pics I managed to take on some panels on the left side of the car Front left fender before Front passenger door before With the time frame that I had, my initial plan was to compound the defects using Megs d300 on the mf cutting pad, I figured that this approach will save me some time in cleaning the compounding dust afterwards. I then refine the paint by following it with PO85RD and Uber Green pad on the rotary as I like finishing with the rotary better than with the DA. Below are the some 50-50 shots 50-50 of the front fender Before part of the panel After part of the panel 50-50 of the fender and the door Fender finished This is how the fender and the door looks like after 2 hits with d300 on mf pad and a set of po85rd on Uber green with the rotary Rear passenger door before Rear passenger door after It turned out that it took me more than 4 hours with the combo to do just the fenders, and doors of the left side of the car. It was taking me too long to get rid of most of the swirls with the d300+mf cutting pad on the DA. So I figured if I were to finish this car before noon of the next day, I would need to change my game plan. So, for the remaining panels I changed my combo. First I would hit sure them with s17+3m wool pad on the rotary (took me 2 hits with this combo on most of the panels sans the hood to get most of the defects out. Sure enough, this approach was much faster than the previous one in removing the defects, eventhough I needed to hit them with the wool pad twice , it is still considerably faster. My next step might come as a surprise for some, but I for one, believe that d300 on an mf pad have a unique leveling quality to a paint job, from my experience with it, it seems to be able to produce crisper reflections compared to other compounding methods. So eventhough this might be just a placebo effect with my eyes playing tricks on me, just to make sure that this car will get that “unique” d300+mf pad quality, plus cleaning up anything that I might have missed with the wool, I followed up my wool compounding hits with a quick set of d300+mf pad on the DA at medium pressure. Each panel was then subsequently refined with PO85RD on Uber Greens with my DeWalt rotary. For the hood, it turned out that the s17+wool combo was not strong enough to quickly remove the severe marring present, so I switched to Menzerna Power gloss and hit it with the wool. The panel had a healthy reading of around 160 to low 200 microns so it is quite save to keep chasing the defects out. I divided the hood into 12 small sections and on average it took me at least 4 hits with powergloss and the wool pad to get most of the rids out. It was that bad gents, I assure you. I then follow it up with a quick set of d300+MF+DA and further refine it with PO85RD on the rotary. Below you can see the transformation. I apologize for the less than ideal pictures but I hope they would be sufficient in conveying the extent of correction on the panel. Here are some 50-50 shots I managed to take on the hood later that night The before side of the hood The after side More from the same panel , this one was before refining with po 85 rd Some more pics, this time with the help of the Fenix LED before after The area shown with the defect before, now finished Pics of the finished left side taken in the morning And now the finished product, lsp used was a coat of Collinite’s 915 Neighborhood vegetable guy posing Not the best sun shot but the best I could get that day The owner wiping some dust off with onr , the building next door is a welding shop so dust accumulates quickly All in all it took me around twenty consecutive hours on this project, I buffed constantly throughout the night even though the place was right next to a cemetery LOL.. Thank you so much for viewing , hope you enjoy this post. Ps: I would really want to thank Russ (Reflectology) for having so kindly guided me in the proper use of Scholl’s polishes, you inputs were proven to be priceless and they have helped a lot me in utilizing not only Shcoll’s but other products more effectively. A couple of most important points (among many) that helped me the most was understanding a DAT polishes’ “cycle” and how to get the most from it and the roles of proper pad priming and product loading on the pad had on the performance of a DAT polish such as Scholl’s S17. Thank you Russ, you’re a top bloke, mate! Regards, Bob aka BSTP
Very nice work Bob. The client was lucky you were able to begin work the same day he called. Thanks for sharing the process and hurdles along the way. Tell the "vegetable guy" I say hi! lol
thanks so much for stopping by mates! Brian, hows those mf pads been treating you? hope u have a great time with them. cheers, Bob BSTP
