Vengeful Girlfriends...

MAKE FOR DIFFICULT DETAILING :gasp:

Apparently the poor owner of this Scion TC said the "wrong" thing to his girlfriend at the wrong time while she was sitting in the passenger seat.

His girlfriend proceeded to exit the Scion and take off her HIGH HEEL shoe as she walked over to the drivers side door to get some revenge :yikes:

The result...



The culprit...




At first I didn't believe I could fix the deep scratches caused by the shoe, but the owner begged to do whatever I could so I agreed to the detail ...despite his yelp at my ballpark estimate. In addition to the severe scratches the car in general was in poor condition as it is never garaged and sometimes neglected by other family members the owner informed me.

A shot of the main damage outside



We'll get to the correction work and wetsanding later, first up is the wash process

The Scion was very dirty with the works: road grime, road salt and heavy brake dust.

I didnt have time to document the wash process on Day 1 of the detail so here is a quick summary.

The DIC 20 and Camspray 1500 PW were a big help during the process as it was freezing temps outside so extra scrubbing and drying weren't needed

-Poorboys spray and rinse on the wheels
-APC 4:1 on the tires and wheel wells
-Pre foam the paint with a heavy mixture of CG CWG
-Remove road grime w/ Grime Destroyer and PB bug squash
-2 bucket hand wash with gloss it gloss shampoo and 2 shmitts

Before I called it a night I made sure to let the wetsadning paper soak for adequete time so it would be good to go for the following day

Meguiars Uni-Grit 1500, 2000, 2500 and 3000 soaking overnight




Day 2 started the correction work, first the car was clayed

After doing a quick "cellophane test" I found the finish to have a considerable about of contaminants. First I needed to soften up the clay as its been sitting in a cold garage for a while.

Warm water in a pot usually does the trick



I used Gloss It lavender aggressive clay with Megs LT 1:1 for lube

Here is the clay after about 3/4 of the car



After claying came the inspection, my tools of choice were the Highline PTG and the ever so great "Light of Truth" Fenix TK10 ... nothing picks up defects better on metallics



The side fender with moderate swirls under the fenix



There was some sever bird drop etching in several spots of the hood which needed wetsanding attention, before doing large sections of the hood I did a test section, wetsanded and corrected to see what polish and pad combo would work best

I tended to the bird etching on the hood test spot as well, first I sanded with Meguiars Uni-grit 2000grit







I was able to use the same polish and pad combo to remove the sanding marks as well

-Gloss It Extreme Cut w/ a megs burgandy and EVP prime on the Makita.

My Zenith approach was a little different in terms of RPM used because I had Gloss It EVP on the pad when correcting, EVP extends work time and disperses heat so you can polish longer at high speeds without generating excess heat.

900,1200, 1800, 2100 rpm ------ then back down to 1500, 1200 and 900 to finish off

Working the extreme cut on the test spot



Turns out the combo worked excellent, a quick before and after





And under the Light of truth after an IPA wipedown... perfect! You can tell the finish is 100% hologram free because the center LED beam on the Fenix is not refracted on the paint in all directions, you see the beam in a perfect circle which indicates full correction.. mind you these results were after only 1 step correction and the IPA wipedown



I found that combo worked very well so I corrected the rest of the hood, 2 other bird etchings were sanded with either 2000 and 2500grit

Moderate swirling and some deeper RIDS were corrected on the rest of the hood

Before



After





The finish was perfected after only the 1 step, I worked the extreme cut for a very long time and kept jeweling it down until I reached about 1000rpm. To add a bit more depth to the finish I decided to go one more step.

-Gloss It Evolution polish on the cyclo with blue finishing pads, I found the evo polish leaves behind a great finish so I used only a few beads per pad and lightly burnished the paint, no need to tape off sections with the cyclo, on a small hood such as this you can work it all at once. This took about 8 minutes maybe

Working the evolution polish with the cyclo



The final result after correction and finishing, IPA wipedown and no LSP





The final finished hood under all types of lighting

Infratech



Standing halogens



Up close with the halogens



Camera flash only



Finally the Fenix LED



I feel its important to show all kinds of light on the paint to ensure the finish is truly corrected, I know that in the sun that car will be perfect, I dont worry about holograms anymore thanks to the fenix.

Now onto correcting the rest of the car,

I used gloss it 1 step machine polish on the makita with the burgandy megs pad to correct the side of the car as the defects were not as bad as the hood and trunk, I finished the paint with the cyclo again and the evolution polish

After correction with the 1 step machine polish



Rear panels finished out with the evolution polish this time





The trunk was a problem area, lots of coarse swirls, RIDS and long scratches.





I wetsanded the deeper scratches with Meguiars 2000grit and then corrected the whole small trunk area using... a cyclo?...YEP!

I used these 4inch blended wool pads and the gloss it extreme cut compound to remove the sadning marks and other defects.



Why the cyclo and not the makita? Well the space I had to work with was very limited being as the trunk area is tiny so two 4inch cyclo wool pads actually fit perfectly for the correction work.

After 3 separate passes with the wool and extreme cut I finished with the cyclo again and the 1 step machine polish on green polishing pads.

After





Fenix shot



I worked my way around the car, polishing the lower bumper and rear license plate areas . Then came the very dreaded drivers side where the high heel damage was done.

After working the rear section with 4inch pads on the makita



Drivers side time, first I spotted some scratches by the drivers side tail light, so out with the sanding paper again :doh:

Before



After sanding with 2000grit and correction with 4inch orange pads on the makita




Onto the most dreaded part of the detail:shakehead:





I saw the extent of the damage now under my lighting, by far the deepest scratches I had dealt with, along with them were coarse swirls and RID's ( more on these panels than on the rest of the car)



No more games, out with the 1500grit. I sanded the large area of clustered scratches and then spot sanded the random ones


One of the deeper ones









I used a 6inch white lambswool pad for the initial correction (its a double sided pad)



And again I used extreme cut



I used some EVP prime on the wool pad as well so I could polish at higher RPM without generating too much heat, max RPM was about 2400

After the first pass I was pretty pleased to see I got out a good amount of defects but more wetsanding was needed so I hit the deeper scratches again with 1500grit and the finer ones got 2000grit

Again I used the lambswool pad, extreme cut and polished at about 2100rpm for an extended period of time for 2 more passes

The results after compunding with the wool after wetsanding



You can see the heavy hologramming but at least the scratches were taken out, this made me very happy:gidiup:

I began to finish the paint after the compounding with wool, I used the makita and the 1 step machine polish on a meguiars cutting pad, after 2 pass



The top half of that panel also had deep scratches from the high heel, again wetsanded and compunded




After 1 pass with a 4inch blended wool on the makita,



After 2 more passes, 1 with the wool pad and the other with a polishing pad using the 1 step polish to restore the gloss



And after finishing with the cyclo and evolution polish on blue pads, a scratch, swirl and hologram free finish is left



I lined up some bottles to show the clarity in the paint finish after all the correction work was done



The Fenix TK 10 showing the real finish after correction



Far from done correcting this Scion however, still have the drivers side door to take care of.

More high heel scratches? No! its like groundhogs day:thud:



A pic I took before outside



Just the regular swirls and RIDS on the upper half of the door, guess the heel's missed this section



Same deal on these scratches, 1500, 200 grit, lambswool pad, foam pad on rotary, finish with cyclo



Here is the panel all finished again under the light of truth





before, some of those door scratches



after



Now for the home stretch, no more heel damage just more swirls etc.





After 1 step machine polish and finishing with evolution polish





Here is the car post polishing after a quick rinse with just De-Ionized water, followed by an IPA wipedown



With all the correction work out of the way I called it quits for day 2, finished up at about 2am and went to sleep.

DAY 3 started with the interior which was in less than stellar shape







After



The trunk wasnt bad, cleaned up the doorjambs with APC 10:1 and a SV brush





I really didnt catch a lot of breaks on this one, :giggle:







the gloss it interior twins worked very well, streaking is a non issue with both of these products I found (dont flame me for this stuff, Im just stating the products I used to get the results i did, if I had a picture of the Lexol twins nobody would bat an eye ...understand where im coming from before I get flamed)




Carpets shampood with Folex, toweled dry and then vacummed

After





Interior process:

-Leather cleaned with gloss it satin leather cleaner
-conditioned with gloss it satin leather polish
-dash treated with gloss it TRV protectant
-plastics cleaned with 1Z cp and Reinger for the stubborn stains



As a little touch I like to spray the interior with Febreeze to get that fresh smell into the carpets, I do the same for the trunk compartment

Before going to LSP I performed all the finishing touches:

Glass was cleaned with spray way
Tires dressed with gloss it signature tire gloss
exterior trim treated with 1Z gummi pledge
exhaust polished with NXT megs
wheels sealed with Z-CS

Day 3 ended with the LSP application

Hand application of Gloss It Gloss Finish sealant x1
Hand application of Gloss It Concourso Gloss (great topper for the extra wow)


The concourso gloss on a red CCS before being massaged into the paint



And finally some final shots inside and some outside










I had to return the car very early on the 4th day, I caught some shots as the sun came up. My garage shows the depth and clarity very well because the light is shining on every angle. i wish I had some sun to showcase this car but it was only 7am when I took these.













Total time... I stopped counting at 25hours on the 3rd day


Well thank you as always for reading, this car was a nice challenge but the end result was worth it. The look on the owners face was hilarious, kind of dumbfounded if you will. Hes thrilled his car looked like it did when it left the showroom and not like it left the junkyard.

Hope you enjoyed


:thumb:

 

Wow Awesome work man! Damm HIGH HEELS :/

 

amazing. great turn around.. its crazy how people can let their cars go

 

Gloss-it heaven :thumb:

 

Great work! Lesson Learned: High Heels=High Maintenance, LOL

 

Poor guy, that is really rough..i cant imagine my girl doing anything like that..but she im sure she has been mad enough to do it :tiptoe: Great work as always and you really earned that money!!!

 

Great recovery on that Scion! I'm not sure why anyone would flame you for using Gloss-It products. They may be great products but I just don't like the marketing tactics they use.

 

How are they marketed? I don't understand :shead:

 

Awesome job on the Scion. What a mess! Why does he have a bathroom key in his car? (on floor behind passenger seat)

 

Great job! I hope your customer learned his lesson, never date a girl who can potentially boil your bunny. :giggle:

 

stunning results on the paint, especially considering the condition it was in initially!

PS: is your creeper chair comfortable? it looks like you would be sitting on a bike seat and kneeling at the same time...just curious.

 

WOW :worship2:

And I bet he very, VERY happily paid you every penny!

Well done sir. Like it sounds like you nearly did, I'd have probably turned that job down, thinking I couldn't fix a lot of that.

 

Beautiful Just Beautiful. I Couldn't believe the clay. That was nasty. You did a fantastic job and a great write up as well...:thumb:

 

This is the first write up I've read in a while that I was really impressed with. You would never have known those scratches were there! :thumb:

That girlfriend sounds like a real b!tch.

 

just fantastic work!! nice job...:worship2:

 

Looks wonderful, Wow the nerve to do that to someones cars is beyond me. That has the potential of costing thousands of dollars to fix. Good thing he went to such a good detailer

 

fantastic turnaround!

 

Yea the chair I use is great, called a RacaTac. You do sit and kneel at the same time, helps take some of that pressure of your lower back when polishing and cleaning wheels etc. I was stupid and broke the heat adjuster on the chair so now its never where it needs to be but its still nice to have.

Google racatac and you will find it somehwere.

And to all others, thank you for the kinds words and compliments...it makes these long write ups very well worth it:worship2:

 

Nice work :applause:

 

Thanks Slang!