Black Mercedes GL 450 - a TDekany Tribute

H

howareb

New member
Well as Thomas has left our regional vicinity of North Virginia:sadpace: he was kind enough to refer me to one of his clients with a Mercedes GL 450. The customer that he referred me to was an awesome client who wanted to maintain his vehicle as best as possible.



I went and picked up the vehicle to take back to my shop to work on it. Upon initial inspection I just saw your regular light swirls which is expected. A deeper inspection however showed some halograms and previous clues of buffing,which I assume came from the prep shop at the dealership. Here are some before pics.



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We start the process with a pre-foam bath from the CamSpray Foam Cannon to loosen up the contaminents. I let the foam dwell for three mins. and then wash the car with Zaino Z7 Car Wash and a Lowes Grout Sponge.



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We also cleaned the wheels with Megs Wheel Brightner. We needed to do two applications along with some agitation due to the baked on brake dust.



This was our first test spot on polishing.



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The Process

After a few more test areas I settled on the #105 and #205 combo with a LC White followed by LC Green on the Makita. The paint on this vehcile was soft but corrected fairly well after the compounding step. Megs #105 did not finish as well as it normally does, but it was not anything that #205 could not take care of.



  • Z7 Wash
  • Clay
  • # 105 and LC White
  • #205 and LC Green
  • EZ Creme Glaze via PC speed 6 on a LC White Pad
  • Z6 Wipedown
  • 2 Coats Z5 with ZFX
  • Application of Z8
Below is a pic of the passenger side after the polishing steps were completed.



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Here are some final shots. Enjoy!!



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Isn't this Cerami-Clear paint or whatever they call it? it looks awesome all done up. Our neighbors have the identical vehicle and I've never seen it clean. The wheels are always as black as the body...she's a real toilet bowl :(



T, was this a lot of work or fairly straighforward? It came out great, paint looks wonderful.
 
Thanks guys. I spent about 22 hours on this one. It really was a lot of paint. HEHE!!



To answer the question about Cerami-Clear, this vehicle was not. This paint was soft and hologrammed if I looked at it crosseyed. :) Which is why it took so long to correct some areas.
 
Thanks for the compliments guys.



LoiG37 said:
Using a PC, what pads and polishes would I need to work this GL's paint?
Click to expand...





Sorry to bust your bubble, but I used a Makita for the compound and polishing steps. The only step that I used the PC for was to apply EZ Creme glaze. This step cleaned the paint nicely before applying the LSP.
 
Yes I understand you used a Makita, but I have a PC. I was asking what pad/compound combo you would suggest for this vehicle using just a PC.



thanks
 
LoiG37 said:
Yes I understand you used a Makita, but I have a PC. I was asking what pad/compound combo you would suggest for this vehicle using just a PC.



thanks
Click to expand...



OK sorry I thought that you may have missed what i used in the earlier post. :)



With a PC I would probably attack this with a purple wool and #105 (new version) speed 6 followed by #205 with a white pad speed 6 decreased to 4. It will take a large amount of passes but if the paint you work on is as soft as the one I worked on, you may get some decent results.



On a different note, as a test, I use a Flex speed 6 with a purple wool with #105 and it was not pretty but I did get some correction. It seemed that #105 (original version) just was not behaving correctly. If I continued with the Flex I would have had some major work in front of me during the polishing steps.



If you need any further help when you start, just hit me with a PM if you have any questions.:2thumbs:
 
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