bstp - 34hrs Paint correction with a 97 W210 Mercedes in Obsidian Black

Hi guys, I’m back, it’s been quite a while, but I’m back at detailing now.
The owner of this car is a long time customer of mine (he owned that blue black w202 to which I did my first time with d151 to). He called me a few weeks back saying that he had just purchased this car and he wanted me to come and take a look at it and discuss what steps should be taken to bring it back to shape. So we arranged an inspection session a few days afterwards at a shopping mall where he had a shop there. Here are some pics of the initial inspection:
Looking shiny?


Lets take a closer look



As you can see the car was badly swirled up and showed some evidence that it has been taken to a , shall we say, “volume” detailer numerous time before as can be seen by the presence of buffer trails and holograms all over the paint job. Furthermore there were numerous edges showing signs of paint burning that further supports my prejudice.
I also did quick measurements of the car’s paint on the spot, and it was clear that the hood had been repainted with readings of over 400 microns in some spots. The other parts of the car , I’m not so sure, but what I do know is in some areas they’re thin as hell averaging mid 70s to mid 80 microns on the low spots while other areas read around low 90s-120 microns , further indicating that this car has been taken to “volume” detailers as well as bodyshops numerous times in its lifetime.
After I showed the owners the defects present on the paint job and my initial paint gauge readings I asked him what his expectations were for the car. His answer was what I wanted to hear. He said,” do whatever you need to do to get it looking as best as you can, because its going to be a weekend car”, so I asked him what’s his budget? He said anything under 35 hours should be okay.
So I picked up the car the next day and bring it over to my new little garage  its far from fancy nor large, I actually had to maneuver the car occasionally to work on an area comfortably, but at least now I canhave a secure and consistent place to burn the midnight oil and work on cars.
The next morning I started by giving the car a proper wash, starting with the wheels and interior vacuuming. For the paint job I used a strong mixture of shampoo, dishwasher liquid and a little of Meg’s apc+ in an attempt to clean the paint and strip it as best as I can. I then followed my decontamination routine with claying the car using a mixture of ONR and distilled water as clay lube. Here is what my clay looked like after I finished with the boot lid. Not too dirty, further compounding my initial suspicion of this car having been taken to a “detailer” shortly before the sale.
After the decontamination process was completed, I repeated my inspection on the paint job, this time in a more thorough way and I was not surprised to see some spots showing readings as low as mid 60s. This, folks is why we need to do it right the first time, when it comes to detailing. Because damages that hacks WILL instill on a car are not always fixable.
Here are some pics of my inspection
First off, how my clay looked like after half of the trunk



The following pics were taken during my thorough paint inspection stage. I checked the state of all the panels with the help of my Fenix torch as well as taking careful paint thickness measurements on all the panels. Unfortunately since I didnt have anyone to help me , i didnt get to take snaps of my paint thickness measurements done at this stage, my PTG needs two hands to operate.






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This one below is from the trunk or boot lid depending on which side of the road you drive 




On with our little tour






With the results of my inspection I then decided my course of action for this Merc.
I planned to do the best I can to remove the defects on the hood - considering it has a relatively thick coat of clear – without resorting to wet sanding. As wet sanding on a car this size can easily push my work outside of the allocated time limit. As for the rest of the car I would approach it on a section by section basis, doing the best that I could to remove the defects while constantly monitoring the available paint thickness. After the heavy defect removal is done I will follow up with a medium cot polish set and then jewel it with an ultra fine polish like PO85rd to bring as much gloss as possible to the obsidian metallic black finish.
The first thing I did was to do a test spot on the hood; this is where things got interesting. Starting with the least aggressive principle, my first try was m205 + uber green polishing pad with the deWalt rotary, most of the deep swirls on this thing proved to be too deep for 205 to handle, no surprises there, the interesting thing was that 205 left an oily film on the paint that won’t get wiped off by gentle wiping of my plush MF. It took more pressure to wipe the residue off, which is atypical for 205 or any of the more recent of Megs polishes. However, wiping it with more force caused micro marring to be instilled on the paint. At the time, I thought to myself, I might be dealing with a soft AND sticky paint here. I have had experiences with very soft black paints before but not this sticky that even 205 leaves a coat of oily residue that is hard to buff off. Next up I tried my long time companion, Scholl’s s17.
Before I go on I have to inform you that in the later part of last year, I have been lucky enough to have had an opportunity to discuss about Scholl’s polishes with Russ (reflectology), he was kind enough to send me a paper that he had written regarding these polishes. I honestly say that his guide was nothing short of amazing. I have been using Scholl’s products for years but I don’t think that I have found a way to use it as effectively until I tried Russ’s methodical apporoach. With his method, the previously appeared to be dusty S17 barely even dusts. And the finish it is able to leave the paint with the rotary and a cutting pad was just amazing on certain paints. If any of you are wondering right now about how to use Scholl’s products properly, you might consider giving Russ a call. Don’t worry he’s a top bloke, or so they say in England.
Anyway back to the car. I considered using s17 on my next try, with the rotary because this combo had saved me before when I was working on another black Merc with very soft paint. At the time I managed to complete the car using s17 on wool for the heavy cutting step and then finishing it with s17 on a black finishing pad. Not a chance on this one though. As s17 left an even worse layer of residue on the paint. For the sake of fairness, s17 on Uber yellow with the rotary succeeded in taking out a lot of defects.
After two frustrating attempts I recalled one of Carlos’s (L2D) post, one in which he talked about the effects of heat of the rotary having a worsening effect on sticky Subaru paints. So I thought to myself, maybe I should just ditch the rotary on this job. I didn’t bother trying s17 on the da as I thought that the iPT system in s17 is not really designed for DA application, so my next step was d300 on the mf cutting pad. Just like s17 on the rotary before, this combo managed to take out a lot of defects, although I had to repeat the application up to 3 times at times to get most of the defects out. Very few RDS remained on my test spot, the kind that would take wet sanding to remove efficiently, but unfortunately that was out of the budget. Mind you this combo also left the paint with a coat of sticky oily residue, quite severe but not as bad as they were on my rotary tries. Wiping them off still required effort that would leave micro marring on the paint. Mind you this cutting step also left the paint with its own micro marring / hazing from the heavy cutting action on the soft paint, but I thought I better not worry about them much since my polishing step is supposed to take care of any micro marring left behind. Another thing to note is that this combo left the paint much cooler than before so I felt more secure.
Next was to try a polishing combo that might work, since don’t plan on using the rotary on this paint; I went with m205 on Uber green polishing pad with my Das Pro DA. Sure enough this step took care of the micro marring left from the previous compounding step and cleaned up the paint real good, yet it still leaves a sticky oily residue. And also, any forceful wiping on the paint will inflict marring.
So my next approach is trying PO85rd on an Uber Blue finishing pad with the DA. Sure enough it cleans the paint of any hazing left from the previous steps. Surprisingly, fully working down PO85rd left a much easier residue to wipe off, much nicer than the kind left by the other combos. In short, it’s not sticky, providing i made sure that ithas been fully worked. This is just surprising as this was my first time working with 85rd on a DA. And from my experience 85rd should be the oilier when compared to 205, who would’ve thought eh? However, it took me quite a lot of passes to get it to work down properly. I don’t mind though as I was so happy about the fact that it didn’t leave any nightmarish sticky film of oil.
Considering the hood had a very different reading than the rest of the car’s panels, I did another test spot on the driver side front fender. Surprisingly this panel, albeit a lot thinner than the roof, around 80 lows to 100 on the highs, showed exactly the same characteristic as the hood when it comes to being sticky and prone to micro marring. Confusing eh?
Anyway judging from my test spot experience, I decided to not finish each panels completely as I work on the car as I would normally do. Because the simple act of wiping any dust will scratch the paint, I decided to just compound each panel as best as I can with d300+MF and repeat as necessary while constantly keeping an eye on paint thickness, then follow it with a set of 205 on uber green polishing pad with the da. I will then repeat the process to the whole car panel by panel, after this has been done, after that I will then give the car a thorough wash with my stripping dilution to get the oily film residue and dust off. Only then will I start finishing the whole car with PO85rd on Uber Blue and the DA. After my finishing step I planned to rewash the car to minimize the chances of scratching the paint before I apply my LSP. That, folks, was exactly what I did.
At this point I would like to tell you that initially I had planned to document my work on this car as thorough and as methodical as possible (one of the motivations was the new little garage I had), but, as the hours roll by, reality starts to sink in, and I realize that if I had continued documenting this car in the way I wanted to, I wouldn’t be able to finish the car on time. So here are some areas of the car in which I managed to do in depth documentation to. Please do keep in mind, that most of the 50-50 pics I had below are done after my polishing stage, BEFORE the PO85rd + finishing pad + DA step, a step which I did AFTER I finished compounding and polishing , then giving the car a thorough stripping wash to get that sticky oily residue out off the paint job to give me a solid, clean base for me to do my finishing step.
With that said, lets start with the hood
Started off with taping

Proper taping is time consuming, yet it is paramount because this is what we’d get if we failed to do it right , burnt edges.



Other than to prevent edge burning, i also like to tape areas where I would like to minimize dust from the heavy cutting stage to get into, hence this area is getting taped this way


Then I re-do my paint measurements before i start each section just to make sure I didn’t miss a spot




Right now below are some 50-50 shots, with the help of the Fenix, mind you I didn’t have my DSLR with me at the time, so all these pics were taken with my old 5Mpix Sony point and shoot, please excuse me if some pics shows more than the normal hazing around the light source, this ten year old cam tend to do that.
Before

After


Before side



After side next to it


video
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50-50 of the hood / bonnet under the halogens














another video of the area
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Some more 50-50 from a different angle






And now some pics after the whole hood/bonnet it has been corrected (before a final hit with PO85RD)





video of the completed hood (still before another hit with PO85RD)
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The hood alone took me around 6 hours to finish the compounding and medium polishing sets, I worked on very small sections at at time, repeating my compounding sets as necessary, I divided the hood into around 24 smaller areas in total, worked with with very very slow arm movement and medium to heavy pressure and repeating any step if I see any imperfections still intact (apart from the seriously deeper RDSs. All of the pictures above are taken before the finishing stage with po85rd.


The front driver side (yes, we drive on the RIGHT side of the road) fenders
This panel was markedly thinner than the hood, indicating that it might have an original coat, I say might, because on a car this age, we can never be 100% sure. Anyway readings on this panel was rather all over the place some high spots above the body styling line was showing around mid 90s to low 100s, some spots around the lower area showed as low as mid 70 microns. Which was inline with the results of my initial inspection throughout the majority of the car, indicating that whatever method that worked well on this panel should be readily applicable to most of the other panels of the car. I proceeded by taping up a test spot on the front half of the panel, suspecting that this might have original Mercedes paint job, I decided to try Scholl’s s17 on Uber Yellow on the deWalt rotary first. This combo had always worked impressively well for me on original Mercedes paints. Surprisingly, it didn’t. despite the marked contrast in thickness between the paint on this panel to that of the hood, it showed exactly the same sticky and soft characteristics. The result of my Scholl s17 set was just as it did on the hood. long story short, the combo I used on this panel and most of the car was d300+MF+DA for one or more sets, followed with M205+Uber green +DA then wash, then a set of po85rd + uber blue +DA. As always, working areas for every “hit” was kept small, I think it took me 9 or 10 sections to cover just this fender.
Here are some pics I managed to get showing areas in their original state vs areas after my d300 followed with m205 sets







The driver side doors
The driver’s side door received a similar approach, with some variations in the repetitions of the d300 sets, dictated by the amount of available paint thickness.






with the Fenix


50-50 video of the door
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The door completed



Rear driver side quarter panel

This panel worthy of a special discussion because a section of it showed a really worrying paint hickness reading , maxing at the mid 60 micron range. Hence I decided to tape and isolate the area of concern while I compounded the rest of the panel, which was showing a relatively healthier paint thickness reading, ( 80 to low 100 microns ). This approach was repeated on other panels showing similarly worryining sections. I then removed the tapes after I finished my compounding sets on the rest of the panel, including the previously isolated area and incorporate them into my polishing set for the panel. It turned out quite acceptable, as the m205+uber green combo was doing quite a decent job in tackling out most of the swirls on the thin section to make it blend with the rest of the panel.
The process is shown below

The panel



]

This is the upper side with healthier readings I told you about


Below the tape line lies the section with worrying paint depth readings



50-50 of the rear driver side quarter panel


completed



Driver side C pillar




50-50 of the c pillar


A little closer



with the fenix torch



the whole pillar corrected


next up is the trunk ,or boot-lid if you’re Russ (thanks for your guide mate!)


The same panel, after


a video of the trunk
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Unfortunately I didn’t have enough time to document the work on the rest of the panels as well as I did in the previous ones. Any way, I proceeded with compounding the rest of car’s panels with multiple passes of d300+mf pad on the DA guided by available paint thickness, followed it up with m205+uber green on the DA, give the car a stripping wash, then hit all panels with a set of po85rd+uber blue on the DA.
After the paint correction was completed I washed the car again, then I dried it, and applied a coat of opti seal. I chose THE EASIEST sealant to apply in an attempt to reduce the chances of marring the paint through microfiber wiping.
The next morning I started with applying another coat of opti seal, and then i applied some dressing to the wheels, wheel wells, and other areas of the car. I also took the opportunity to apply some opti seal to the wheels.
Here are the pics of the end product
Sun shots taken at a petrol station on my way delivering the car since the sky were cloudy when I left my workshop. - I remember Dana said somewhere, some time ago, that we need to take finished shots under the sun on a sunny day between 11am – 3pm; so I just pulled over to the closest place I could find to take some pics as I saw the cloud opening. Thanks for the guidance Dana, you rock!
But first, a little trivia
I don’t know if it was captured on the picture, but I’m pretty sure the guy who drove the public transport minibus taxi (pictured below) was not really happy with me blocking part of the exit.

Btw for those wondering the words meant “city transport”. These little minibuses act just like buses, with its set of route, people can just wave at them and they WILL pick you up. The average fare is a flat rate at around a quarter of a dollar, with that kinda money you can go as far as the minibus’ route could take you. If you need to go somewhere outside of the route simply stop the car by yelling to the driver, walk out of on and hitch hike another one which route will take you to where you wanna go. Mind you one small van like that one is usually filled with 12-13 people!

Now on to the sun shots , taken at mid day, (as always no digital enhancements were ever done to any of these and my previous pictures)




Now on to some reflection shots
















One more from a bit further

I admit that those Brabus Monoblock IIs are a bit anachronistic on this car, but somehow I think they look quite cool, making the tame lines of the w210 looking rather mean, would you agree?
And a little self reflection shot, cheers! (note to self, go easy with the beer mate)

Opti seal does look good on a well prepped finish, but the best thing is that it repels dust so well. This is crucial in a tropical and dusty climate, because a wax will only allow us to have a perfect paint for like 15 minutes down the road, before dust starts to pile up and hide the car’s gloss. This Merc stayed almost dust free when I got to the owner’s place , after sitting in bumper to bumper traffic for about 40 minutes. That NEVER happens if I put a coat of wax on it.
The owner has a shop in this shopping center and asked me to deliver it there. Not a great shot, but nice to see depth of the paint job compared to other cars. Again, minimal dusting thanks to Opti Seal !

Btw since the owner told me that he is going to have the wheels repainted, I didn’t do much to them apart from my regular cleaning routine and light polishing with d151 by hand folowed with a coat of optiseal. Wheel wells and tires got a coat of Meg’s hyper dressing.
In the end, between pursuing perfection, balancing it with the owner’s time frame, and doing my day job, it took me around 34 hours to complete this detail (excluding time taken for short breaks and dinner) spanned over the course of 5 days.
Thanks for viewing. As always, comments and criticisms are welcome 
Cheers,
Bob

 

Welcome back Bob! Fantastic work on the Benz and very thoroughly detailed writeup.

 

Nice job Bob. That last pic looks fantastic. I just had one of those ( black as well ) in my shop last week. The readings you got 80-90 microns were repeated on the one I did as well so its probably as they were painted from the factory.

 

wow great work! that was a hammered merc, looks very mobbish all cleaned up though, I love it.

 

Hey there bri, hows it going mate? hope you're doing well. thanks a bunch for viewing this one, always nice hearing from you.

Thanks for your comments mate, you're too kind

Now here is the man i also need to thank to! i believe we had a correspondence a while back that has allowed me to get the products i used on this detail as well as the proper technique to use it, however this post it took me three days to complete, i forgot some people i needed to thank, my apologies Ken. Always a pleasure getting comments from you.

anyway ken, i relieved that you shared the same paint reading on a similar car that you worked on, that means my PTG is correct. gee if that is how these cars are painted from the factory then these has got to be some of the thinnest Merc paints i have encountered so far.
regarding the "character" of the paint, was yours as soft and sticky as the one i described on this post? and if you dont mind me asking, what combo did you end up working on it with?

best regards,
Bob

 

Very nice