richy
New member
This is supposed to read F A I R Y tale ending. No idea why the forum would block that?? Oh, well, now you know what was blocked out.
This gentleman found me via my website. He brought the car around for me to see in the Spring, but I was booked up until now. It sure looked worse now than it did then! I was overwhelmed by how awful the wheels looked, but it was perfect actually as I had a new wheel acid I was wanting to try. I didn`t shoot much of the side of the car, but it only looked dirty. It sure turned out to be much, much worse than that!
Here it is as it arrived to me:
A 3 year old car and already swirled up! Shame.
There was a great collection of bugs and chips across the front:
The wheels were probably some of the worst that I had ever seen....and that`s saying something!!
What is that...moon dust?? Holy Moley!
The customer pointed this out: he wanted improvement on all the door handle openings. Unfortunately, I forgot to specifically shoot that today. Here`s what needed fixing:
This job was going to be harder than I anticipated. Hmmm...time for a:
First up was the wheels. I wanted to compare the 2 front wheels (which were the worst) with 2 products. #1 was my biggest and baddest wheel cleaner I own: Malco Brake Off. If it wasn`t so damned caustic to breathe and burns so badly on the skin, I`d use it more. But, give the Devil his due. Here is the LF wheel ONLY after MBO:
I shot the wheel with MBO, let it dwell only a few minutes and then lightly agitated it, both barrel and face and then rinsed off. I did follow it up with products to neutralize the alkaline as I know from personal experience of having it on my skin: water alone will not make it go away. It needs an acid to neutralize it. The instructions don`t call for that, but I like to be prudently cautious about the products I use and how I use them. The results speak for themselves I think. This stuff makes Meguiars Wheel Brite look tame.
The other product I wanted to try out, which I did on the RF wheel, was an acid called BAM. BAM was supplied to me by my detailer friend. You can dilute it heavily and the instructions are to wet the wheel first, and then spray, lightly agitate if needed and then rinse. Ummm, yeah, I didn`t do it that way on this wheel. I figured it was just too nasty. Here`s a reminder of what it looked like:
So, how did I use BAM? I sprayed it on and let it dwell for a minute or so and then lightly agitated both barrel and face (just like how I did with MBO) and then sprayed off. I wanted this to be an apples to apples comparison. So how did it do? This is just after rinsing off and nothing else:
I then finished the job by spraying the barrels and faces with Zep Citrus to make sure I neutralized any of the BAM and also washed with a demoted wash mitt and Megs Hyper Wash. I finished by shooting the wheels with Aqua Bead. Here`s how it looked after the complete cleaning:
So how was BAM to use? Marvelous! No acidic smell (has a citrus smell to it). Doesn`t burn the skin. I used it at about a 50% dilution ratio and a 5 gal bucket costs approx $100 Canadian. I`m not sure even who he gets it from but I`ll be getting a 5 gal bucket when my sample of about a gallon runs out.
To finish off that stage, I cleaned the tires twice with Zep 505 and the wells with LATA.
Now the paint. I really wished I had photographed it b/c you would have said "Rich, it just looks dirty". And I would have agreed with you. But we`d both be wrong. The paint, especially behind the wheels was awful. It looked like tar to me so I first tried spraying it with Tarminator. No help whatsoever. Still these black spots. So then I sprayed the car down with Americana Iron remover and followed that immediately with a bug sponge (yes, I had to get really aggressive to get it clean) with a healthy dose of IronX paste. The bug sponge would get disgustingly dirty after only one panel. This thing was taking a LONG time to get properly clean. You forget how much white can hide dirt. The front bugs were dealt with first actually with the bug sponge and 3D bug remover. After the decontamination wash came a normal wash of 3D pink soap...the opposite order of what I usually do. But, it was now clean. A storm was fast approaching so I didn`t bother with the purple running shots people love to see. Sorry. I still ended up finishing it in the rain.
It was brought in and clayed with a clay towel. Here`s what I was looking at:
The hood was the worst and the swirls didn`t look bad but the paint ended up being pretty darned hard on this car. I ended up using Shine Supply`s Chop Top again with a 3D black wool pad + 3401. That was curing it in good time. That was followed up with M205 after Essence was getting finicky again for me. The sides that were not as bad had M100 substituted for CT. The head and tail lights were treated to the same combo. I wanted to share something that I`ve done before on an SUV where you didn`t want the backing plate to hit an adjacent panel. I inserted cardboard between the 2 panels do I could get right down low. The bottom panel on these does not open up like a normal SUV gate does...it pivots outward which is useless to get at it to polish. It might look kooky, but it works!
I even did the 2nd stage (using a yellow B/S pad) on the windows too for giggles. The car was then double coated with CQuartz original and the trim was coated with DLux. The wheels were hand polished with M205 and a mf and double coated too. The tires were shot with OB via my air gun. The exhaust tips were hand polished with 0000 steel wool and M100 followed by M205 and a mf and subsequently coated twice. Here it is all done both inside and out:
Sorry for all the pics, but I was really happy with how this came out. My goal for white is always for it to have a "glow". I think I accomplished that here.
This gentleman found me via my website. He brought the car around for me to see in the Spring, but I was booked up until now. It sure looked worse now than it did then! I was overwhelmed by how awful the wheels looked, but it was perfect actually as I had a new wheel acid I was wanting to try. I didn`t shoot much of the side of the car, but it only looked dirty. It sure turned out to be much, much worse than that!
Here it is as it arrived to me:
A 3 year old car and already swirled up! Shame.
There was a great collection of bugs and chips across the front:
The wheels were probably some of the worst that I had ever seen....and that`s saying something!!
What is that...moon dust?? Holy Moley!
The customer pointed this out: he wanted improvement on all the door handle openings. Unfortunately, I forgot to specifically shoot that today. Here`s what needed fixing:
This job was going to be harder than I anticipated. Hmmm...time for a:
First up was the wheels. I wanted to compare the 2 front wheels (which were the worst) with 2 products. #1 was my biggest and baddest wheel cleaner I own: Malco Brake Off. If it wasn`t so damned caustic to breathe and burns so badly on the skin, I`d use it more. But, give the Devil his due. Here is the LF wheel ONLY after MBO:
I shot the wheel with MBO, let it dwell only a few minutes and then lightly agitated it, both barrel and face and then rinsed off. I did follow it up with products to neutralize the alkaline as I know from personal experience of having it on my skin: water alone will not make it go away. It needs an acid to neutralize it. The instructions don`t call for that, but I like to be prudently cautious about the products I use and how I use them. The results speak for themselves I think. This stuff makes Meguiars Wheel Brite look tame.
The other product I wanted to try out, which I did on the RF wheel, was an acid called BAM. BAM was supplied to me by my detailer friend. You can dilute it heavily and the instructions are to wet the wheel first, and then spray, lightly agitate if needed and then rinse. Ummm, yeah, I didn`t do it that way on this wheel. I figured it was just too nasty. Here`s a reminder of what it looked like:
So, how did I use BAM? I sprayed it on and let it dwell for a minute or so and then lightly agitated both barrel and face (just like how I did with MBO) and then sprayed off. I wanted this to be an apples to apples comparison. So how did it do? This is just after rinsing off and nothing else:
I then finished the job by spraying the barrels and faces with Zep Citrus to make sure I neutralized any of the BAM and also washed with a demoted wash mitt and Megs Hyper Wash. I finished by shooting the wheels with Aqua Bead. Here`s how it looked after the complete cleaning:
So how was BAM to use? Marvelous! No acidic smell (has a citrus smell to it). Doesn`t burn the skin. I used it at about a 50% dilution ratio and a 5 gal bucket costs approx $100 Canadian. I`m not sure even who he gets it from but I`ll be getting a 5 gal bucket when my sample of about a gallon runs out.
To finish off that stage, I cleaned the tires twice with Zep 505 and the wells with LATA.
Now the paint. I really wished I had photographed it b/c you would have said "Rich, it just looks dirty". And I would have agreed with you. But we`d both be wrong. The paint, especially behind the wheels was awful. It looked like tar to me so I first tried spraying it with Tarminator. No help whatsoever. Still these black spots. So then I sprayed the car down with Americana Iron remover and followed that immediately with a bug sponge (yes, I had to get really aggressive to get it clean) with a healthy dose of IronX paste. The bug sponge would get disgustingly dirty after only one panel. This thing was taking a LONG time to get properly clean. You forget how much white can hide dirt. The front bugs were dealt with first actually with the bug sponge and 3D bug remover. After the decontamination wash came a normal wash of 3D pink soap...the opposite order of what I usually do. But, it was now clean. A storm was fast approaching so I didn`t bother with the purple running shots people love to see. Sorry. I still ended up finishing it in the rain.
It was brought in and clayed with a clay towel. Here`s what I was looking at:
The hood was the worst and the swirls didn`t look bad but the paint ended up being pretty darned hard on this car. I ended up using Shine Supply`s Chop Top again with a 3D black wool pad + 3401. That was curing it in good time. That was followed up with M205 after Essence was getting finicky again for me. The sides that were not as bad had M100 substituted for CT. The head and tail lights were treated to the same combo. I wanted to share something that I`ve done before on an SUV where you didn`t want the backing plate to hit an adjacent panel. I inserted cardboard between the 2 panels do I could get right down low. The bottom panel on these does not open up like a normal SUV gate does...it pivots outward which is useless to get at it to polish. It might look kooky, but it works!
I even did the 2nd stage (using a yellow B/S pad) on the windows too for giggles. The car was then double coated with CQuartz original and the trim was coated with DLux. The wheels were hand polished with M205 and a mf and double coated too. The tires were shot with OB via my air gun. The exhaust tips were hand polished with 0000 steel wool and M100 followed by M205 and a mf and subsequently coated twice. Here it is all done both inside and out:
Sorry for all the pics, but I was really happy with how this came out. My goal for white is always for it to have a "glow". I think I accomplished that here.
