This job was posted on another forum by Justin and I thought I'd share it here too. Rasky and I teamed up again for this job, a Mini Cooper S that was in decent shape but definitely in need of some help. It was a basic 1 step/protect but we wound up doing some extra decon and polishing steps to make it really pop and send it out the door in a manner that was satisfactory to both of us. Once again, like with all light color metallics we had some issues getting the paint condition to translate to pictures well (we tried 2 different DSLRs, 3 different lenses, multiple exposure settings, etc). The silver/gray metallic paint was very hard, very contaminated and good at hiding defects, which made having 2 sets of eyes a very good thing. The process was: - Wash w/ONR - Tar-x and Iron-x on various body panels - Clayed with Blackfire Poly Clay and Griots Speedshine as lube - D300 on a MF Cutting disc via GGDA - Blackfire to seal, Opti-Guard on plastic trim - Wheels got everything under the sun (more later in write up) - Stainless Trim cleaned w/Optimum Metal Polish - Chrome Cleaned with Mothers Chrome Polish (love this stuff) - Tires dressed w/Megs Hyper @ 4:1 - Interior vacuumed and wiped down with Megs QID On to the pics. Like I said, we had a very hard time capturing the condition before, but the trim panels and stripes here give a pretty good indication what we were faced with. Crop of paint attempting to show swirls. Stainless trim before: After Optimum Metal Iron X Working away on the white roof: Tar-X having it's way with the lower panels: Thrashed tips before: After a lot of elbow grease, Optimum Metal and 0000 steel wool: All chrome polished with Mothers Chrome Polish The wheels had the worst brake dust contamination/build up/etching I've ever seen. This is after a Round with Sonax Full Effect (barely touched it) Meg's Wheel Brightener helped considerably: Decided to see if straight Iron-X would even do anything after all that, and the answer was yes it would: Decontamination complete (or as complete as it was going to get); now time to do some correction............
Paint Measured Healthy on all panels: It's fine as long as the buffers don't touch.......right? D300/MF doing its job effectively: 3" Mirka plate and MF pad for the tight spots Trim pieces before and after: Taillights before and after: Rasky Opti-Guarding the wheel arch trim: Wrapped up, sealed and ready to deliver: Chad says "Thanks for looking!"
Nice work boys, impressive metal restoration there. Were you able to get the wheels back to 100% even with Iron-X?
Thanks guys! Definitely nice having someone to work with! Keeps you motivated and the work is a lot more fun too given our personalities. Thanks! Nope, the damage to the wheels was to extensive and some pitting still remained. Owner was floored with how well they came out though. I should add that we actually went over the black trim with 2 steps. I think the pics Justin posted were after D300. The ones below are after 106fa with tangerine LC pads. Also, here is the after pic on that one white strip which was etched/stained and it even looked like the material itself was failing. Not 100% but a big improvement.
Very nice. I have buildup like that on my wheels as well in some areas. Did the Iron-X at least remove the black build up?
Nice job guys. It amazes me that people can let their wheels get to that point. All those people should be forced to drive Yugo's. F%$# em! Good idea using IronX straight on the wheels. I've had great success with that as well.
Thanks guys! No, not completely. It improved them noticeably, but after 3-4 total rounds of cleaning we figured it was good enough since we had already gone above and beyond what this job was scheduled for.
