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Child Item

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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Spike Witwicky

vectra wrote: »

The only thing is that 845 likes to be used on bare paint.
Good job though.

Balls. Ah well not to worry. Was more interested in gettin rid of the swirls.
Seeing as i have Menzernas FG400 & PO85RD on order i might try their Powerlock sealant.

Curran

Good work....great to see the flake in the paint pop again!

Noccy_Mondy

Don't know whether I should start my own thread for this but I'll leave it here for now. Went to debadge the car today and this "stain" came and won't leave. What's the best course of action?

Curran

Why is the area around it so dull in the 2nd picture?

Anyways, it appears that the glue was fully removed and you are just left with the paintwork? The paintwork under the badge has never been damaged from washing, etc, so a bit of polishing around the area should help bring the rest of the paintwork closer to the un-damaged paintwork in appearance and as a result it will be less obvious.

Noccy_Mondy

Sorry ya under the badge is perfect, matches the paintwork on the rest of the car perfect, it's whenever I applied the AutoGlym tar remover it seems to have left the surrounding stain. I'm assuming the tar remover done it, I used nothing else, only a hairdryer. The tar remover wasn't even on that long. What kind of polish would be best, never bought polish before

Would it be ok done by hand?

Curran

Did you apply the tar remover on the panel when it was very hot after the hair dryer?

You'll probably need something with a bit of cutting ability. For example, Autoglym Super Resin Polish doesnt have a whole lot of cut to it, its a better filler of defects than fixing them as such.

If the stain from the tar remover wasnt there; there wouldnt be an issue? So its the stain caused be the tar remover, is what you are questioning?

Noccy_Mondy

Ya the paintwork would have been hot alright. Basically yes, it must be the tar remover that left the stain, nothing else could have. If that stain wasn't there then it would be all fine.

Curran

Try a small bit of tar remover on a cloth and give it a light rub and rinse well afterwards. Failing that, try polishing.

Gordy6040

Quick top for the new guys. .. From a new guy. .. don't try a hand polish after hitting the gym. Its a heart breaker.
Just finished polishing the wife's car. Thank god its a clio. Actually the first time I've ever been glad it's a clio.

Curran

You need to go to the gym more, or spend more time at polishing the cars! Wimp!

[Deleted User]

Or you could stop hitting the gym and just go inside and use the machines like you're supposed to :pac:

Gordy6040

I see I've wandered into the comedians forum.
Anyway... I'll give the polish a rinse off tonight and put a wax on. Crappy power washer is pulsing and I'm waiting for some parts to fix it because at the moment it's doing little more then giving the car a shower.

Spike Witwicky

Typical. I gots me Menzerna polishes and am itchin to polish the car. Weather isnt too bad either but i'm on stoopid nightshifts this week

Ded_Zebra

Here's a little project that I got up to over last weekend. Spent about 10 hours on both Saturday and Sunday on it. I had fantastic intentions to take lots and lots of pictures throughout the process but as I'm sure a lot of you find it takes so much extra time when taking photos that it's not worth it when the car is needed again on monday morning!!

Anyway, here are the before pictures of the car.

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The car has 270,000km on it. That coupled with 9 years of automated car washes means that the paint was ruined with swirls and looked like crap. However, that wasn't the main problem. The car was painted to "touch it up" by the owners brother. Unfortunately he didn't bother with any prep other than a basic wash and he used cheap black paint on a lava grey car! You can see it on the back passengers door the worst. It had been there for a couple of years and she was told that the panels would need to be resprayed to fix it. As he painted most of the panels in a few small spots that wasn't an option. The other problem was the scratch in the front passengers door caused by a pillar in a carpark that jumped out of nowhere. As you can see its pretty extensive on the handle, the door and the rub strip.

The first job was a snow foam, and a 2bm wash.

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Then it was onto detaring and then claying.

Tar Cleanse doing it's thing
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Conveniently, the tar cleanse actually dissolved all the black paint off the car! Fortunately no sanding required and a lot of time saved

:D

This is what was under the paint on the back door, a few suncream hand prints that polished off in about 30 seconds with the DA. :rolleyes:

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The scratch on the door was what occupied most of our time. We had paint mixed up in Halfords. It was applied into the scratch, allowed to dry, sanded back with 2500 wet and dry, paint was re-applied to the low spots. This was repeated until the surface was even enough. The aim was to do a 90% job. 100% was achievable but I would't be comfortable going for it without a paint depth gauge. Basically we wanted to turn it from a 30 footer (a scratch that can be seen from 30 feet away) to a 2-3 footer.

Herself paying the price for her years of abusing the car

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Ded_Zebra

The end results

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Scratch can still be seen but it's actually better looking in real life than in this photo

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We're very happy with the results anyway! Maybe next weekend we'll do the exhaust tip and that scratch in the middle of the back bumper

Ded_Zebra

Oh and what would this post be without a beading shot :P This is Finis Wax. Pity about the rain immediately after finishing the car though

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mik_da_man

Some good work there.
Fair play

Curran

Great work! Had you beem planning to sell the car, that would easily have added a couple of hundred quid to the value!!
Nice turn around. ..with the finishing touches, it'll be spot on!

Ded_Zebra

Cheers lads. There's a couple of bits to finish off on it alright. One of the worst bits is the roof rails. They're aluminium and as far as I can tell they have a clear coat on them. The problem is that they have oxidised under the clear coat and they can't be polished back with metal polish. I remember people saying that this happened to their Audis on here before but can't remember how they fixed it. Any ideas? On a phone so I can't post up pics but I will later.

Chimaera

Was it OAC's Tar Cleanse you used? I've got some dodgy rattle can work (sadly my own misguided attempts) to remove and this might make it easier.

cena

Not many women would look after a car this. Great job on the shine

[Deleted User]

cena wrote: »

Not many women would look after a car this. Great job on the shine

Indeed! DZ is one of few women who look after their cars :pac:

Ded_Zebra

Chimaera wrote: »

Was it OAC's Tar Cleanse you used? I've got some dodgy rattle can work (sadly my own misguided attempts) to remove and this might make it easier.

It was:)

It may not work on your paint though. Apparently this stuff wasn't car paint but the kind of stuff that you get in Dealz or the likes for a couple of quid. I would imagine that car paint would withstand Tar cleanse .

MetzgerMeister wrote: »

Indeed! DZ is one of few women who look after their cars :pac:

Not quite, 1 more operation to go :pac: Just saving up for it, that's why I'm driving a daysul now

Ded_Zebra

Here are the roof rails I was talking about. Any ideas?

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[Deleted User]

I had that oxidation on the chrome trim around my doors. A dremmel with the cotton polish pad and autosol did the job. I did that over a year ago and still fine.

Ded_Zebra

MetzgerMeister wrote: »

I had that oxidation on the chrome trim around my doors. A dremmel with the cotton polish pad and autosol did the job. I did that over a year ago and still fine.

Did it leave an even finish?
Those roof rails have a lot of surface area for a dremmel…. Don't really fancy that much work

Metal polish by hand did literally nothing for them and there was no blackness on the applicator like you would normally get when polishing metal. Is there a clear coat that needs to be polished through first?

[Deleted User]

Even finish?? What are ya gob****in' on about?? It left and oxidation-free, factory finish.

See, in order to remove this type of thing from metal, you need a bit of heat build-up and the fast rotation of the dremmel. It's tedious but it's the only thing I have found to work.

Ded_Zebra

MetzgerMeister wrote: »

Even finish?? What are ya gob****in' on about?? It left and oxidation-free, factory finish.

See, in order to remove this type of thing from metal, you need a bit of heat build-up and the fast rotation of the dremmel. It's tedious but it's the only thing I have found to work.

Grand cheers for that

the energy for detailing is low at the moment after the weekend but I will give it a go in a week or so maybe.

What kind of attachment did you use on the dremel? One of these boys?

[Deleted User]

Yep, that's the one!

Stallingrad

If you get an even finish on an area that large with a Dremmel I'll eat my hat!