1995 C200 W202 Silver – Full paint correction (25+ hours in two days) This is another detailing trip I managed to do on these past couple of months. It’s a two owner 1995 w202 C200, in elegance trim. The first owner was the current owner’s former boss, and he bought the car new in 1995. When he retired the current owner bought it from him. That was way back in 2004. Since then the car has been living a coveted life, as a weekend car. And spent most of its days garaged. It was sometimes taken to hack car “salons” though, because the owner was not aware of proper paint correction at the time. It is also registered as a member in one of the big car wash chain in the city. All that, explains the condition of the paint when I got the car. Oxidation marks were everywhere, there were almost no reflections at all on the paint, and underneath the oxidation layer, swirls and rds are hidden. After a lengthy discussion, the owner decided to book the car for a full paint correction, I explain to him that it would take at least 24 working hours, he said, that’s not a problem. When we had our final discussion, it was Thursday night, and he told me that he needed the car ready by Sunday because by that time the w202 club was going to go on a short touring drive to have lunch about 60 miles east of the city. I told him that would mean that I need to work on the car for at least 12 hours for each of the following days. Long story short I worked on the car until 3 am on Saturday morning. And then I went to get some rest, resume working on the car the next day at 11 am and I finished at 2 am Sunday morning. Total time spent was around 25+ hours. Due to the time constraints I didn’t get to take a lot of detailed pics, only some pics with my phone. But I did manage to get a 50-50 video of the boot lid. I hope the video would be enough to show you the level of correction that was needed to be done on the car. In a nutshell this is the treatment that I did to the car - Car was washed , de-tared, clayed - Heavy compounding was done by s17 on Uber yellows, I didn’t go with the wool because I really wanted to remove only the amount of paint needed to get as close to 100 percent correction as I can. I worked on small areas at a time and on most areas it took me 4-5 hits of s17 on Uber yellow to get all the defects out. On some areas I needed to do up to 6 hits to get it perfect. - After the time consuming compounding process was done, I followed up with s40 on LC whites. I used the white pad with relatively high pressure and RPM (while cutting) to make sure that I got all the leftovers from the compounding stage out. After I feel that I have got the correction I wanted , I made sure to burnish the paint by reducing the RPM and my pressure. I did all that on every panel, while keeping my working area relatively compact. And sure enough, after this step was done, the car looked so glossy and wet, all of the defects that I planned to remove was gone, and I was so happy as I really wanted to show the owner that with proper surface prep, even a silver paint job can be glossy, reflective, and wet. - LSP was Collinite 845 applied by hand at 1 am in the morning. All polishing was done using a DeWalt rotary Here is the video that i hope would be enough to describe the extent of the work that needed to be done on the car. the left side had taken 6 hits of S17 on Uber Yellows. (sorry guys ive searched and tried but cant seem to figure out away to post embedded videos, so here is the direct youtube link) YouTube - W202 silver, Bstp paint correction‏ And here are the pics I managed to take This is the uncorrected part of the bootlid And here is the area of the bootlid after numerous, and I mean, numerous hits of s17 on Uber Yellows (I should’ve brought s03 with me I guess, light trails on the left side are not marrings, the pics were taken by my phone, it always does that to light sources The following was the state of one of the lower panels before corrected Now here’s the panel above that one after corrected with yet another numeroous hits of s17 A corrected panel next to the one on the previous pic (deeper rds there were too deep to be safely removed) Here is a pic of the car after im done with the compounding stage with s17 and uber yellows (not yet refined with s40) Now here are the pics of some panels after a follow up hit with s40, as expected, s40 on lc whites does the job of cleaning up the leftovers of the compounding stage and amp up the gloss really well. This pic was taken like 10 hours after the previous pic, it was around 11 pm. See how the reflection of the other car was there even under low light condition (unfortunately conditions were less than ideal at the time to allow the pic to show the effect of the s40 hit properly) Now here are a few pics of the finished product I managed to take the day after , I was totally knackered and sadly, just before these last pics was taken the car was involved in an accident (caused by a reckless bus driver overtaking in a blind corner) so I couldn’t take the pic of the front end. The good news is the owner told me earlier this week that the car is fixed now, and we are arranging a follow up detailing session to get the car’s paint back in shape. Love to see reflections like that on a silver car (none of these pics were edited nor enhanced) Total time taken was 25+ hours in two days Thank you for viewing Cheers, Bob
