Detailed: 2008 Chevy Tahoe -20k Mile Nightmare!

This 2008 Chevrolet Tahoe, looked tired and aged, which was unacceptable being a 2008 vehicle with only 20k miles on it! We could see the damage from the other end of the building when we showed up, the black paint had a heavy gray hue to it. Over the course of 25 hours among three of us working, we revived this paint and gave it the gloss and correction it should have regardless of age and mileage! Being such a large vehicle, we had our work cut out for us, and it's not often that we do SUVs simply because of the time and effort required to do such extensive correction work. As listed in the process the paint varied across the vehicle, and some panels were more damaged than others, a result of consistent trips to the automated car wash. Just goes to show, hand washing your vehicle is far more beneficial in the long run. This was easily one of the most defected vehicles we have worked on. We've tackled some difficult projects before that consumed many days, but this Tahoe takes the cake on damage, lucky for us paint was pretty soft and easy to fix. With that said, the pictures are worth an unlimited amount of words, there are a LOT of pictures in this thread, but we really wanted to document and show the differences in the various lighting and such. Even in the shade this car made me cringe!


Products used

Meguiar’s M105 + wool pad
Meguiar’s M105 + yellow pad
Menzerna SIP + yellow pad
Menzerna 203PF + orange pad
Menzerna 106FA + black pad
Blackfire Wet diamond + blue pad
P21S Paint Cleanser + P21S yellow applicator
Meguiar’s Last Touch (clay lube)
Riccardo yellow clay
Sonus Green superfine clay
CG maxi suds
Poorboys Bold ‘n Bright tire dressing
Poorboys Natural look


Procedure:
Car was rinsed and washed with CG maxi suds, there was no protection on car what so ever. After wax, it was dried and clayed, it was pretty bad specially on lower section of doors and rear hatch. Car was washed again and dried. Pulled car inside, and took paint readings, range was from 95-105 to 298-334 on same panels. Test panel was done on hood and Menzerna 203 and orange pad took everything out with one stage. Other panels needed more work and different combination of pads and polishes were used. After all polishing stages (3 stages), P21S paint cleanser was used and then BlackFire sealant was applied, left on car for about an hour and wiped off. Wheels were cleaned , tires dressed, plastic trim dressed. Tail lights and headlights were polished. Glass cleaned.

Time spend on detail: 25 hours

Onto pictures

Before






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Clay condition after about each panel
bottom of doors (this was about same after each door)
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Top panels






test panel 50/50


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Correction pictures 50/50








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car was pretty big so all means of getting job done were used



50/50 video of rear quarter panel after first polishing stage
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BlackFire sealant applied





reflection pictures


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Final pictures and video
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The end results speak for themselves! Thanks for reading!

 

wow! Great turnaround!

 

Wow....Looks a Bazillion times better....

 

My god that had to have been some of the worst before pictures I have ever seen.

 

yeah! it was a nightmare!

 

Dang that thing was beat up! The 50/50s shots, final looks great with the nice deep black.

 

Wow! That car was absolutely trashed! The finish on that looks great!

So were you guys mobile on this job or do you guys work for GV? I dropped out of the DSM scene a while ago so I havent been in touch with GV crew since they moved to their new shop about a year or two ago.

 

Those are some of the most insane 50/50s I've ever seen, amazing...

 

Stunning work indeed!!!!! :thumb::thumb::thumb::thumb:

 

wow..amazing im assuming you used a rotary ...i cant see a pc getting thatkind of results

 

Simply WOW! That kind of transformation is just overwhelming

 

Thanks guys, it was worst paint we have worked on although MB S600 might have been in about same condition on top of hard clear. but this paint was pretty soft so it was pretty easy to work on

we go to GV when they need us for their customers, thats only mobile jobs we do, yeah their new shop is huge so plenty of space to work in

rotary didnt touch that car, we usualy use rotary on ceramic clears where its actualy needed, it probably would have made job faster but we didnt use it

 

those are some of the most dramatic 50/50 shots i've seen. nice work guys!

 

Nice work. Worst before pics I have ever seen!

 

wow! talk about some hazed out paint! Thing looked tore up from the floor up man. The 50-50's were incredible and the finish was just stunning. Can't believe it took 3 people 25 hrs to bring that thing back . . . . your customer must have been thrilled at the results . . . . . now hopefully it stays looking that good for a while.

 

excellent work here. paint was ridiculous!

 

WOW! 5-steps of polishing...That's a lot of work! I am often lazy to do 2 step polishing...

 

it was more of 3-4 step. just different panels sometime needed different polishes, plastic had very hard paint so had to use wool on that

106 doesnt take much time since its just gloss polish and not correction polish (at least thats what we used it for.

 

I am continuously amazed at what a PC can do in the hands of a professional and reassured in my purchase of a PC to learn and grow on

 

i thought i was ready to jump to a rotary...apparently i have to learn how to use the pc first ......cause there is no way i could have done that...

on a side note you said ou used wool....i thought wool and a pc was a no no. or do you mean a purple foamed wool