Polished Bliss: A Week On A Prancing Horse!

[cupra_clark]

Well this was my most enjoyable detail yet in the whole time I’ve been a professional detailer. The owner has recently signed up for a maintenance contract with us and Rich had originally booked the car in for 3 days to allow for all the little details to be done to the standard we would like, but due to a couple of people re-arranging dates for their details I ended up getting the car for the whole week to play with!



Some of you may be thinking that a week on one car is a bit excessive and surely not needed but as you will see in the write up below, this isn’t necessarily the case when we’re talking about the world of detailing! The owners last Ferrari had been detailed by a different company previously who didnt do a particularly good job so this made me even more determined to get his new pride and joy as spot on as possible... :thumb:



So, on with the detail:



Monday





The car arrived at 9am sharp, not looking too bad – it shouldn’t really as there’s only just under 800 miles on the clock so it was pretty clean to be fair:

Firstly, the car was pre-rinsed at high pressure @40 degrees:

Meguiars Super Degreaser was used to clean the arches and tyres, with Menzerna 7.5 being the choice for the wheels and calipers:

The car was then washed with the 2 bucket method and Meguiars Shampoo Plus, then clayed with Meguiars Mild Detailing Clay. No need for Tardis on this detail as there was very little in the way of tar stuck to the car at all. I then gave the engine a quick going over with a MF mitt as I didn’t want to risk pressure washing this one (being rather expensive and Italian! ).



The car was then rinsed off:

I then dried it off with a waffle weave and the leaf blower.





Next stage was to get the car inside and all taped up ready for polishing, then I took PTG readings:

The car was incredibly consistent throughout, reading from 180-210 microns so a nice healthy amount of paint all round.





Defects weren’t too bad, swirls were at a minimum really:

Whilst the swirls were minimal, there were quite a lot of RIDS and random “nicks� in the paint, more than likely installed from the dealership as there was product residue on the trims and the car just had that “washed with a sponge� look about it.



I initially started out with Menzerna 3.02 on a Meguiars Polishing Pad but the Menz was playing up a wee bit so I swapped to Meguiars 83:

This broke down perfectly…

 

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Leaving a perfect finish…

I completed the de-swirling of all the larger areas of bodywork with the rotary, leaving the smaller/tighter areas for the Megs machine the following day.





7pm and end of day 1







Tuesday





The start of day 2 began at 1 o clock (I was in court in the morning) and saw the new Meguiars Machine being brought out for its first outing to de-swirl the smaller areas. I used a 4� cutting pad with Menz 3.02:

First impressions of the machine were very good – It feels a lot more refined than the PC and definitely produces a good bit more power but with less vibrations. I don’t like using the PC as I get numb hands after ten or 15 minutes but I operated the Megs machine for a good few hours with no problems at all.



Downsides in my eyes are the large guard round the counter weight, which can make centering a spot pad when using a 3.5� backing plate rather difficult. I found it quicker to remove the backing plate, center the pad and then screw it back in. The other downside is again with the guard, due to its size I would have preferred it to have a rubber coating or something similar instead of metal, as the chances of possible damage to the paint when coming in contact with the guard are quite high due to its size (chances are increased further when working on a car such as the Ferrari with its different curves and angles). This is why you can see I have wrapped our one in masking tape in the pics above.



Other than that, I was quite impressed with the machine and I like the design of the wrap around handle.



Below are a few pics of the correction work as I progressed around the car, using the machine at speed 5:

before:

after (excuse the smears):

before:

after:

 

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I couldn’t miss out the number plate either!

Top of the front bumper before:

after:

before:

after:

Lower half next to air intake before:

after:

There were sections that were also suffering from buffer trails:

after:

 

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Rear lights were also polished:

As was the rear Carbon Fibre section as this was showing bad cases of micro-marring:

after:

Last job for the Megs machine was to polish the headlights, which didn’t really need it but i did it anyways!

That was the correction work nearly completed. As I had been working my way round the car I marked any RIDS that were slightly too deep to remove with polishing alone. They were mostly along the tops of the wings and back quarters for some reason:

These RIDS were sanded back with 3000 Unigrit that had been soaking for 24 hours as I was pretty sure I was going to need it at some point when I first saw the car on Monday:

This made a 99% improvement on all the scratches and even I had to look really hard to see the remaining 1 or 2 that were still there.



After polishing with Megs 83 and the rotary:

 

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This was all the paintwork fully corrected so I called it a night.



9pm and end of day 2









Wednesday:





Start of day 3 began with Menzerna PO85rd finishing polish and a 3M finishing pad:

Usually I would use 3M’s Ultrafina but we have loads of the Menz to use up so I fancied a change.



This was worked at 1500rpm’s:

I always use the halogens to keep the panels warm when working with the Menzerna:

Once the rotary work was completed I went round the smaller areas again with the Megs machine and a 4� polishing pad and 85rd. This was worked at speed 5.

Once all final polishing had been completed I removed the masking tape from around the window rubbers etc before buffing off the polish. My reason for this is so that I can first remove any product residue left from the edge of the tape with a separate MF:

This prevents you from catching any traces of residue or excess polish in your mf which can then marr the paint and prevent you from creating a perfect finish. I always use a separate mf to run around all panel gaps before buffing off on the larger panels too.





Next job was to give the car a dust down:

I then applied the cars first coat of Vintage and left to cure while I dressed the tyres with Blackfire Long Lasting Tyre Gel and sealed the wheels/calipers with PB Wheel Sealant. Arches weren’t dressed as these were perfectly clean and as the car was brand new in September they were still nice and black:

I then buffed off the wax and called it a day.





7pm and end of Day 3







Thursday





Thursday morning began with a quick dust down of the car again before I applied the cars 2nd coat of Vintage, with the 1st coat having cured over night. This was buffed off after i'd had a short coffee break



I then polished the tailpipes, these are a funny material and were quite tarnished/stained but Meguiars NXT and Blackfire Fine Cut Metal Polish got them back to new again:



before:

after:

 

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The engine was next:



The silencer needed a bit of a spruce up already:

Meguiars NXT Metal Polish on a 4� polishing pad & German Applicator gave the following result:

before:

after:

I would have liked to have removed the swirls fully but I needed to make sure I got everything else on the car finished first.





303 Aerospace was used to dress the engine bay:

HD Cleanse was used for the glass:

 

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Onto the Interior next, this was hovered before I used Zymöl Leather Cleaner on all leather and vinyl:

The Glass was cleaned inside with HD Cleanse and the outside with Werkstatt Prime Strong.



I then used a mf with a couple mists of Field Glaze to remove any finger prints etc from the carbon trim:

I then used the Halogens to heat up the seats prior to feeding them:

These were left for about 15 mins while I cleaned all the product reside from the trims that the Dealers had kindly given me for free,using Apc and then applying Zymöl Carbon to all exterior trim:



before:

after:

The seats had now warmed up nicely so I fed them with Treat:

And then conditioned the rubbers with “Seal�:

Werkstatt Prime Strong was again used for the sills:

 

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Shuts were waxed too:

Interior Pics:

I then applied a 3rd coat of Vintage and left it on the car overnight.





7pm and end of Day 4

 

[cupra_clark]

Friday:





Final day of the detail was a nice easy one to finish off as the car was 99% finished. All that was required was to buff off the 3rd coat of Vintage that had been left on overnight and then give it a wipe down with Field Glaze as there were quite a lot of oils rising from the paint by this point.



The rest of the morning/afternoon was spent taking loads of pics (I took over 350 during the week!!!) to try and capture the finish as best as I could as the car was now looking stunning. There was a noticeable difference as each layer of Vintage went on and cured, the paint was incredibly wet and glossy and gave off a vibrancy that we’ve only seen from this wax so far.





I put the car outside so we could mop the floor and generally tidy up the studio again and luckily the sun started to come out, so I got some nice outdoor shots:

 

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I then put the car back inside to what was now a nice and tidy studio again, complete with a new 430 Scuderia Picture sent to us by Chris_A3 – many thanks mate, it looks great!

 

[cupra_clark]

So there you have it, the best part of 5 days and over 30 hours work, and to be honest I could easily have spent longer on the car if I could have. I also think this goes a long way in showing just what a high end wax can give in terms of the ultimate finish over those "lesser" waxes. Yes its mostly down to the prep but a decent wax will add that bit extra in my eyes.



Hopefully you enjoyed the write up and stupid amount of pics, its taken me well over 4 ½ hours to sort them all out and type this up so many thanks for looking as always!





:thumb:

 

[gmblack3]

Thanks for taking the time to document and share your work with us.



I like this pic:

 

[KnuckleBuckett]

Really professional work. Great end product. Excellent work overall. Also thanks for an exceptional write-up and photograph gallery.

 

[imported_Dave11]

Great documentation and some very nice pictures of your work.....



Top of the line......:xyxthumbs

 

[Todd@RUPES]

Really amazing. I know I will be reading this thread often . It was like reading a great novel, great work, great photos, great documentation. Bravo!

 

[watermantra]

Great thread! Great car! Great job!



Question: What's that thing you have under the car catching the washwater in the first few pics? I wonder if that product is available in the States...

 

[JustinDetail]

Wow! Fantastic work and thanks for the detailed write-up!

 

[imported_Grouse]

Very very good work.

 

[imported_DetailDan]

Very nice write up, nice pictures.

 

[Pats300zx]

Awesome write up. The car came out amazing. Thanks for taking the time to document your whole process.