This car belongs to a good friend of mine (phil), who's currently sunning himself in Ibiza at the moment. He rang to ask me to do a full monty exterior detail on it prior to the show at Castle Combe next weekend.
Phils a bit of a closet bufty and had kindly washed and clayed the car all over prior to leaving on his jollys.
I collected the car from his house yesterday (saturday) and brought it back to mine to assess what was required.
Heres how it was when it landed.











A fair amount of swirling and evidence of paintwork (although it has been done very well in the past it seems).
First job was the wheels/wheel arches.
Some befores





What the insides of all wheels looked like

Wheels after cleaning



All 16 wheel nuts were cleaned with wire wool and polished up as well.

The wheel cleaning kit used was this little lot

Each arch was given a good soaking of Autosmart TFR and G101, scrubed with a hand brush, then pressure washed clean.]
Then arch liners and plastics were dressed with Highstyle.
Some afters of the arches.




Once cleaned the wheels were refitted and torqued up, and the car parked up for the night.
It was 8.30 by this point! And you can probably tell, pissing down with rain!!! :bang:
Sunday morning started at 7.00am by washing the car off using a pre-soak of maxisuds2 through the gilmore, then the two bucket method with sheepskin wash mit, dryed with a poorboys waffle weave drying towel.
I taped the car up prior to machine polishing



Todays "weapons of choice" - the fantastic 3M range of compounds/pads and the trusty clarke rotary polisher.

Initial reactions were the paint was quite soft on the drivers side, needing only 2 passes with the 3m yellow liquid to achieve good correction. This was folowed by 2 passes with the blue (ultrafina se) to remove any holograms etc etc
A 50/50 shot after just 2 inital passes

Some more 50/50's on the drivers door




Once i got to the bonnet and passanger side, it was obvious the paint was much harder so i had to hit it quite hard with 2 x passes of fast cut plus on a hard 3m compounding pad, followed by the usual 2 of yellow and 2 of ultrafina se.
Once the machine polishing was done, the car was untaped, and washed again with the gilmore and pressure washer to get rid of the inevitable dust.
Once dried again with the drying towel, i could comence sealing the paintwork.
2 x coats of Poorboys EX were applied, leaving 10 mins between applications for it to cure (normally left longer but by this point it was boiling hot on my drive), all buffed off with my latest mega plush shag pile microfibre cloths!!!!
Once it was sealed it has 2 x coats of Colinite 476S double coat car wax. Although not as "show" as some other waxes, its got an excelent reputation for durability, especially as the car lives outdoors and is used a lot.]


Again all buffed of with my new pet cloths!!
Exhaust box and tailpipe were cleaned with wire wool and peek metal polish, tyres were dressed with Highstyle, and windows cleaned with AG glass cleaner and a microfibre.
Finally some completed shots.











All in all a very tiring (and bloody hot) day, but worth while.
Thanks for reading. Any comments most welcome.
Matt

 

Looking good!i've bought myself a meguiars g220 recently,having a local detailer help me with mine as its my first time sometime soon

 

Good results. How much should I expect to pay for a similar service?

 

that looks bob-on

 

Lovely, it did look a tad dull before, looks awesome now!
Well done.

 

Awesome job. That car is begging for a splitter though

 

Nice work mate

 

There is one....

in a million pieces at the moment though!

(not my fault by the way LOL)

 

exactly what i was going to say

 

Stunning and amazing the difference you made

 

Good job matey!!!

I always thought this car could do with a proper detail back when Lee had it!

Top banana!

 

 

Brian

 

Cheers Martin.

To the untrained eye it looked ok before i started, but up close you could have confused it with ash black metallic, it looked quite flat.

The 50/50 photos are a swine to do outdoors as well, especially with the sun being as bright and as hot as it was yesterday.

Phils back from ibiza now and is chuffed to bits with it.

 

that realy does look the nuts...was finking bout going into business doing this myself,but wat would be involved inbecoming self employed in this area of detailing and would it be worth doing?

 

Great work matey

 

that is top work there mate . i think i need to get you in my list of friends

 

Cracking work mate, must have been a hard slog in the heat, but you got there in the end. Top job!

 

Thanks Rich.