adrock2003
New member
Okay, so this customer was a pleasant woman I met while working on the 1987 Mercedes SDL 300 I posted a while back. She is the admin assistant to an attorney here in Lynchburg, VA. (who's headlights needed about 3 hours worth of work to make them clear again on his Mercedes SUV). She pulled into the parking lot of MB Euro Service and I noticed how swirled her paint was. I gave her my car and told her I could fix her paint and a few weeks later, I received a call to fix the headlights on the previously mentioned Mercedes SUV and she walked out to ask when I could do her car. I scheduled her for today (AWESOME DAY!), and John and I went to town.
The customer requested I stay within a certain budget, which meant John and I would focus more on the exterior than on the interior, though we did do some light interior work, though I forgot to take after pictures of the interior...to sum up the work done on the interior, we wiped down pretty much every surface with a diluted 4:1 Meg's APC, used a brush to fluff and vaccuum the carpets and seats and cleaned the windows. No dressing was used, though I wish we could have added it within the budget. The carpet and floormats looked new when we were done. Wish I'd remembered to take pictures for you all. Sorry. Anyway, ON WITH THE PROCESS AND PICS!!!
PROCESS:
- Washed via ONR (this will be the norm for us from now on!) and dried with an absorber.
- No claying was necessary, though we thought about doing it, we had a bit of a time constraint to meet today as John had to leave at a certain time to be able to pick up his kids after school today.
- Wheels were cleaned using a light degreaser/Meg's Gold Class Shampoo/Aluminum Brightener mixture and LOTS of warm/hot water and aggitated with several brushes. Had to go over them 3 times to get them to where they are in the after pictures.
- Rubber and plastics dressed with Meg's Synthetic dressing (exterior only).
- Correction was done with M105 on LC Orange 6.5" CCS pad using the new Griot's DA x2(AWESOME machine!) and M105 on LC hydro-tech Cyan pad using the Flex 3401 DA x2.
- We were satisfied with the correction and surface of the paint and decided that since there did not appear to be any marring left (though the pad/product combo was pretty aggressive), we decided to top it off with an LSP of Poorboy's EX-P.
- Windows were cleaned with Stoner's Invisible Glass.
- I also had to do a light correction on the headlights to make them clear again as they were starting to scab up and yellow a bit. I went at them with a quick hit of 1000 grit 3m wetordry paper, then 2500 grit, a bit of M105 on an orange pad, followed by Meg's PlastX and a top coat of Poorboy's EX-P for a bit more protection. There were nice and clear after that with no scabbies, so for a quick, free headlight correction, it was awesome.
So now for the pics!!!
BEFORES:
So yeah...this car was SERIOUSLY swirled.
Somehow...this was about the ONLY bug splattered on the whole car, we were both amazed.
Few more hood shots.
See? No bug guts anywhere to be seen...strange.
The trunklid and roof had some deeper scratches we couldn't get out and with both of us in "alternate" vehicles today and not having access to our entire arsenal of pads and product, we decided to let a few RIDs pass in the afters.
Notice how dark and murky the wheels look and how dead the overall appearance of the paint is in this picture.
There's just nothing in this pic that gives me warm fuzzies...it was like looking at a piece of chalk.
Look how BLACK the drums are...such a pain to clean, but they came out looking VERY nice in the end.
Here are a couple of 50/50 shots of the level of correction we were getting with just 1 pass of M105 on the LC Hydro-tech Cyan pad and Flex 3401 DA.
The customer requested I stay within a certain budget, which meant John and I would focus more on the exterior than on the interior, though we did do some light interior work, though I forgot to take after pictures of the interior...to sum up the work done on the interior, we wiped down pretty much every surface with a diluted 4:1 Meg's APC, used a brush to fluff and vaccuum the carpets and seats and cleaned the windows. No dressing was used, though I wish we could have added it within the budget. The carpet and floormats looked new when we were done. Wish I'd remembered to take pictures for you all. Sorry. Anyway, ON WITH THE PROCESS AND PICS!!!
PROCESS:
- Washed via ONR (this will be the norm for us from now on!) and dried with an absorber.
- No claying was necessary, though we thought about doing it, we had a bit of a time constraint to meet today as John had to leave at a certain time to be able to pick up his kids after school today.
- Wheels were cleaned using a light degreaser/Meg's Gold Class Shampoo/Aluminum Brightener mixture and LOTS of warm/hot water and aggitated with several brushes. Had to go over them 3 times to get them to where they are in the after pictures.
- Rubber and plastics dressed with Meg's Synthetic dressing (exterior only).
- Correction was done with M105 on LC Orange 6.5" CCS pad using the new Griot's DA x2(AWESOME machine!) and M105 on LC hydro-tech Cyan pad using the Flex 3401 DA x2.
- We were satisfied with the correction and surface of the paint and decided that since there did not appear to be any marring left (though the pad/product combo was pretty aggressive), we decided to top it off with an LSP of Poorboy's EX-P.
- Windows were cleaned with Stoner's Invisible Glass.
- I also had to do a light correction on the headlights to make them clear again as they were starting to scab up and yellow a bit. I went at them with a quick hit of 1000 grit 3m wetordry paper, then 2500 grit, a bit of M105 on an orange pad, followed by Meg's PlastX and a top coat of Poorboy's EX-P for a bit more protection. There were nice and clear after that with no scabbies, so for a quick, free headlight correction, it was awesome.
So now for the pics!!!
BEFORES:
So yeah...this car was SERIOUSLY swirled.
Somehow...this was about the ONLY bug splattered on the whole car, we were both amazed.
Few more hood shots.
See? No bug guts anywhere to be seen...strange.
The trunklid and roof had some deeper scratches we couldn't get out and with both of us in "alternate" vehicles today and not having access to our entire arsenal of pads and product, we decided to let a few RIDs pass in the afters.
Notice how dark and murky the wheels look and how dead the overall appearance of the paint is in this picture.
There's just nothing in this pic that gives me warm fuzzies...it was like looking at a piece of chalk.
Look how BLACK the drums are...such a pain to clean, but they came out looking VERY nice in the end.
Here are a couple of 50/50 shots of the level of correction we were getting with just 1 pass of M105 on the LC Hydro-tech Cyan pad and Flex 3401 DA.
... are you doing correction in the sun? Does it affect the working time for the polishes you use?
