Polished Bliss: Mercedes S Class Wedding Prep!...
19 February 2008, 04:40 PM
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Polished Bliss: Mercedes S Class Wedding Prep!...
This was a detail done at the end of last week, and i can 100% say that this was the most gruelling and time consuming one yet!
The car is to be used as a wedding car at the start of next month so it was booked in for a full correction to get it looking its best for the big day, here it is upon arrival on Wednesday morning:
Wash:
I firstly pre-rinsed the car at high pressure (60 degrees) to get the worst of the grime off and then cleaned the arches with Meguiars Super Degreaser and a brush. The wheels were then cleaned with Meguiars Wheel Brightener (4:1):
No need for Tardis on these wheels, which made a nice change
I then washed the car with the 2BM and Meguiars Shampoo Plus and then cleaned all shuts/petrol cap etc with a MF mitt as there wasnt a great deal of dirt to be removed.
I then soaked the engine bay with Super Degreaser and left for around 30 seconds... (Engine is off, the morning sun was causing the steam):
....And then rinsed at medium pressure (60 degrees):
Next job to do was to clay the car. The paint was very smooth after i'd applied and wiped off Autosmarts Tardis but i clayed anyways as the fingertip test can be deceiving and i always find you can pull a fair bit of dirt off a car even though it feels smooth to the touch
One final rinse (40 degrees) followed and now the swirls could be seen in the rising sun:
Not overly bad, but funny how even direct sunlight can be deceiving (more on this shortly...)
Some lovely buffer trails too:
Polish:
Paint readings were taken next, and this was a mixed bag of results - the majority of the car was healthy enough:
Some was a tad on the thin side:
Some areas were even thinner, the lowest reading being 63 - so at least this gave some indication of where the absolute limit was as this area still had clear coat remaining. Obviously we wouldnt be going anywhere near as low as that but it still allowed the 70 micron areas to be polished
Now, i mentioned that even sunlight can be decieving when assessing defects, and this was proven once the car was inside and under the halogens, as this showed the extent of the damage a bit more:
Buffer trails again:
"Still not THAT bad" you may think?
Below is a half and half shot without halogens to show just how much depth and clarity the defects were robbing of the paint:
Pretty nuts for a 2 year old car!
I initially started out correcting the paint with 3.02 and a cutting pad @1800rpms, but the paint just laughed at me!
I finally settled on 3M Fast Cut Plus with a drop of Ultrafina @ 2000rpm's, yet the paint still needed Three hits per section on the bonnet,roof and boot lid (these areas were slightly worse than the side panels). This was easiest the hardest paint i've ever polished, which was strange as i've done Mercs of this age before and they havent been overly hard. I was sorely tempted by Menzerna's Power Gloss but to be honest the Fast Cut Plus is pretty close in terms of cut and doesnt produce half as much dust!
It was at this point i consulted Rich about the car, as i only had 2 days to do it in and i knew it just wasnt going to be possible on a car this size with the defects it was showing. Luckily, the owner agreed to collect the car on the Friday morning to allow us to work a late night on the Thursday if needed (which it was, more later!). I could have corrected the car to 50% and the customer would have been delighted but its just not in our nature to hand over a car that isnt perfect (or as near as paint condition will allow!) and there wasnt a hope in hell i could achieve the desired results in 2 days.
Rich suggested he helped me on the Thursday (which was going to be a big help!)once he got through his e-mails etc so i soldiered on for the rest of the day, slowly correcting each panel.
As you can see below, the correction was very good - just a couple of RIDS remaining, however 2 or 3 hits on each section was making it a very slow and drawn out affair!
50/50 on the bootlid:
Fully Corrected::
C-Pillar Before:
After:
It was now around 7 o clock and i decided to call it a night so i could get to bed early, allowing me to be bright and breezy for the next (long!) day
Day 2:
Correction resumed, with myself doing the rotary work while Rich had the painful task of correcting the bumpers and other smaller areas with the Megs G220 - using a 50/50 mix of 3.02 and Power Gloss on a 4" Cutting Pad, like myself - he was having to do multiple hits to get the desired results.
I carried on down the sides...
50/50 on the front wing:
Fully Corrected:
Back 1/4 50/50:
The back 1/4 on the other side was showing some nice buffer trails amongst the scratches...
The section masked off was an area that was into the 60 microns, so obviously i wasnt going to polish this when the Fast Cut Plus and Rotary was removing around 5-6 microns after 2 or 3 hits. This section was polished when i went round the 2nd time with the finishing pad and polish, this increased gloss but obviously the defects remained - nothing else i could do with it i'm afraid
back 1/4 after :
A-Pillars were done with the Rotary also:
Finally, the correction work was done and it was now approaching 11 o clock at night, Myself and Rich were running on fumes at this point but we were glad at the effort put in as the car was now looking soooo much better, and Rich had done a stunning job on the bumpers! You get out of it what you put in
Polishing wasnt done yet though, as i had to go over it again with the finishing polish (pad pictured ready for priming, i dont use this much afterwards):
Luckily, the panels are all pretty flat on this car so this stage took no more than an hour-ish, including 106FA on a 4" polishing pad with the G220 for the bumpers etc.
Now up and over midnight, i couldnt really be bothered to take much pictures from there on, so here's one taken the morning after of the interior after a hoover/APC wipe down/Glass cleaned with HDC/Shuts with prime strong/leather fed etc:
Engine bay was dressed with 303 Aerospace Protectant:
LSP of choice was Vintage, this was applied to the whole car and left while i did a bit of tidying up. Rich sealed the wheels (PB Wheel Sealant), dressed the tyres (BF Long Lasting Tyre Gel) and arches (Meguiars All Season Dressing). I used Prime Strong on a few areas of chrome/plastic that were tarnishing and then buffed off the Vintage.
So, after finishing up at around 2am, here is the results of a grueling 2 day detail!
Even though we had about 4 hours sleep untill i had to get up for work on the Friday, it was all worth it - far better in my eyes to miss a few hours in your bed in order to give your all to make a customer happy - which she was
This one has now led us to re-think our pricing and time scales for full correction details as our standards have raised again, so full corrections are now to be done over 3 days - this will enable us to go for pure "Polished Bliss" (want some toast with that cheese?) every time
Thanks for looking and thanks to Rich for his help on this one. I'd probably still be working on the damn thing now if it wasnt for him!
Clark
The car is to be used as a wedding car at the start of next month so it was booked in for a full correction to get it looking its best for the big day, here it is upon arrival on Wednesday morning:
Wash:
I firstly pre-rinsed the car at high pressure (60 degrees) to get the worst of the grime off and then cleaned the arches with Meguiars Super Degreaser and a brush. The wheels were then cleaned with Meguiars Wheel Brightener (4:1):
No need for Tardis on these wheels, which made a nice change
I then washed the car with the 2BM and Meguiars Shampoo Plus and then cleaned all shuts/petrol cap etc with a MF mitt as there wasnt a great deal of dirt to be removed.
I then soaked the engine bay with Super Degreaser and left for around 30 seconds... (Engine is off, the morning sun was causing the steam):
....And then rinsed at medium pressure (60 degrees):
Next job to do was to clay the car. The paint was very smooth after i'd applied and wiped off Autosmarts Tardis but i clayed anyways as the fingertip test can be deceiving and i always find you can pull a fair bit of dirt off a car even though it feels smooth to the touch
One final rinse (40 degrees) followed and now the swirls could be seen in the rising sun:
Not overly bad, but funny how even direct sunlight can be deceiving (more on this shortly...)
Some lovely buffer trails too:
Polish:
Paint readings were taken next, and this was a mixed bag of results - the majority of the car was healthy enough:
Some was a tad on the thin side:
Some areas were even thinner, the lowest reading being 63 - so at least this gave some indication of where the absolute limit was as this area still had clear coat remaining. Obviously we wouldnt be going anywhere near as low as that but it still allowed the 70 micron areas to be polished
Now, i mentioned that even sunlight can be decieving when assessing defects, and this was proven once the car was inside and under the halogens, as this showed the extent of the damage a bit more:
Buffer trails again:
"Still not THAT bad" you may think?
Below is a half and half shot without halogens to show just how much depth and clarity the defects were robbing of the paint:
Pretty nuts for a 2 year old car!
I initially started out correcting the paint with 3.02 and a cutting pad @1800rpms, but the paint just laughed at me!
I finally settled on 3M Fast Cut Plus with a drop of Ultrafina @ 2000rpm's, yet the paint still needed Three hits per section on the bonnet,roof and boot lid (these areas were slightly worse than the side panels). This was easiest the hardest paint i've ever polished, which was strange as i've done Mercs of this age before and they havent been overly hard. I was sorely tempted by Menzerna's Power Gloss but to be honest the Fast Cut Plus is pretty close in terms of cut and doesnt produce half as much dust!
It was at this point i consulted Rich about the car, as i only had 2 days to do it in and i knew it just wasnt going to be possible on a car this size with the defects it was showing. Luckily, the owner agreed to collect the car on the Friday morning to allow us to work a late night on the Thursday if needed (which it was, more later!). I could have corrected the car to 50% and the customer would have been delighted but its just not in our nature to hand over a car that isnt perfect (or as near as paint condition will allow!) and there wasnt a hope in hell i could achieve the desired results in 2 days.
Rich suggested he helped me on the Thursday (which was going to be a big help!)once he got through his e-mails etc so i soldiered on for the rest of the day, slowly correcting each panel.
As you can see below, the correction was very good - just a couple of RIDS remaining, however 2 or 3 hits on each section was making it a very slow and drawn out affair!
50/50 on the bootlid:
Fully Corrected::
C-Pillar Before:
After:
It was now around 7 o clock and i decided to call it a night so i could get to bed early, allowing me to be bright and breezy for the next (long!) day
Day 2:
Correction resumed, with myself doing the rotary work while Rich had the painful task of correcting the bumpers and other smaller areas with the Megs G220 - using a 50/50 mix of 3.02 and Power Gloss on a 4" Cutting Pad, like myself - he was having to do multiple hits to get the desired results.
I carried on down the sides...
50/50 on the front wing:
Fully Corrected:
Back 1/4 50/50:
The back 1/4 on the other side was showing some nice buffer trails amongst the scratches...
The section masked off was an area that was into the 60 microns, so obviously i wasnt going to polish this when the Fast Cut Plus and Rotary was removing around 5-6 microns after 2 or 3 hits. This section was polished when i went round the 2nd time with the finishing pad and polish, this increased gloss but obviously the defects remained - nothing else i could do with it i'm afraid
back 1/4 after :
A-Pillars were done with the Rotary also:
Finally, the correction work was done and it was now approaching 11 o clock at night, Myself and Rich were running on fumes at this point but we were glad at the effort put in as the car was now looking soooo much better, and Rich had done a stunning job on the bumpers! You get out of it what you put in
Polishing wasnt done yet though, as i had to go over it again with the finishing polish (pad pictured ready for priming, i dont use this much afterwards):
Luckily, the panels are all pretty flat on this car so this stage took no more than an hour-ish, including 106FA on a 4" polishing pad with the G220 for the bumpers etc.
Now up and over midnight, i couldnt really be bothered to take much pictures from there on, so here's one taken the morning after of the interior after a hoover/APC wipe down/Glass cleaned with HDC/Shuts with prime strong/leather fed etc:
Engine bay was dressed with 303 Aerospace Protectant:
LSP of choice was Vintage, this was applied to the whole car and left while i did a bit of tidying up. Rich sealed the wheels (PB Wheel Sealant), dressed the tyres (BF Long Lasting Tyre Gel) and arches (Meguiars All Season Dressing). I used Prime Strong on a few areas of chrome/plastic that were tarnishing and then buffed off the Vintage.
So, after finishing up at around 2am, here is the results of a grueling 2 day detail!
Even though we had about 4 hours sleep untill i had to get up for work on the Friday, it was all worth it - far better in my eyes to miss a few hours in your bed in order to give your all to make a customer happy - which she was
This one has now led us to re-think our pricing and time scales for full correction details as our standards have raised again, so full corrections are now to be done over 3 days - this will enable us to go for pure "Polished Bliss" (want some toast with that cheese?) every time
Thanks for looking and thanks to Rich for his help on this one. I'd probably still be working on the damn thing now if it wasnt for him!
Clark
19 February 2008, 04:57 PM
#2
Excellent job guys. Loving the 50/50 shots, shows the correction brilliantly. I've been asked to work on a Merc in the next couple of months...might need an excuse or two !
19 February 2008, 07:28 PM
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Truly amazing results
. I was looking forward to seeing these pics after speaking to you guys the otherday when I bought my bits, you were right then when you said it was the toughest ever!!!
As I said on the phone, please can you open a place up down in the warmer part of the country! I'm sure there would be plenty of takers.
PS. I think the Porcshe in the background needs your attention!!
. I was looking forward to seeing these pics after speaking to you guys the otherday when I bought my bits, you were right then when you said it was the toughest ever!!!As I said on the phone, please can you open a place up down in the warmer part of the country! I'm sure there would be plenty of takers.
PS. I think the Porcshe in the background needs your attention!!
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