Polished Bliss: GT3-kitted Carrera S
 

At long last I finally found time to do a car on my own for a change! Expect a lot more write up's from me again over the coming months, now that Mrs Bliss has taken over the running of the store. Not a bad one to start with either, a simple Zymöl protection detail on this rather tasty GT3-kitted Carrera S...

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f2.../997csgt3a.jpg

The car was registered in January, and was used as a demonstrater by the Aberdeen Porsche Centre until the start of April, when a regular customer of our's bought it. The Porsche Centre's preparation for the handover left a lot to be desired, with a huge amount of tar contamination left on the inner rims, glass polish residue all over the interior, and product residues in many of the exterior seams...

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f2.../997csgt3b.jpg

First job was a thorough wash with a citrus degreaser, applied using the Gilmour as my new foam lance refused to connect to my old power washer trigger handle (typical, bought a new handle and it's working fine now)...

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f2.../997csgt3c.jpg

After the initial wash and power rinse, the wheels ended up looking like this; still covered in plenty of brake dust and bonded grime/tar...

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f2.../997csgt3d.jpg

So, the next step was to use a wheel spoke brush and a pH neutral gel to gently lift and remove the bonded grime and brake dust...

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f2.../997csgt3e.jpg

...which left the wheels looking like this...

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f2.../997csgt3f.jpg

...better, but still covered in bonded tar spots, which can be seen here in more detail...

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f2.../997csgt3g.jpg

Perfectly clean wheels right through to the rear are a must in our book, so I then proceeded to use a tar and glue remover and a combination of mitt and brush work to remove all traces of the tar...

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f2.../997csgt3h.jpg

...and after a final rinse, the wheels were left looking like this; perfectly clean and ready for drying and subsequent coats of protection...

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f2.../997csgt3i.jpg

Everything else on the car was relatively straightforward, with only the interior requiring more work than expected (thorough APC wash down to remove engrained glass polish residue from vinyl surfaces, dry, hoover, leather feed). I didn't get any decent shots of the interior work as by the end of the afternoon I was short on time (the above wheel cleaning work took over an hour longer than expected). After applying HD-Cleanse and the Vintage, I then moved onto the little details, cleaning/dressing the boot and engine bay, and interior work whilst waiting for the oils in the wax to rise...

Exhaust Tip Before

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f2.../997csgt3j.jpg

Exhaust Tip After

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f2.../997csgt3k.jpg

Boot After Cleaning/Dressing

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f2.../997csgt3l.jpg

Engine Bay After Cleaning/Dressing

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f2.../997csgt3m.jpg

Wheel After Sealing/Dressing

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f2.../997csgt3n.jpg

By the end of the afternoon the sky had turned flat grey and it had begun to drizzle, so sadly no fantastic after shots outside, but these give a reasonable taste of the final finish...

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f2.../997csgt3o.jpg

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f2.../997csgt3p.jpg

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f2.../997csgt3q.jpg

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f2.../997csgt3r.jpg

Total work time 8 hours, broken down into 1.5 hours for initial wash (including glue and tar removal step), 1 hour for extra wheel cleaning work, 1 hour for the HD-Cleanse step, 1 hour for the Vintage application/removal, 1.5 hours for cleaning/dressing the details (tips, wheels, boot, engine bay, shuts), 1.5 hours for the interior work and 0.5 hours for the final Field Glaze wipe down and checks.

:)

What did you use to "seal" the wheels?

Top job btw :)

what dressing do you use on the tyres? and does it come off on the mitt when you clean the wheels next time?

i use an old turtle wax tyre dressing gel and while it looks great when you put it on, it comes of and scums up the mitt i use for the wheels:(

any tips please?

typically cracking job on the porsche by the way, probably looks better in the light of the garage to be honest:)

Nice job as always guys! :thumb:

Heres the one i did friday!

http://i179.photobucket.com/albums/w...1/P1010010.jpg

http://i179.photobucket.com/albums/w...1/P1010006.jpg

http://i179.photobucket.com/albums/w...1/P1010018.jpg

gleaming-1, do you want to remove the number plate details from your pics?

Due to the Zymol contract, I can't name other products used on public threads, so pm on it's way. :)

As above, I can't name the product used on this thread, so pm on it's way. None of the dressings we sell behave like you describe, they all dry fully. :)

Nice work. Car looks great, as they always do. :thumb:

Shame about the Zymol contract, although the cars look great there a bit strict. Looks like you'll be sending quite a few pm's!