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Polished Bliss®: MK II Golf GTi...

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Old 14 February 2011, 05:09 PM
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Clark @ PB
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Default Polished Bliss®: MK II Golf GTi...

This was the latest one in for a full correction job, although it should have been an Audi Q7 and not a Golf! The owner sold the Q7 a couple of days previously and felt bad about having to cancel so he decided to bring the golf in and see what we could do with it

The car was actually booked in for a respray in a few months so if we did our job properly then at least that would be some money saved

The car was fairly clean on arrival, although looking a bit pink in areas:












As always, the wheels were given a thorough pre-rinse and then sprayed with R222 Wheel Cleaner...





...Then agitated with a Raceglaze Detailing Brush...



Then rinsed:



The wheels were spotless after that so no need for any further cleaning treatments

Onto the tyres and arches:

Meguiars Superdegreaser was sprayed...





Then agitated with a Raceglaze Detailing Brush for the tyres and a Wheel Woolie for the arches:





Then rinsed:




The engine was given a once over with Meguiars Superdegreaser but nothing too detailed as a 2.0 TSFI engine is getting dropped in shortly - should be fun :driver:






The car was then foamed with Meguiars APC and left for a few minutes:






Rinsed off at high pressure:




Funny how a car can look in good conditon when wet

Again, using the APC and Raceglaze Brush all the exterior trim, badges, door shuts etc were cleaned:




After another rinse the car was washed with Meguiars Shampoo Plus and Lambswool Wash Mitt before any tar spots were taken care of with Autosmart Tardis.


Now inside, the car was clayed with Meguiars Mild Detailing Clay and plain water for lube:




Then dried off with a Poorboys Waffle Weave towel and the Black Baron:






Paint readings were then taken:



As to be expected with a car of this age, it had seen quite alot of paintwork in the past so correction was going to be interesting.

Defect wise, this is what we were up against:














We've been gradually getting Alan up to speed on the correction side of things with the DA machine so he took care of the paintwork on this one. The paint was rock hard and needed several hits of Meguiars 105 and a Cyan Lake Country Hydro-tech pad to get the desired result:




Before:



After:





Before:



After:





This lower section was really bad:



After several hits it was much improved, the deeper marks couldn't be removed as there wasn't enough paint left to warrant going any further:




Before:



After:




Once the desired level of correction was achieved the paint was refined with Meguiars 205 and a Crimson Hydro-tech Finishing Pad:






While Alan was working away at the paintwork I'd been busy bringing some life back to the plastics using the heat gun, this pic is from the heat gun alone, no dressing applied:



Some areas were worse than others and took a bit of patience to bring back but the difference was massive.

The other biggest difference was the further cleaning of the trim with Swissvax Plastic Wash:



Considering the trims had been cleaned with APC and Tardis during the wash stage the amount of dirt and grime still pulled out by the Plastic Wash was unreal.

This then left the perfect base for applying Swissvax Protecton:




Meanwhile, Alan had finished the polishing and had cleansed and prepped the paint with Swissvax Cleaner Fluid and applied a coat of Crystal Rock.

The badges which had been removed for polishing were then cleaned up and fitted back onto the car:






Tailpipes were polished with Swissvax Metal Polish:






I applied Swissvax Seal Feed to all window rubbers etc:






The wheels were sealed with Swissvax Autobahn:



And tyres dressed with Swissvax Pneu Glossy using the Pneu Brush:






The glass was cleaned inside and out and the interior was also detailed, or what was left of it should I say - there was only the driver’s seat as the rest was away getting re-trimmed so not much to see I’m afraid


A final wipe down of the paint and trim followed by a final check left us with the following results:






























And here's a few taken on the Sunday morning:














Needless to say the respray was cancelled

Thanks for looking!


Clark
Old 14 February 2011, 05:56 PM
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bighead
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great work clark that is awesome ...so how much did all that work costed the owner ??
Old 15 February 2011, 11:40 AM
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Cracking work. I have a soft spot for a MkII golf gti.


Originally Posted by bighead
great work clark that is awesome ...so how much did all that work costed the owner ??

Not as much as the repspray
Old 15 February 2011, 11:48 AM
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krisando
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Amazing job, same agin, must have cost quite a bit?
Old 15 February 2011, 12:23 PM
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Nice work. I used to own one of these many years ago, and can confirm that the red paint is hard to polish by hand

Interesting use of a heat gun on the plastics. How does that work - does it just liberate oils from deeper down in the plastic back to the surface again?

John
Old 15 February 2011, 12:47 PM
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Very nice job, always wondered how you guys would deal with the plastics on this kind of car.
Old 15 February 2011, 01:25 PM
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PB list their prices here:

http://www.polishedbliss.co.uk/acata...e-options.html

I'd have thought that the level of correction of this one it fits into the correction detail option. Which is great value when you think of the money saved on the re-spray.
Old 15 February 2011, 07:44 PM
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How did the bumper come back to life just by using a heat gun
Old 15 February 2011, 08:23 PM
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Originally Posted by scoobyverysoon
How did the bumper come back to life just by using a heat gun
he use a plastic cleaner on it as well .
Old 16 February 2011, 12:05 PM
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Originally Posted by scoobyverysoon
How did the bumper come back to life just by using a heat gun
Originally Posted by bighead
he use a plastic cleaner on it as well .
Originally Posted by JohnS
Nice work. I used to own one of these many years ago, and can confirm that the red paint is hard to polish by hand

Interesting use of a heat gun on the plastics. How does that work - does it just liberate oils from deeper down in the plastic back to the surface again?

John
As JohnS has deduced, the heat gun lifts the oils from within the plastic: you need to take care not to overheat and melt the plastic and also not to heat the surrounding paint.

If you want to try it for the first time, maybe find an old mud flap as an experiment: bit safer to melt that than melt your bumper!

After this was done, we used Swissvax Plastic Wash: http://www.polishedbliss.co.uk/acata...stic-wash.html

I know we sell it so I'm bound to say this but this is a truly amazing product, really, really impressive: it just lifts so much ingrained grime from plastics that even strong cleaning and hot water pressure washing doesn't remove.

As the plastic is then clean and restored, any dressings then have a great bond on the plastics giving a nicer finish and extended durability.

Old 16 February 2011, 02:13 PM
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Nice work as always...always a great source of inspiration

(p.s. order arrived today, cheers )

Last edited by *smiles*; 16 February 2011 at 02:14 PM.
Old 02 March 2011, 11:16 AM
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Outstanding, looks new again!
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