I'll admit it - I love doing cars like this Every day car, but with an owner who really wants it to look special, and lets face it, every car deserves to shine whether it be a supercar or a city runabout "Has paint, make shiny!" :lol::lol: The car arrived with Bryan and Stuart who carried out the washing and claying of the car, which left us with the car ready to machine polish: The car was looking reasonably good, its a beautiful colour this blue, but it was lacking a little bit of depth and gloss.. getting the Sun Gun out, and you could easily see why! Swirls galore, starting at the front end: As always when machine polishing, I never guess at paint hardnesses or products to use - always start light and work your way up on a test spot to assess the required correction combination that not only delivers the best in terms of finish but also does so in a way that is safe for the paintwork. Menzerna Intensive Polish was trialled during this process, on a cutting pad, which was shown to be sufficient for the swirl correction... But as usual, the Sun Gun (while the best tool for assessing the quality of the finish in terms of clarity and marring free finish - avoid 500W halogens for this task!!) is not so good for looking for deeper RDS - bright lights cause glare which hide subtle deep marks... using the strip lights, we can see much more clearly that the finish is still containing deeper RDS, Paint thickness checks shows a healthy and consistent thickness on the car suggesting no regions which had been painted or previously aggressively polished... IP was shown to be removing small amounts of paint, a maximum of around 3um calculated from averages, so it was decided to step up to 3M Fast Cut Plus on a Meguiars W7006 cutting pad. Application was as follows, using a couple of drops of 3M Ultrafina SE to help increase work time and reduce panels temps and dust: Spread at 600rpm, pass or two, light pressure Begin working at 1200rpm, two or three passes until residue evenly spread, light pressure and slow to medium machine movements Work at 1800 - 2000rpm, starting with moderate pressure and slow machine movements (couple of inches per second) As panel temperature rises, reduce pressure and speed up machine movements, maintaining 1800 - 2000rpm, until marks removed or compound dries to dust This left the following RDS free finish: Refining was carried out using Meguiars #205 Ultra Finishing Polish on a meguiars W9006 tan finishing pad (85RD was also trialled, but #205 was found to most satisfyingly knock out light hologramming from Fast Cut while delivering the sharp finish with most flexibility ). Refining process using the Double Zenith Technique as follows: Spread at 600rpm # Begin working at 1200rpm, for two or three passes until residue evenly spread and panel slightly warmed, light pressure Work at 1500rpm with moderate pressure and steady machine movements, two or three inches per second movements, lightening pressure off towards end of the set Refine at 1200rpm, lighter pressure, slower machine movements Burnish at 900rpm, supporting the weight of the rotary, and makcing slow one inch per second machine movements This resulted in the following LSP ready finish Wing before under 500W halogens (note how poor they are even for general swirls in comparison to the Sun Gun...) After, gloss restored, finish looks swirl and marring free under the halogens... Best checked under the Sun Gun though Moving onto the passenger side (Stuart worked down the driver's side), we see the following... Also, note this deep scratch on the door... After careful checking of the thicknesses before and after a hit with Fast Cut, it was decided to wetsand the local region to reduce the severity of the mark which stood out like a sore thumb on the door!! First of all, start off by spraying a concentrated shampoo and water solution on the region to be corrected, and also soaking an Abralon 2000 Grit disk in the same solution... Sanding here is carried out by DA, the Kestral DAS-6 to be precise. The key is light pressure, as anything heavy can inflict deep pigtails by wetsanding this way which are very hard to remove... light pressure, at about speed 3, moving the machine at about 1" per second... Every three or four passes, the paint thickness is checked across the area and sanding repeated until it was decided the mark was suitably removed, on in this case until around 10um of paint was removed by 2000 grit (this to me constituted significant paint remove, deadened the mark, but did so without leaving a severe thin spot). Sanding was refined using 4000 grit and a repeat of the above method (again, monitoring the paint thickness), before then polishing out the sanding marks using 3M Fast Cut Plus as above... and refining with Meguiars #205 as above... You can still see evidence of the scratch in the afters... However it is now significantly reduced, while achieving the results safely to the paint finish. More deeper marks just behind the door... After correction and reifning, these marks removed... General after shots on the side of the car... Roofs, while rarely seen, seem a favourite for harboring deeper marks and this car was no different with a consistent covering of RDS best shown by the strip lights... Correction and refining as above happily dealt with these marks... Lovely roof reflections... After an IPA wipedown, the paint was treated to Clearkote Yellow Cream Wax to add a little wettness to the deep blue and then followed by Collinite 845IW for durability in the finish and ease of application for the owner who wanted to use the products for protection himself on the car after the detail Glass was cleaned using Stoner Invisible Glass, rubbers with All Seasons Dressing, tyres with Meguiars Endurance. Indoor after shots... I'm being spoiled with the weather right now though, yet more sun for our outdoor after shots Every car deserves to shine :thumb:
Beautiful work as always, Dave. That scratch that you sanded out, could you feel it with your fingernail before you got to work on it?
