Trig Detailed - 2004 BMW 325i - First C&B

[trig]

This was my first "full" detail on a vehicle that was not mine. The car had 50,300 miles on it when it was pulled into the garage.











Products used were:



Meguiar's Gold Class

DP All Exterior

Mother's Back-to-Black

Mother's Chrome Polish

Black Magic Titanium Tire Gel

Mothers Clay & Lube



Porter Cable 7424

Orange, White, and Gray Pads

XMT#3

XMT#1

XMT Glaze/Wax



1500/2000 Grit Wet-Sanding Paper

Plast-X



First of all, I wasn't very happy with the XMT products this time around either. On both my 325i, and this 325i, I did not get the finishing results I hoped for. I'm assuming that my interpretation of "Intermediate" Swirling was a little too optimistic, so I have some samples of Wolfgang TSR 3.0 and FG 3.0, as well as some Collonite 845, and some 5.5" Yellow, White, Gray, and Red Pads ordered.



I also want to try Meg's 105 and/or Menzerna SIP but have yet to spend the money on those products yet.



I was happy with the finished product but know it could have been better with more time and more aggresive products.







Here are the before and after photos. I need to remember to take more pics more often, but I'll work on that on the next detail. Sorry for the random marks from Photobucket. I was trying to edit out the license plate and the website was glitching all over the place so I just posted them as-is.

After:

 

[MrRumble]

Lookin' good!



What exactly were you dissatisfied about? Left-over swirls after your heavier polish??



How long did your process take?

 

[trig]

Lookin' good!



What exactly were you dissatisfied about? Left-over swirls after your heavier polish??



How long did your process take?

Lol, only 74 views until a comment. Not bad for a first I suppose. I guess I should take some more interesting photos.





I was unhappy with the left over swirls. I think the biggest problem is that what I thought was "intermediate" swirls, was really severe swirls. I spend about an hour trying to correct the hood, and there is still severe swirling. I ended up just putting a layer of wax on the car and calling it good until I get some more aggressive products. The swirling that is shown in the "Before" photos is still present on the entire car.



I started on the car at 9:30am and and the customer picked it up at 4:00pm. I probably spent the last hour or so going over the entire car with microfiber towels, just checking over the entire body out in the sun though. I guess that makes it a good 6 hours of work. This included playing with polish, waxing the entire car, cleaning the interior, and removing over-spray from the headlights.



I would have liked to remove the wheels and detail the wheel-wells and rims a little better, but I decided to wait until I could get more stuff and spend some more time on it.

 

[MrRumble]

The PC often struggles with correcting deeper imperfections. If you aren't already using 4" pads with your PC, try them, it'll enable you to put slightly more pressure before the spinning bogs down -- corrects quicker/better. Expanding your arsenal of polishes/compounds like you mentioned is definitely a good idea.



Also, sometimes I find that it's tricky assessing the depth of the damage on bright metallic silvers - tends to "hide" or "lessen" the effects of swirls.



Like many others, you'll soon learn the correction boundaries/time hindrance of using a PC exclusively on certain jobs - like this one. You may want to look into a used Makita 9227c rotary to learn to polish with the rotary for the future.



Good job non the less - pretty speedy process for your first full detail job, like you mentioned.