It seems that my recent details have been of vehicles kept in extremely poor condition. This time, an '05 Lotus Elise was in dire need of some help. The owner seemed to have never cleaned the wheels after powerdercoating. The beautiful aluminum tub had fresh motor oil spills behind the seats, dirt was everywhere, and the paint was extremely dry. On top of this, this vehicle is supposed to be in a magazine soon, and pictures will be taken this Sunday at a car show. I am in the process of working on it, and final pics will probably not be until tomorrow, but here are the previews. The correction steps for this car have been rotary, HTEC and wool leveling pad followed by Menzerna SIP via rotary and green edge pad followed by the PC and 106FF. Please enjoy the pics, if you can :nervous2:
And finally, after over 15 hours of work, we were finally done. The vehicle was finished with XMT glaze followed by P21S, since the vehicle was to be entered in today's local car show. We could have done even more, but the budget had been well exceeded and at this point we were just trying to highlight the specific areas that most people look at. The wheels were absolutely toast, so we couldn't save them despite a power wash and full removal. Only parts cleaner did the job but the cost to perform such a service exceeded the cost to have them stripped and powdercoated again, so we did the best with what we had. My most favorite improvement besides the wonderful paint had to be the venturi tunnels. Brasso applied with a PC and blue LC foam pad worked incredibly. This will be my go-to product/process for future use on Lotuses. It was a beautiful day today, which was nice because I was able to drive it to the car show on some great roads.
What's funny about this quote was the fact that I got pulled over one evening while driving this car (in exchange for some driving time I offered a discount). TWO police officers pulled me over after one passed by me going the opposited direction and another driving around elsewhere. They told me "They have never seen this car around here before and it looked like you took that corner a little too fast. We just wanted to make sure it wasn't stolen. We will give you a ticket for a defective tailight." Oh well, a $1 fix and a trip to the station the next morning resolved everything.
