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Today I did some detailing...

randy hickey

We have the "Today I Did Something To My Car" thread out in the main forum, and a lot of the posts on it pertain to detailing.
I thought it would be a good idea to give our various detailing activities a thread in their proper home.

I'll get the ball rolling.

Today ( ahem, last night really!), I snow foamed the car
Wasn't able to follow through and wash it properly as my back went, but couldn't believe how well it looked this morning!
In fairness I have a fair bit of LSP on it, but there was ten days worth of road film and tree sap on it.

Well impressed.

Over to you!

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Curran

I'd assume the bumper is stone chipped so perhaps worth freshening it up along with the wing?

But if its not needing paint, then you shouldnt have to have any other panels painted - what would be worth doing is having the surrounding panels polished, so they are back to the original colour and painter shouldnt have an issue with paint matching, or at the very least wont be trying to blend to a false colour.

punisher5112

Question for yee in the trade....

I'm desperately looking for a vRS blue front driver's side wing to fit 2006 to 2009.

I will get the door and bumper sprayed.

Sick of it looking so bad.

Curran

^^^ Beauty & The Beast!

:P

Never did get a chance to take it for that spin you mentioned

Looked too good on a poor day when you collected it to ask! Maybe a few hundred yard dash some morning on the mountains!

btkm8unsl0w5r4

I didnt do it myself but the fine folks at D'Shed detailing. After its full correction and ceramic coating the paintwork is looking fantastic. The colour is so reflective in early light the car is a deep red and in direct sun its a metallic flake orange.

DaveyDave

Finally got to wash the car today. It's probably been about two months! Between the frequent rain mixed with doing lots of overtime in the last 3 weeks I haven't had much free time.

White hides dirt well but the downside is I don't notice when it gets really dirty. Hard to see in the picture but the bonnet shows one side being a darker colour in comparison to the white. Even the roof was like this. As I passed with the mitt the water would almost be brown and I could see right away where I was wiping, usually it's only the lower part of the doors that I can see turning to white as I clean.

BH Autowheel worked a treat. The wheels were very heavily soiled, even blasting them with the pressure washer before hand didn't shift much and that usually does 75% of the cleaning. There was maybe half an inch of solid build up on the side of the spokes. Rinsed off to see the wheels 90% clean, only used the wheel woolies to get behind the spokes while the foam was dwelling.

The time I saved on the wheels was spent rinsing twice as often on the wash, hopefully the weather gets better so I can wash it more often and it won't take as long!

McBluffin

yannakis wrote: »

The detailing happened on Monday so I guess I'm slightly off topic :pac:

Didn't do much - rinse, foam gun, rinse, wash, rinse, carpro hydro2lite, rinse, towel dry. But look what I found this morning! Pretty, pretty sweet!

Full size images attached:

Always weirdly satisfying. Great job

yannakis

The detailing happened on Monday so I guess I'm slightly off topic :pac:

Didn't do much - rinse, foam gun, rinse, wash, rinse, carpro hydro2lite, rinse, towel dry. But look what I found this morning! Pretty, pretty sweet!

Full size images attached:

Theboinkmaster

McBluffin fair play, looks a beaut!

MarkN

Looks unreal fair play!

Curran

Really nice work there McBluffin!!!

Superb car that came up fantastic - you'd have to be happy with that!

Very quick scan over the process, and cant really fault it either!

vectra

Mc Love wrote: »

like that spoiler

punisher5112 wrote: »

Reg even more....

Car even more again :cool:

Lovely car
well wear. And very nice job

McBluffin

@yannakis, made a change to the font now so hopefully that helps

yannakis

@McBluffin some of us use the dark theme, and your font colour is not looking great

punisher5112

Mc Love wrote: »

like that spoiler

Reg even more....

Mc Love

like that spoiler

McBluffin

Hi Gents, first time post on this forum. I thought I would share my latest job I got myself engrossed into the past few days.

Picked up a 2008 Alpine white 335d back recently. The car was covered and I mean totally covered from head to toe with swirl marks, tar spots and other decontamination which gave the car an almost yellow like appearance. However, given the body work itself was excellent, no dents or overly deep scrapes (apart from on one side skirt), I decided to try and bring it back to a 90%+ level.

After doing a test panel, I realised to get to this 90%+ it was going to take a few days longer and a lot of patience. The paint was like granite and I didn’t have the schedule to bang it out in 3 full days.

Some things that I preferably I would like (but didn’t have) for this project were microfiber cutting pads, Bilt Hamber Auto Foam, possibly a ceramic coating, CarpPro Flyby, Carpro Dlux. Anyway, I ploughed ahead and worked with what kit I had at the moment.

Hope you enjoy the read….It’s long I know J

Process:

Step 1

Wash/Decontamination

Thorough wash down with just water from the power hose

Foam Cannon – Chemical Guys

Wheels – Bilt Hamber Auto Wheels on alloys & Bilt Hamber Surfex HD on tyres

2 bucket method – followed by another after Claybar step

Door,boot,bonnet jam, & Exhaust/back boxes - Bilt Hamber Surfex HD

Tar & Iron Removal - CarPro

Claybar – Bilt Hamber Medium

Various Detailing brushes such as Vikan’s - Mini Detailing Brushes used to get those harder to reach areas

Step 2

Compounding

Rupes Duetto (dual action) – Blue & Yellow 5.5” pads with Rupes blue compound & yellow finishing polish

Flex pe8-4 80 (rotary) - 3, 2 & 1” pads (same compound as above) with Vertool 50mm, 80mm & 120mm extension bars

The Rupes blue pad didn’t offer enough cutting so I would of preferred a microfiber pad. However, the Rupes blue pad still gave excellent results; it just took me a lot more passes as the paint was so hard.

The 5.5” pads on the DA were used for the larger panels and the edges of each panel was followed up with the 3” on the rotary. When needed the 2” and 1” pads were called into action for areas such as thin roof rack strips on the roof, intricate areas on the boot, spoiler, fin, front bumper, gloss black trims etc.

Once completed the car was fully cleaned down with Bilt-Hamber Cleanser-Fluid followed by a quick touchless wash with the foam cannon using a wax free solution to loosen any remaining polish residue in the jams. The car got a touchless dry down using a Master Blaster, again all jams were cleaned free of any annoying water that might seep out during the waxing stage.

Step 3

Sealing/Waxing & Other

Sealant - Finish Kare 1000P Hi-Temp Sealant. 2 coats with 12 hours apart

Wax – Reflect Autocare Sovereign Gold (this was all I had at the time so it will be interesting to see how it perform over time)

Windows – RainX Rain Repellent (really wanted to put Carpro Flyby on but didn’t have any)

Wheel/Tyres - Finish Kare 1000P Hi-Temp Sealant. 1 coat. Chemical Guys VRP on the wheels

Final walk around with a toothpick lodged in a microfiber cloth to get any remaining polish/sealant/wax (pictures are before this process, so don’t eat me please J

Hope you enjoyed the read, I know it was a bit of a ramble but as all of us can be a bit OCD at times, I wanted to make sure I covered everything.

Interested to hear what you guys think and especially what I could have possibly done differently or what steps/products could make life easier.
During the process I also changed out the chrome grill for an OEM gloss black set & replaced the yellow OEM rings in the headlight for LUX H8 180’s.

Link to more images: http://cubeupload.com/codes/4ed678

ianobrien

I gave the Leon a quick wash, dry and a coating of BH Auto-qd. It's not really enough to call it detailing.

It's now a grand "5 foot" car, looks good at 5 foot plus, but look close and you'll see dirty wheel arches, a grand coating of tar, dirty wheel barrels, filthy suspension arms and a manky engine bay. You know, I was thinking of addressing this list over the weekend but feck this, I'm going to go mountain biking instead.

Curran

Looks very well. Nice motor!

Ryano87

Long time lurker rarely post but always checking out your work here

- spent 6 hours on the paint work of my new to me mx5 yesterday.

Raging having to drive it in the rain now!

There was a crazy amount of tar and fallout on it for a car that has less than 2 months on the road - worth the effort though.

The colour is called ceramic - hope ye like it!

EPAndlee

Did a full contamination today and got the paint ready for its annual machine polish. Probably going to hit it with britemax black max or maybe menzerna

[Deleted User]

If that's not detailing....I give up :pac:

Nice work

Noccy_Mondy

Don't know if you'd class this as detailing, but I'm posting it here anyway!

I wont lie, the mondeo hasn't been polished or received any protection since last May..... I'll tackle it this week.

In the mean time, I took each of the wheels off, cleaned all around the arches, washed the rims down, de-tarred and de-ironed them, and applied a coat of polish. Hard to beat a nice clean alloy. The car is a 10 year old daily, but I try to keep it in decent shape

Pics aren't the best quality as I was loosing light

[Deleted User]

Got the gti hoovered and gave the seats a "shampoo".
I had a bottle of autoglym seat shampoo so gave that a blast.
wont really know until it drys but it looks like ok stuff so far.smells nice

[Deleted User]

EPAndlee wrote: »

C2 V3 is fantastic. It's the main product I make sure not to run out of. I normally use it to top up my wax when I feel it's starts to wear down. Normally only wax the in the summer tho.

It's better as a base layer rather than on top of wax as it will then only last as long as the wax.

vectra

EPAndlee wrote: »

C2 V3 is fantastic. It's the main product I make sure not to run out of. I normally use it to top up my wax when I feel it's starts to wear down. Normally only wax the in the summer tho.

If you are only topping up wax.
Might be worth giving Carpro Reload.
Fantastic product.

MarkN

MetzgerMeister wrote: »

Looks superb Mark!

May I suggest Gtechniq C2V3? All the performance and longevity of a wax with a quarter of the work. That topped with a coat of their quick detailer makes for a super-slick surface which lasts ages.

I've completely given up on applying wax to my car and I only use the above products now although mine does have Gtechniq Crystal Serum and EXO underneath but I just don't have the time or will to apply/buff wax anymore.

I’ll deffo have a look at it, I’d like to wax it more often but as you mentioned it’s the time/effort.

EPAndlee

MetzgerMeister wrote: »

Looks superb Mark!

May I suggest Gtechniq C2V3? All the performance and longevity of a wax with a quarter of the work. That topped with a coat of their quick detailer makes for a super-slick surface which lasts ages.

I've completely given up on applying wax to my car and I only use the above products now although mine does have Gtechniq Crystal Serum and EXO underneath but I just don't have the time or will to apply/buff wax anymore.

C2 V3 is fantastic. It's the main product I make sure not to run out of. I normally use it to top up my wax when I feel it's starts to wear down. Normally only wax the in the summer tho.

yannakis

Graham 1324 wrote: »

Gave the mazda sport a nice fresh bitta wax this weekend , noticed theirs a fair amount of tar embedded in the paint lately anyone know where I can find that tarX stuff?

Detailingshed have it and they are generally reasonably priced. TarX in particular sells for around €15/£12 in the majority of online shops - but I just spotted this for £10.94 :pac: :cool:

[Deleted User]

MarkN wrote: »

Arms, legs and back are stiff... can only mean one thing. The car got waxed yesterday. Noticed doing it that there's quite a bit of tar on her so ordered some TarX and Bilt Hammer clay from Detailing Shed and I'll do it again next week.

Usual process was BH foam, BH wheel, two buckets, Dry Me Crazy towel (although lazily I let the car dry naturally in parts and the wax sealed in the bloody water marks). Used the Microfibre Madness buffing cloth for the first time to remove to application of 50 Cal Pentawax and would recommend to anyone.

First time using Poorboy's Wheel Sealant and it was really easy to apply/remove. Adds a bit of time to an already long washing process but I just want to keep the wheels fresh, particularly the two I've had refurbed in Wheel Wizards recently which are mint.

Looks superb Mark!

May I suggest Gtechniq C2V3? All the performance and longevity of a wax with a quarter of the work. That topped with a coat of their quick detailer makes for a super-slick surface which lasts ages.

I've completely given up on applying wax to my car and I only use the above products now although mine does have Gtechniq Crystal Serum and EXO underneath but I just don't have the time or will to apply/buff wax anymore.

PGE1970

That looks mint for a 10 year old car Graham!