Detailed my car (lots of pics)

Detaling and car washing techniques

Detailed my car (lots of pics)

Postby madix » Mon Jan 28, 2013 2:27 pm

First off, if anyone in SE Melb has any detailing-related questions or issues, you are most welcome to come by for advice or whatever. I have been detailing cars for a long time purely as a hobby so I do not charge for anything, but beer is always welcome. I'm always happy to help but don't expect me to do the work for you, I will teach/demonstrate what needs to be done and leave you to it.

As for my car, I got it towards the end of 2012 in fairly good condition. There were a few issues as can be seen in my profile thread: http://forum.liberty.asn.au/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=19852
Mostly, it had the usual light scratches here and there, watermarks everywhere (previous owner parked outside at work and under a carport at home), light swirling and worst of all, overspray.
Once the repainted front bar was fully cured, I started the detailing process, breaking it into two parts over two days. First part was the interior, clay and polishing all exterior glass which had heavy watermarking. Second part was polishing the paint and sealing everything.

Let's see some pics:

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Interior was straightforward, just cleaning everything. I treated the leather with Zaino Z10 and plastics with Poorboys Natural Look.

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Natural Look leaves a low-sheen which I like and no residue. Same with Z10 which also has a nice leathery odour.

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Time to start claying.

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The car was covered in overspray, which left a very rough feeling across the entire car, particularly on horizontal surfaces. It took probably 2 hours just removing it all. Here is the best pic I could get of it from the B-pillar. Above the green line is the clayed area. Below the green line are quite obvious white spots.

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Claying complete. Yuck.

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Next up is the headlights. They look pretty good but why not, right?

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Went with Poorboys SSR 2.5 on the rotary for the job.

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Before & After.

At this point I polished all the windscreens and windows but didn't get pics so let's skip to the paint.

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All masked up to protect the trim.

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SSR 2.5 on the rotary again, with a small polishing pad to tackle problem areas.

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Before & After of some light scuff marks on the bonnet.

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This was a particularly nasty group of scratches on the RL door. I thought about wetsanding as they were quite deep but went with 3 passes of the SSR 2.5 on rotary.

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Not perfect, you can still see the defects if you look hard enough but I didn't feel like removing even more paint.

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With all the more obvious scratches gone, I proceed to buff all the painted surfaces with SSR 2.5 on the Rotex. One pass was enough to remove watermarks and swirl marks apart from the bonnet which required an extra pass.

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Such a waste but what can you do.

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Detail complete.

Drove down the road for some quick pics:

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Thanks for reading!
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Re: Detailed my car (lots of pics)

Postby Subie Boy » Mon Jan 28, 2013 2:47 pm

Amazing work mate, well done. The car looks brand new and so shiny
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Re: Detailed my car (lots of pics)

Postby paggaz » Mon Jan 28, 2013 2:58 pm

Looks incredible mate! Very well done. Where do you buy your Poorboys products?
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Re: Detailed my car (lots of pics)

Postby EJ25 » Mon Jan 28, 2013 3:10 pm

Just curious, what were your paint readings and what sealant you used?

Also, what was done to the b-pillar other than claying?
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Re: Detailed my car (lots of pics)

Postby Mickyboy » Mon Jan 28, 2013 3:21 pm

Great work!
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Re: Detailed my car (lots of pics)

Postby madix » Mon Jan 28, 2013 5:35 pm

You can get Poorboys from Waxit.com.au, but once my bottle of SSR 2.5 runs out, I probably won't get another.

I don't have a paint thickness gauge, I can borrow a friend's but wasn't too concerned. One of the reasons I decided not to wetsand. SSR 2.5 on a polishing pad is fairly gentle. B-pillars are just painted black so they got the same treatment as the rest of the paint. After polishing, I prepped the exterior (paint+glass+trim) with Klasse AIO and topped the paint with Zaino CS.
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Re: Detailed my car (lots of pics)

Postby chris12 » Mon Jan 28, 2013 6:59 pm

Poorboys looks like it did a good job on the interior. Any other products for the interior you can recommend? Why don't you want to use it anymore?
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Re: Detailed my car (lots of pics)

Postby madix » Mon Jan 28, 2013 7:53 pm

1Z Cockpit Premium and 303 Protectant work very well for interiors as well.

I have quite a few Menzerna polishes as well so it's either use it or let it go to waste. Nothing wrong at all with Poorboys.
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Re: Detailed my car (lots of pics)

Postby hamish_023 » Mon Jan 28, 2013 9:39 pm

Nice work Terrence, did you deal the headlights?
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Re: Detailed my car (lots of pics)

Postby madix » Tue Jan 29, 2013 8:25 am

hamish_023 wrote:Nice work Terrence, did you deal the headlights?


Not quite sure what you mean. :?:
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Re: Detailed my car (lots of pics)

Postby hamish_023 » Tue Jan 29, 2013 6:01 pm

I meant to say seal* When you polish headlights you are taking away some UV protection that needs to be replaced once finished otherwise they will go yellow very quickly.
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Re: Detailed my car (lots of pics)

Postby madix » Tue Jan 29, 2013 6:56 pm

Oh, yeah they got the same treatment as the paint.
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Re: Detailed my car (lots of pics)

Postby TonyT » Thu Feb 28, 2013 9:14 pm

Nice job there, need to do that on mine. But need my bumpers redone.
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Re: Detailed my car (lots of pics)

Postby cooki_monsta » Tue Apr 02, 2013 10:30 am

Good job.
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