All white, all right

Yesterday I did a '98 Lexus LS400, 114000 miles. The clear was flaking in a few spots so I decided to use the least aggressive approach possible to avoid thinning the clear. I probably could have compounded the whole car and gotten all of the marring out, but I was afraid of taking off too much clear and hastening paint failure. Sorry no befores, the car was in pretty good condition with the exception of badly stained rims and pretty bad paint contamination. Clay wouldn't touch a lot of the spots on the paint, I ended up using a plastic razor blade and CG's Speed Wipe to lubricate.



Process:



Wash with foam gun and CG Maxi Suds

Meg's WB 3:1 on rims

Tarminator on lower panels

Pressure wash rims and lower panels

CG clay with Speed Wipe as a lubricant

Optimum polish via white LC pad @1500 on lower panels (grey) and roof

FPII via black LC finishing pad @1400 on hood, truck, and white side panels

FK1 Pink via Cyclo and white finishing pads

Aquawax used to remove Pink wax and on rims and glass



Interior:

Folex to pretreat

PC brush to agitate

LGCM and Zep Extractor soap to extract

4* Ultimate Leather Conditioner on leather

4:1 mixture of CG Silk Shine and CG O-shine high gloss dressing on vinyl



DSC00170.jpg




DSC00165.jpg




DSC00163.jpg




DSC00168.jpg




DSC00161.jpg




The owner was real big on striping the inside, so I went a little overboard for her. All the carpets got striped, including the kickpanels on the doors:



DSC00158.jpg




DSC00159.jpg




I was very impressed by Aquawax on white too, it's definetly my new go-to for light colors. Still not quite sold on it on black, I'm going to have to experiment with it over/unde r a carnuba.
 
That is just incredible! What a job on white and on a car with over 100K!?!?!

The interior is icing on the lovely white cake. Just beautiful.
 
gregh said:
How do you stripe the carpets?



Its easiest to use a little green clean machine or carpet extractor, but you can do it with a brush or shop vac. You just need to get the carpet a little bit wet, then make passes in opposite directions, just like striping the lawn. If your first pass with the vacuum/suction thingy is down, then make your second pass up. You can stripe diagonally, in patterns, etc but personally I like the classic up and down.
 
wish i could have seen some befores for the wheels,

i hate badly stained / caked wheels, PITA



anyways, car looks great and the carpet and mats look awesome :getdown
 
gav'spurplez said:
wish i could have seen some befores for the wheels,

i hate badly stained / caked wheels, PITA



I used to feel the same way before I discovered WB and a pressure washer. The front two rims on this car were matte brown, soap and water wouldn't touch them. I sprayed liberally with WB cut 3:1 with water, let sit for 2 minutes then sprayed off with a 1350PSI el cheapo electric pressure washer. A quick coat of Aquawax and they looked like new, if I had used P21S or another neutral cleaner I would probably be looking at 45 minutes to an hour of scrubbing with a variety of brushes to get such a result.
 
Nice job on that white, looks great! First time I heard of striping carpets, gotta get out more. Greta work on that as well
 
Back
Top