Remember "dirty Jeep"? Meet dirtier Beetle

L

LightngSVT

New member
This Beetle is owned by the husband of "dirty Jeep" that I posted last week. Similar color combination (silver / black) and similar, but worse, condition overall.



This one took about 5.5 hours to do, which seems like alot for such a small car. Luckily the road tar was almost none, but I had to deal with many bug stains and the rims had the familiar baked on brake dust. The overall condition of the paint was rough to the touch, lacked any depth and didnt bead at all. The interior had some pet hair, but mostly alot of dirt, leaves, dust and general "soil" on the door panels, shifter, etc.



My steps were:



engine- 2x washing with 2:1 simple Green, dress with No Touch tire care

tires / wheel wells- Mothers tire cleaner, Meg's Endurance gloss gell dressing x2 (wells dressed with Armor All)

wheels- Mothers wheel cleaner x3, scrubbed with various brushes up to a brass bristle brus in crevices

Pre-treat- Sprayed with 10:1 solution of APC+ (removed alot of dirt and 95% od bugs, etc)

wash- NXT wash

polish 1- DACP with yellow pad on speed 6 by PC

polish 2- NXT with white pad on speed 5 by PC

LSP- Megs #16 wax with grey pad on speed 3 by PC, removed by hand with MF

glass- ext= #16, int=Invisible Glass

carpet- Woolite / water mix by hand with stiff brush, APC+ to treat bad stains

vinyl- same as capet, 303 protectant



It was very overcast Sunday when I did the car. It was actually a bit lighter when I finished and the pictures kind of show that. I thinki that the #16 muted the metallic pop a bit, up close it sparkled, but from a few feet away it had more of the muted, salad oil look. Im very happy with the depth especially for a silver car.





engine-before.jpg




engine-after.jpg




wheel-before.jpg




wheel-after.jpg
 
You don't have a picture of the dash, but am curious as to what product(s) did you use on the smooth portions?



I bought 1Z's Cockpit Premium specifically for this purpose and though I like it on all other surfaces, it just doesn't do the job for that task.



While polishing, did you notice the VW's paint being any harder (ala Audi paint as noted by Accumulator) than other paints you've worked with? I worked on an '01 Black VW NB with Meg's #80 x2 (LC polishing pad) and didn't acheive the results of other paints with only a single pass of #80 :nixweiss Clarifying, the resulting finish was very nice, but several minor issues still remained. Following up with NXT helped, but still didn't "hide" everything.
 
Thanks guys. These jobs never pay what they should, but are rewarding anyway.



On the dash all I needed to wash wipe down with woolite mix and a terry towel, dry with an MF. Then I went over it with 303, thats it.



As for the paint, it didnt seem that much harder then normal paint. MAybe a bit harder though, I needed to use the yellow pad to get the normal results of the white pad. But nothing outrageous.
 
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