Divine Detail - 2007 Cobalt LS

Well a co-worker of Carlos purchased this vehicle, it’s not a brand new vehicle but it was purchased of a dealership and the owner was having a hard time with the dealership with respect to the detailing the dealership performed to the vehicle. Well the owner gave up with the dealership and that’s where we came in. The vehicle:

2007 Cobalt LS

Now the following pictures are how the dealership delivered the vehicle to the owner, with only a few days of being driven around town:

Now the rims didn’t look too bad neither did the tires


But the wheel wells could use some attention









Well on with the show, the interior was the place to start. First all the carpets of the vehicle were removed and the entire vehicle was given a thorough vacumm:


Then it was time to extract the entire vehicle:


The owner if this vehicle requested that the head liner be done as well, so it was done:


Moving along it was time to give the entire interior a wipe down including the vents:








Once the entire vehicle had been vacuumed, extracted and a thorough wipe down it was time to dress the interior, for this Optimum Protection Plus was used:


Interior of the windows were also done


Now that the interior had been completely done it was time to move on to the engine bay, first it was given a good rinse followed up with P21S Total Auto Wash:


The engine bay was scrubed:


The roof of the hood was looking like it needed some attention as well, so it too received a good coat of P21S Total Auto Wash:


The engine bay was then given a rinse:




Now that the engine bay was done it was time to move on to the rims, tires and wheel wells. First the wheel wells were given a coat of P21S Total Auto Wash:


Then the rims received a coat of P21S Gel:


Then the tires received a coat of ARO:


Wheel wells were given a good scrub with a long handle brush:


Then the rims were agitated with a Swissvax brush:


With the help of a Meg’s tire brush, the tires were agitated:


This was the process for all the rims, tires and wheel wells. Time to get ready to wash the rest of the vehicle, for this the two bucket method, Gold Class Shampoo and Zymol sponge was used:




Once the entire vehicle had been washed it was time to clay the vehicle, to clay the vehicle Ricardo clay was used:


Entire vehicle was clayed:


In general the vehicle did not have too much contamination on it, here is a picture of the clay when the vehicle had been completely clayed:

As you can see some contamination but not that bad.

The vehicle was then given another rinse and was dried using various waffle weaved micro fiber towels:


The vehicle was taped up and with a 3M Sun Gun it was time to inspect the vehicle:







A few spots on the back had some deep scratches and were touched up, that’s what that dark smudge is.





Oh this was lovely, the dealership left some residue:




Well now that the inspection was done it was time to take some paint gauge readings with the PosiTector 6000:









Lot of readings were taken just to make sure there were no surprises to this vehicle, as you can see the vehicle had plenty of clear coat.

Now for the paint correction, the following combo was used:

3M Fast Cut Plus (UK Version), 3M Blue Polishing pad (UK Version) and Metabo at 1500RPM, here is a 50/50 to show how this combo finished off:




Here is the entire panel polished off with the same combo:


Well This combo finished off flawlessly, certain areas required two passes. What was interesting though was that certain panels of this vehicle required a pass of 3M Perfect-it (UK Version) so these two were used through out the paint correction process:


Well these 3M polishing products work quite well and a long working time but you can tell when it has completely broken down, here are some example of how ell it’s lubricated:




Well now for some before and after pictures to illustrate the difference made for during the polishing process.

Before:


After:


Before:


After:


Before:


After:


Before:


After:


Before:


After:

(My apologies for the bad after image)

Before:


After:


Here are some 50/50:




A 50/50 of the trunk:


The paint correction process went very well, now the 3M products produced lots of dust as you may haven noticed on the previously posted. To remove the dust a Zymol duster was used:


The engine bay was dressed with 303:


The entire vehicle was then HD Cleansed (regular), now the regular HD Cleanse is really easy to use. Larger panels can be done and it wipes of quite easy. To wipe off the HD Cleanse Tornado micro fiber towels were used:


Then the vehicle was protected with Swissvax Shiel:


This product was applied to the entire vehicle:


Here is how Shield looked like on the vehicle once applied:


It was left on for several minuets and then it was buffed off with some Cookies monster micro fiber towels:


Now for the end results, lets start with the engine bay.

Before:


After:


Before:


After:


Before:


After:


Well engine bay turned out quite nice, now for the rest of the vehicle:




































Well that concludes the detail of this vehicle, the vehicle finished off quite well and Shield was quite pleasant to work with the shine left behind from Shield was quite nice. Like always comments/questions are always welcome.

Hope you enjoyed the detail.

 

Wow, I wasn't sure what to expect when I saw it was going to be a Cobalt, but that's fantastic work!

Thanks as usual for the great write up, there's a lot I learn every time for them.

 

Good work guys!

 

Can you just use a carpet extractor on any headliner?

 

The 3M polish does a nice job. I bet the owner was happy with how it turned out

 

I kind of ?'d that too... isn't it dangerous using hot water on a headliner and soaking it as much as you did, don't get me wrong, I'm not an expert at headliners, but I know it's a no, no to soak them... supposedly it could cause the liner to sag.

Anyway, fantastic job on the car as a whole... you should of driven it to the dealership and proceeded to slap them in the face

 

Great work. That thing was filthy for a "new" car!!

 

With the ammount of solution sprayed on the headliner there wasn't any danger at all. The extractor actually works extremely well on headliners!!

 

Awesome work

 

nice work guys....
just be aware them readings given on that gauge are total thickness of all layers. So the figure given in pic above of 190 microns could mean 180 of that is primer/paint with the remaining 10 microns being clearcoat which if that was the case it wouldnt be "plenty of clear coat"

just making it aware to people that because a reading is high it doesnt always mean that it has a safe level of clear coat. I have come across a vehicle not to long ago that had a average reading of 300+ microns due to being resprayed but after inspecting again with the 200 model I found that it didnt have very much clear coat (12-15 microns- which is very low) to enable me to use a heavy combo which was needed to get a decent level of correction...i could of easily went thru the clear here or removed 4 microns of clear coat and risked the chance of the vehicle somwhere down the line having cc failur...

i would say anything under 8 microns of clear and you run a chance of clear coat failure happening so be wary guys.

 

looks like CS isn't a prority at the dealer ship...

Good Job :thumb:

 

Jay,

You can use the 200 on ferrous and non ferrous metals? :shead: What gauge did you use before you switched to the 200 to determine it's layer depth?

 

200 is for composites -but it can also read metal substrates but is not as accurate... (usually about 8 micrins or so out) Readings are much more accurate on flat panels than it is on curved panels. Also make sure you use the lube


i used the postitest combo for first intitil reading which gave me overall reading then used 200 to get actual clearcoat thickness

 

Oh ok, I was second guessing my plans to purchase the 6000 and 200 there...Thanks for clearing it up.

 

i had the dft combo first then bought the 6000 to replace it but found the combo was better for me as it was easier and faster (and cheaper) to use so swapped it back.

as for 200 get the adv model...great piece of kit, well worth the money imo..wouldnt be without it:thumb:

 

Well to be honest the headliner really needed to be extracted in this maner as it looked as though someone cleaned there hand on it. I'm no expert on the head liners but this method worked well for us and gave us no issues what's so ever..lol..it dosen't help either when I was telling mike to do it again as the picture didn't turn out just the way I wanted it hahahahahaha.

Spoke to the owner today, his family is thrilled with the turn around on the vehicle.

Oh and this vehicle was purchased with the purpose of giving it to there two kids that are attending university for them to comut to school and home and so on. Man they got a smoking deal on this vehicle but unfortunetly the dealership just didn't prep the vehicle properly...but that's were we came in :headbang: :headbang:

Glad you guys enjoyed it oh and using 3M again felt good, look forward on using the 3M line some more :applause2:

Oh an sas for Jayplay's coment about the PosiTector 200, I agree if your going to be spending that amount of coin might as well get somethign that is worth the effect. I now have the Advanced version of the 200 gauge and what Jayplay says is true :nod: so I second his suggestion.

 

Great job!! Thanks for sharing!

 

Awesome work done to this car! The owner had to be very happy with your workmanship!:applause:

 

wow that looks very good and to top it off you use shield on it!!!!!

 

If he didn't buy a brand new car, he got one now
The engine was awful before, has it been driven in the desert? :S