'03 Black M3

N

nightscare

New member
this was my first time using the pc on my car... i had done the hood of my beater pathfinder and my friend's pos civic to get a feel for it, and i wanted to finally try it out for real. my car isn't in terrible shape in the sunlight, but under the halogens you can really see how much work it needed... swirls, fine scratches, deeper scratches, even some water marks. after seeing the before and afters on other m3's done by some of the pros on here, i couldn't wait to tackle mine, even though i knew shouldn't expect such perfection that you guys have done.



this was my process:

- wash and clay

- sip w/ lc orange @ pc 6

- 106ff w/ lc white @ pc 6

- QD all over to clear dust

- 303 on all trim

- 3M glass cleaner on windows

- megs high endurance gel on tires (just a little)

- eagle one never dull chrome polish on tailpipes

- p21s wax



now, the hood and trunk lid got a little extra treatment since they seemed to be in a little worse shape, and they were easier to do more passes on. i wasn't satisfied after finishing the entire car with the sip, so i went back to the trunk lid with another pass on the lc orange pad... didn't really help any. so i tried the orange pad that is included with the sip, and that seemed to do a little more correction... but i wanted more, so i went to my sfx-1 yellow cutting pad, and that got just about everything out, it was about as perfect as i could hope (for someone of my experience, heh). i had originally done 2 passes on the hood with the orange pad, and i went back and did 2 passes with the sfx-1 pad on the and that helped. no more swirls, but there are still some scratches i couldn't remove.



anyway, too much talking, so here are the pics... i'm not the best photographer so bear with me, heh.



hood befores:



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hood after original 2 passes with orange pad:



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passenger front quarter before:



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passenger front quarter after:



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passenger door before:



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passenger door after:



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passenger rear quarter before:



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passenger rear quarter after:



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trunk lid before:



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trunk lid after 1st pass:



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trunk lid after all passes (pic doesn't really do it justice... it looked like glass, i was so happy haha):



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all these pics are after everything was done... this first pic is my favorite one, reflection on the hood in the garage :).



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Awesome job! Especially for your first time. The first hood shot and some of the rear fender reflection shots are amazing. Ton of depth and clarity.



On some of the sun shots it looks like you may have some product smearing. Is that what it is? Maybe some left over rotary hack? Either way you did a great job!
 
Jason M said:
Awesome job! Especially for your first time. The first hood shot and some of the rear fender reflection shots are amazing. Ton of depth and clarity.



On some of the sun shots it looks like you may have some product smearing. Is that what it is? Maybe some left over rotary hack? Either way you did a great job!
Click to expand...

i noticed that too... i went back to look after i saw the pictures and it's not there, so i guess it is just my camera, maybe a dirty lens? i dunno.



thanks for the compliments, from you and everyone else :)
 
Looks awesome! What is freaky is I did the same process to my 99 Camaro this weekend. Same products and speeds...freaky..haha. I had the same great results as you too. Sun shots look the same as mine which are freaking AWESOME! Great work!



I don't want to hijack this thread so maybe someone can pm me about my thoughts. However, this kindof goes with this thread so mods feel to edit if need be and apologize before hand. But anyways my thinking was say this was a customers car that he worked on and got the paiint to its current condition. The customer calls him up again saying he wants him to do the car again because he did such a great job. He goes back to the car and sees all the swirs again cause the customer didn't take care of the car. What do you do then with the paint? Do you want to be as aggressive? Worried about really wearing the paint/clear coat down too far? Basically what steps would you take that would be or get the job done? I would of started a thread on this but I don't have 10 posts yet.



But again nightscare the car looks WONDERFUL! :cool: The first reflection shot in the garage is best I think.
 
thanks again...



but man, this was a lot of work... i don't know how you some of you guys do this day in and day out, lol. i think a lot of people take for granted the work you put into your details... much respect to everyone that does this for a living :bigups
 
great work



though it only lasts about 15 seconds once you pull it out of the garage (personal experience) :)
 
You did a fine job, especially considering with a PC not a rotary. That's a beautiful car!



I used to have a Pathfinder like that. Went 215,000 miles before we traded in for the ML.
 
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