The car arrived looking very clean, but rather dull... Closer inspection in the sun revealed why - swirls! Some minor regions of damage that would require attention too, hit by a football... and bird etching... First off though it was the wheels and arches, which before again looked fairly clean... Wheels cleaned with Bilberry, tyres with and arches with APC. Vikan brushes used to ensure the insides of the wheels clean also... Another wheel and arch before... Tyres cleaned with Meguiars APC, sprayed on and agitated with a brush... Arches the same... Ensuring the inside lip of the arch clean as well, and free of mud... I use my hands (with gloves!) to feel round the inside lip of this wheel arch, dislodging trapped dirt and ensuring a completely clean wheel arch... Rinsing off... The results, clean and ready for dressing The car was then foamed using Meguiars Shampoo Plus through the foam lance (I rarely botther with specialist snow foams, finding shampoos are just as effective ): Rinsed, two bucket wash, rinsed and ready for claying. While I started claying, Bryan set about removing a glue residue from the rear windscreen with a blade.. Claying, the car felt like sandpaper. Zaino Z18 clay used, wiped gently until it ran smooth... and you can see just a small section of the bonnet already pulling up a lot of grime... In the setting sun, the swirls were very apparent: Dull headlights, too... Now onto the challenge - machine polishing. Under the Sun Gun you could see the extent of the swirls and paintwork damage... Under the strip lighting you could see the severity of the deeper marks as well... Correction was a challenge - the paint was sticky, resisting attempts at rotary polishing with many polishes that were trialled - the panels heating up very quickly, despite varied techniques and combos, and the polish drying out... Menzerna was the worst offender, GlossIt was little better, 3M was better, but the products of choice I went for for the correction was Meguiars #95 Speed Cut. Now the paint is soft, and this was an aggressive choice, but I used it quickly, simply spreading and working at 1500 - 1800rpm (keeping temps low, with slow speed compounding) until the marks removed. The heavy cut kept a quick work time and low panel temp, removed the marks, was not severe on paint thickness. It did, as you would expect, leave some hologramming! First stage refining was another challenge... again, many polishes were sticky and biting, with very careful coaxing required to get Menzerna to play ball (light pressure by lifting machine, then slowly up the work speeds to coax into life...). Trialling Menzerna, Meguiars, 3M, GlossIt and Chemical Guys Diamond Cut I finally settled on a polish that isn't much talked about: 3M Polish Ultrafine, 60168 (white top). This spread and was the smoothest in use of the lot but still raised panel temps during its work time higher than normal. It did a good job of removing severe hologramming, but the finish was still not 100% perfect in terms of refining with very slight trails only noticeable under the Sun Gun. Still not good enough though, so I carried out a second refine stage, Menzerna PO85RD Final Finish this time, slow speeds and build to 1500rpm coaxing the polish to life, and then down slowly through the speeds. Long work time, varying speeds, weight and machine movement the whole time to ensure the panel temps remained as cool as possible and the polisher was not allowed to drag. In the end, the quality of the finish I was happy with... It was a challenge, especially compared to Sunday's S-Max where the rotary glided and cruised on the paint like a boat on a mill pond. Today we had a force 10 gale :lol:, but sometimes you get a car that makes you search through your toolbox of skills for a solution and this was one such car. The results were worth it in terms of clarity restored though. Before: After: While up front, we dealt with the dull headlights... Intensive Polish on a polishing pad delivered this (masked back up to protect rubber as bonnet edges were polished by 4" pad): Rear lights, before and after: Onto the sides, and back to the fun of the paint! Swirls galore before... Deeper round the door handle... The correction and first refining stage delivered the required defect removal, and as you can see under the halogen light, the finish also looks well refined and LSP ready... Ensuring correction around the details as well, deeper scratches shifted... and on the door handle... Behind door handle with PO91L Intensive Polish by hand... Back to the finish quality though, and the Sun Gun tells a different story here - look very carefully at the bright light sources and you will see faint tails renderring the finish below par at this stage, and certainly not ready for a wax (never rely on halogens alone!): After very careful and time consuming refining with Final Finish, the tails are removed and the finish has the clarity that it should have... The back door was much the same... Corrected and refined... The silver plastics paint was similarly sticky, but this presented an issue again - high temps would be totally unacceptable on plastics which cannot dissapate the heat and are far more prone to burns and bubbling... They required serious compounding as they were in a bit of a state before... I chose the PC Dual Action here, to correct and keep panel temperatures low, using Meguiars #95 Speed Cut on a LakeCountry Yellow Cutting pad, followed by Final Finish to deliver... The running boards were suffering from rust, but the metal bar was cheered up with Briliant #2 Polish applied with a polishing pad by PC... a 50/50... Remember the football scratch? All removed now bar one deeper RDS which was softened... Nice gloss on the red paint now... While Stu and I machine polished the exterior, Bryan was at work on the interior. In fairness, the car was in good nick inside in the befores... Boot home to a dog... Hoovered, and plastics cleaned with APC and dressed with Poorboys Natural Look... Wetvac was not used on this detail for dedicated carpet and upholstery cleaning... The paintwork was cleansed using Lusso Revitalising Cream and waxed with Autoglym HD Wax. Glass cleaned inside and out using Autoglym Glass Polish... Engine bay before... After a quick clean and wipe down with All Seasons Dressing... Tyres dressed with Meguiars Endurance, wheels sealed, arches dressed with All Seasons Dressing, plastics dressed with All Seasons Dressing and buffed to ensure no streaking. At the close of play on a long saturday, the car was looking good, gloss restored and the efforts put into the machine polishing were paying off in the evening light in the unit... At this stage, Stu and I leave the story - Sunday for us is a Ford S-Max ... Bryan returned to this car on Sunday, applied a second layer of HD Wax and handed back to the owner. All final after pics taken by Bryan this time One happy 4x4 owner A tough day on this car, but rewards in the end well worth it... Sorry there are no more full car outside shots, I'm afraid I wasn't there at the end to do my David Bailie bit :lol::lol:
Awesome to see a top notch detail and paint correction on a... Kia! I think we tend to get spoiled by all the high end cars people detail here so often. Great work, and thanks!
I like working on run of the mill cars... high end cars always look spectacular, making an every day car stand out is more of a challenge
WOW! Another great detail, thanks for sharing! That was a first SUV I've seen with a stick shift manual tranny... Megs Shampoo Plus in a foam lance, huh? That's something new...
My fiancee's Jeep Liberty is a manual - and thats in USA, very rare there apparently... its the 3.7 V6 version, 5-speed manual box. Pity they dont seem to sell the CRD Diesel in America, as for me its the best engine for the Jeeps - loads of lugging torque, combined with economy Maybe its available now though? Try the Shampoo Plus through the lance, or Hyper Wash which is even better - I never use Snow Foams anymore, just good old car shampoo as it does the same job
Awesome work Dave, great write up and pictures as well. Never thought to use ASD under the hood, I love it on tires and wheel wells.
I see. Yes, manual tranny is very rare is USA these days...everyone prefers automatic for some reason...My brother-in-law has Jeep Liberty with CRD Diesel, which is very rare for some reason...I personally never had a diesel car, but will consider it the next time I'll be thinking about getting a newer daily driver...something like diesel VW Jetta, or Golf... As far as snow foams, I use CG CWC in a foam lance, also like DG #901/902, Megs Hyper Wash...Optimum Shampoo does a pretty good job in a foam lance too...But I never heard of using Shampoo Plus in a foam lance, this is the first time...I always use Shampoo Plus in a bucket, and absolutely adore it... Usually I mix it with Majestic Solutions Ultra Gloss (think Dodo Juice Born To Be Mild on steroids) 1:1...it leaves paintwork very slick and very glossy...
Ah, so you do get them Yes, its the Cherokee over here - not hugely popular in the UK, but thats because they come with a price premium over here...
