Cambridge Autogleam vs Ferrari 599 GTO pg38

[Craig 0]

always enjoy reading these write ups, awesome work. those reflection shots are amazing! great work!

[Phil K 0]

Stunning work as normal Nath! My company install those taps with our integrated technology systems and we have one in the showroom kitchen too...

 

You really should pop in at some point for that chat I suggested ;)

[jedi-knight83 0]

oh cool

 

its a kohler tap isnt it?? whats the RRP?

[jedi-knight83 0]

Fridays job was a lovely 993 RS in midnight blue.

 

Arrived just after 9 and started on the wheels.

 

Autoglym (AG for short) acid free cleaner with the swissvax wheel brush then pressure rinsed and repeated for stubborn marks

 

Then the car was foamed with AG PM3 (still the best cleaner ive used)

 

Then for those who are not familiar with the pre-wash tachnique.. foam allowed to dwell for a few minutes before being pressure rinsed off. The aim is not just to remove the foam but really remove as much dirt as possible before touching the car with shampoo so go round the car slowly and deliberately with the pressure washer from the bottom up getting all the drit and grime off. This process more than any other is what will save the car from swirls which are inflicted from poor washing of dirty cars

 

Car was then shampoo'd with AG shampoo and conditioner, Clayed with Sonus Green, Rinsed, Dried and put inside.

 

And now for a few swirl marks... Not showing up on the camera as well as in real life and even in ambient light you could easily see the marks in the panels!

 

 

Polishing was done with Megs polishing pads and ip3.02 on some panels and FA106 on others. Strangely for Porsche paint IP3.02 wouldnt give a hologram free finish.. softer paint than usual i guess??? So FA106 was used after the IP and on most panels FA106 did the trick on its own.

 

 

Before and after with the camera tripod and lights unmoved.

 

Before

 

After

 

After in the sun

 

Polishing work was finished about 6pm, car was then rinsed down to remove dust.

 

Now for the Dodo Juice Pre Wax Cleaner. For those who dont know this is a brand new product which has been knocking around for testing for a few weeks and should be in the shops within a month.

 

I have tested these on a few panels at home and have been very impressed with the results.... so much so i thought it was time for its first use on a whole car.

 

10p sized amount of product on a round foam pad and rubbed over the paint in straight lines passing each secton 3 times.

 

"Oh no i've just got it all over the rubber... thats going to be a pain to get off... oh no ... wait it rubs off easy and.. .0oh flipping heck... that rubber looks good"

 

Yes Dodo Juice Pre Wax Cleaner is pretty amazing on both smooth and textured rubbers and plastics leaving them lovely and glossy.

 

The residue on the paint cleaned off easily MUCH easier than HD Cleanse and left the surface glossy and very wet looking but literally squeeky clean. HDC doesnt give that squeek (possibly the fillers the HDC lays down giving a very temporary protection??)

 

Yes Dodo Juice Pre Wax cleaner breaks all the rules and is easy to use, leaves a great clean finish, safe on rubbers and is going to be very cost effective :doublesho Other brands better either pull their finger out and produce something better to rival this new cleaner or they may be in trouble

 

Anyway.. back to business.. Car all cleansed it was time for the 61% Vintage wax. Applied wax to roof, rear, rear wings with a foam pad and then buffed. Then did the doors, front wings and bonnet and buffed. I found this better personally than doing the whole car before buffing.

 

Windows cleaned, Arches dressed and tyres dressed with non slip, non greasy dressing, final wipe of the paint and finished at 9.51pm

 

Now throughout the day both myself and the owner were pretty impressed with how wet and glossy the paint was looking and at how the colour was changing with light from different angles... but when it came time to photograph the car i was tired and had the camera on the wrong settings so they pics look a bit dead and boring (compared to in the flesh)

 

 

Thanks for looking and reading

 

Nathan

[jedi-knight83 0]

Good evening

 

Been another long week with some lovely cars.

 

Mercedes CLK230 deswirl

Porsche Carrera GT topup

BMW E28 M5 valet

BMW E30 M3 valet

Alpina B5 valet

VW Passat W8 estate deswirl

Aston Martin DBR2 recreation protection

Aston Martin DB9 valet

Range Rover Supercharged valet

Rover 75 estate valet

Nissan Primastar SE valet

 

Ok so some lovely cars and others just cars.. ;)

 

Monday morning was wet.. something that is become all too familiar in the UK! :(

 

The CLK was washed down in the drizzle with PM3 via the foam lance, Shampoo'd, clayed, taped and PTG checked.

 

Being a lighter colour and being outside (although under a car port) it was hard to capture the swirls.

 

 

After menz 106ff on a polishing pad at up to 1800rpm

 

this combo worked well on the whole car with a couple of hits needed on some areas.

 

Paint was cleansed with dodo juice PWC and then waxed with 61% vintage wax.

 

Interior was vacuumed and wiped down. Leather cleaned and conditioned with gliptone.

 

 

 

 

 

Tuesday was the cars i look after regularly. CGT, M5, M3 and B5 needed cleaning and a wax toptup for the CGT which was sporting its lovely new anthracite wheels.

 

 

Wednesday was back to a customers ive been to before and i knew i had the luxury of working in a nice warm, well lit garage with a good stereo system :)

 

Sadly before i was able to get the car in the garage i had to wash it outside and my goodness how it rained!! i got soaked to the bone and ended up having to detail for a while in the locked garage with my trouser on a radiator!

 

Before

 

Anyway.. Car was pre foamed with Megs Hyperwash, Shampoo'd and then clayed with sonus green. As the daily hack it was pretty filthy as shown by how much came off on the clay after a pretty thorough pre wash

 

 

Then taped up and PTG checked ready for polishing.

 

The swirls..

 

 

Polished with Menx IP 3.02 on a megs polishing pad at up to 1800rpm. The menz behaved the best i have seen it in a long time!

 

The pillars were pretty bad so these were also taped up and polished with the polish residue that was left on the pad after doing a major panel.

 

Before > taped > during > after

 

 

After polishing

 

Then on with the dodo juice pre wax cleaner applied to one half of the car at a time and then on with the 61% vintage wax by pad and applied to 50% of the car then buffed and then the other 50%.

 

Throughout the detail i was impressed by the paint colour. Kind of purple / blue / green very similar to the 993 RS i did last week.

 

Anyway the finished shots.. at about 10:30pm!!

 

 

And worth a pic.. i didnt wash this on the day.. but this is the TT i did just over a month ago and its still beading like new.. which is nice

 

Friday i had been looking forward to all week. Aston Martin DBR2. Ok so this is actually a recreation. The originals go for close to £1m.

 

Some history

 

Some years after the two original Aston Martin DBR2 works sports-racers had retired from active competition and begun to appear occasionally on the historic racing scene, an enthusiast commissioned a well respected racing car designer to recreate one of these fabulous cars, while incorporating a number of improvements. A multi-tubular spaceframe chassis was constructed, duplicating the original track and wheelbase dimensions but providing much greater torsional rigidity than the DBR2’s old Lagonda V12 chassis. This was panelled around the cockpit in aluminium.

 

Measurements and templates were made from drawings of the original aluminium DBR2 body and used to construct moulds and subsequently a strong, rigid glassfibre body identical in form to the original. While the recreation’s rear suspension remains true to the original DBR2, consisting of a De Dion axle located by trailing arms and Watts linkage, a simpler and more effective arrangement of unequal length wishbones and an anti-roll bar was installed at the front. The suspension is fully Rose jointed and damped by AVO adjustable shock absorbers front and rear. Disc brakes are fitted all round (ventilated at the front) with dual circuit operation, rear parking brake, copper pipes and Aerquip braided hoses throughout. The wheels are 16 in wire-spoked knock-ons shod with recently fitted road legal tyres. A Cosworth limited-slip differential transmits power via up-rated driveshafts. Steering is by rack and pinion, while other noteworthy features include fully fused 12-volt alternator electrics, battery cut-off switch, Lexan windscreen and side screens, 13-gallon aluminium fuel tank and full tonneau cover in double duck fabric.

 

The engine is an ex-DBS Vantage-specification (325bhp) 4.0-litre unit breathing via triple Weber 45DCOE carburettors and fitted with a fabricated tubular exhaust system. The cylinder head, which bears markings indicating that it may have been fitted to an original DBR2 in the past, has been gas flowed and converted to accept unleaded fuel, while the distributor is driven directly off the end of the camshaft, as on the DBR2, and not via worm gears. Drive is transmitted via a 10 in Borg & Beck clutch to the ZF five-speed gearbox and thence by means of a short prop shaft to the differential. Claimed weight is an impressive 935kgs (2,057lbs) compared to a DBS’s 1,588kgs (3,494lbs) so performance should be nothing less than electrifying.

 

The interior boasts two specially made bucket seats, trimmed in authentic check material sourced from the AML factory, while four-point safety harnesses restrain both driver and passenger, for whose comfort a leg warmer/heater is installed. The car came equipped with a quick release Nardi wood rim steering wheel and also the correct Aston-pattern wood-rim steering wheel, the black crackle-finish dashboard boasts a more comprehensive set of instruments than the original. To enhance the car’s practicality, two small soft pockets have been incorporated in the doors, while the boot lid lifts off to enable access to the modestly sized boot compartment.

 

My job (sadly) was to prep it for sale in an auction down at goodwood as the owner didnt have enough time or garage space to enjoy it anymore.

 

I didnt have the luxury of foaming the car down on this occasion as the interior was far from water tight... so instead i mixed up a hyper wash solution in a bottle with a foam hand trigger and applied to the body of the car in this way. Then rinsed down with the hose (which had quite a bit of pressure). Shampoo'd, clayed.

 

After practicing with dodo juice on the rotary some more i was more confident with what it could acheive.. and as the owner had said not to worry about a fully correction i thought dodo juice PWC would be a great one hit alternative while also getting the paint ready for the wax.

 

Before dodo juice PWC

 

After PWC (if you flick between the pics you will see the difference. Its not huge in the pics but i was very impressed.

 

Engine bay was wiped down.

 

61% vintage wax was applied to the whole car via foam pad then buffed from the whole car and wiped down an hour later witha couple of sprays of last touch.

 

Interior vacuumed and wiped out

 

 

Then i also cleaned the owners DB9, Rangie, Rover work horse and gave my own van a once over.

 

 

Thanks for looking. Have actually booked a week off next week but no doubt i'll end up cleaning something..

 

__________________

[ardandy 0]

What clay's that?

[jedi-knight83 0]

its the sonus ultra fine green clay

[Jim 2]

Great updates there Nath.. what a privilege to have cleaned down that Aston! What a beautiful machine!

[Dirtysouth 0]

Flawless!! :shock:

[jedi-knight83 0]

So I was supposed to be having a week off. But i got a call about this car which interested me and so i ended up at 7am in central london.

 

This is a 1961 Maserati GT. 3.5 straight 6 engine. It was pitched against the Aston DB4 at the time.

 

Only about 200 of these were ever made and this is one of only 2 in the UK that are in this kind of restored condition.

 

There are not many photos in this detail. As time went along and i realised how much work was going to be needed i just didnt stop to eat let alone take pics. Sorry

 

Started off in the small underground wash bay by foaming the car with megs hyper wash, then cleaning the wheels, then shampooing. Car was then clayed and rinsed and moved to the owners parking space to dry and get ready for the polishing.

 

The owner had said that there was 'alot of paint' on the car.. but quite how much paint i wasnt expecting. PTG read up to 1200 on some panels and didnt drop below 400. It turns out that the roof / boot and bonnet are original single stage paint and the sides have been resprayed and lacquered.

 

Paint correction proved extremely time consuming and difficult. I started on the megs polishing pad with 106fa which only knocked out about 60% of the marks. ip3.02 got 95% in one hit but left horrible buffer trails no matter how finely i tried to finish it down.

 

In the end the whole car was machine with 3.02 on the polishing pad and then i went round again with 106ff on a finishing pad.

 

This gave 100% on the original areas and about 95-98% on the resprayed areas which i think was about as good as it was going to get after testing with 3 hits of 3.02 on one of the lacquered areas and it still not improving! :wall: Possible defects under clear???? not sure.. but i was confident this was as good as the car was going to look in the time allowed.

 

Once all the polishing work was complete the car was pressure rinsed to get any redidue out of gaps etc. Car was dried and treated with Dodo Juice PWC followed by the 61% Vintage wax. windows cleaned, dressing applied, final wipe and done. 13.5hrs of solid back busting work.

 

The owner who had been at work all day returned and was almost speachless and over the moon with the transformation (which cheered me up after the long day and my slight frustration at not getting some of the lacquered areas perfect)

 

Unfortunately at 8:45 on a late Aug eve in london its pretty dark so the plans for a photo shoot outside were scrapped..

 

Enjoy what pics i do have though.

 

Thanks

 

Nathan

 

[Jon_vr6 1]

I envy your job so much would love to just quit my day job and do something i really enjoy! Amazing jobs every car on this thread looks brand new after you've finished with it! 8)

[Jon_vr6 1]

Can you reccommend me a foam lance dont want to spend a lot ??

 

cheers!

[herisites 0]

Can you reccommend me a foam lance dont want to spend a lot ??

 

cheers!

 

Do you have a pressure washer? If you are just using a hose then there is the Gilmour Foamaster HERE which plugs on to the end of your hose, then get some Super Snow Foam HERE which foams up ALOT or you can just use normal shampoo in there but it wont foam as much as the snow foam will. Or if you want cheapy cheap then there is the Superspray HERE which again plugs on to the hose and if used with snow foam gives a pretty good amount of foam but not as much as the GIlmour.

 

To get foam as good as Nathan does then you need a Karcher pressure washer and then either Karchers own foam lance or what Nathan uses (im guessing) is an Autobrite foam lance which can be bought from http://www.autobritedirect.co.uk

[Jon_vr6 1]

Cheers fella ^^^^ 8)

[AmbisoniK 0]

Gotta admire your dedication & obvious enthusiasm/love of your work ! (& it is bloody hard work !)

 

i'm going to try the swirl removal techniques you've outlined in this thread & see how it pans out..may even save me a full respray !..top thread man :thumb right:

[jedi-knight83 0]

Been a little while since posting a write up. Been busy with topups so didnt bother posting the same cars again.. also forgot my camera a couple of times! :mad:

 

Anyway this brand new A4 cab was sitting in the collection bay looking filthy! In the sun it was also looking a little scratched and a few dodgy buffer trails in places which the sales guy was shown and then the aftersales manager.

 

Car was foamed twice with Megs hyperwash. Shampoo'd, Tar and Glue remover sprayed and wiped, Foamed again and dried. Fabric hood protected.

 

Inside the areas that needing polishing were polished.

 

Paint cleansed with HD cleanse (temp ran out of my prefered pre wax cleaner which is Dodo Juice PWC.. but the end result is pretty much the same.. just the Dodo Juice is better to use i feel)

 

Waxed with 61% Vintage wax.

 

Leather fed, glass cleaned, dressings applied.

 

Slightly nervey when ALL the sales staff came in to see what i had been doing for 6hrs but all of them were very voacl about how they could see the benefit and how they wouldnt actually get the inhouse cleaners to do their cars.

 

Customer booked ni for bi-monthly top ups.

 

Thanks for looking..

 

[jedi-knight83 0]

I love these cars and this is actually the first one i've done. SO after a good few mins just standing and looking and seeing what the seats felt like to sit in :thumb: it was on with the job..

 

Wheels cleaned with AG acid free cleaner

Foamed with Megs hyperwash

Shampoo'd

Clayed with sonus green

Rinsed and dried

 

Interior vac'd / wiped.

Leather cleaned with Gliptone cleaner gel and fed with Liquid Leather (wiped with damp cloth after 4 hrs of detailing)

 

Couple of areas machine polished (cat scratches on roof and sratch on NSF arch)

 

Paint cleansed with Dodo Juice PWC

Waxed with 61% Vintage wax.

 

 

lovely car to be in. after a quick drive i now need one of these in my life!!

 

thanks for looking

[jedi-knight83 0]

Day started nice and early to get across to where the customer lives.

 

Once there it was straight on with the job

 

Wheels cleaned with Swissvax wheels cleaner concentrate mixed 1:1

Foamed with Megs hyperwash

 

 

Shampoo'd

Clayed with Sonus Green

Rinsed and Dryed

 

Then into the garage.. well half in.. car was too long!

 

Paint check showed 150-200 for the whole car. The swirls were quite light (luckily.. dont fancy doing one of these with bad swirls in 1 day!)

 

Menz 106FA on a megs polishing pad (thanks Tim @ Cleanyourcar for sending them out so promptly!)

 

Swirls didnt show up all that well on the camera but it 100% got rid of them. Only a couple of RDS were left which i later used some ip3.02 to reduce them more.

 

Boot lid in direct sun after polishing

 

Before

 

After

 

As you can imagine.. even with the relatively easy correction.. the polishing took ages! Once completed the car was taken outside and rinsed down to get rid of any dust from the crack and shuts.

 

Paint then cleansed with Dodo Juice PWC and waxed with 61% Vintage wax

 

Interior cleaned / wiped and leather conditioned.

 

Final shots in fairly un inspiring low light.. but it did look lovely and glossy in the flesh!

 

[Jim 2]

The flying spur looks superb mate.

 

Thinking of buying some Dodo Juice products myself when funds permit.. the banana wax is the one for red cars apparently but didn't realise they did pre-wax cleaners too. Would you polish the car with SRP first, then use the pre-wax cleanser THEN the dodojuice wax?

[herisites 0]

The flying spur looks superb mate.

 

Thinking of buying some Dodo Juice products myself when funds permit.. the banana wax is the one for red cars apparently but didn't realise they did pre-wax cleaners too. Would you polish the car with SRP first, then use the pre-wax cleanser THEN the dodojuice wax?

 

Jim im pretty sure the pre-wax cleanser will remove the SRP. A lot of pre-wax cleansers are filler heavy like SRP so they will fill swirls as they prepare the surface for the wax.

 

That RS4 is stunning! I would love to own one of those one day!!

 

Great work as always Nathan :D

[jedi-knight83 0]

Hi Folks.

 

This 1985 Aston Martin V8 Vantage has been booked in for ages now.

 

7am i left the house.

 

My normal start to the day of washing the car didnt really happen as when i got there it looked a little like this..

 

 

perfect you might say!? well nearly.. it was technically clean as the owner never puts it away dirty. So instead of washing i just wiped off any dust using a big clean MF and lots of last touch detailing spray.

 

Car was they clayed with sonus green which didnt really show much dirt atall.

 

Then the leather was cleaned with gliptone leather cleaner gel and conditioned with liquid leather and left for the day to soak in.

 

Then time to check the 25 year old paint..

 

 

Nice... shows again appearances can be deceptive and the whole reason the owner had called me was because this car only comes out when its sunny.. and thats when it looks its worst

 

Then the 'fun' started. menz 106ff didnt touch the marks. ip3.02 left horrible buffer trails. menz 106ff on a finishing pad wasnt enough to fully get out those buffer trails... so in the end. it was ip3.02 with a polishing pad.. then 106ff with a polishing pad.

 

Also the paint was different all round the car with the back half seeming slightly softer (yet still no easier to correct)

 

The going was extremely slow but it was coming up nicely..

 

Before

 

After

 

Because of the time i didnt mess about with too many before and afters but you get the idea.

 

Next thing i notice are wet sanding marks very low down on the panels (respray or previous correction??) And i can see why someone without as much dedication might have left these marks!!

 

 

The owner was made aware of everything i found though and is writting to the company he bought the car from to complain.

 

by now i was really starting to hate this detail! Some jobs i enjoy.. but i wasnt having fun today atall... and then to top it all... my spot light breaks. i tried 3 bulbs in it but nothing.. so down to one light with light outside fading fast.

 

I eventually completed the correction work.

 

Then on with the paint cleanse which a move back to the HD Cleanse today.

 

Paint was finished off with 61% Vintage wax.

 

Then i found my camera batteries were low!! great.. and the spares were dead!! great again.. so with only 1 light and low bateries i dashed round and got what i could.

 

(the bonnet light shot wouldnt come out clean.. but i can hand on heart say there were no smears.. lens was just making it flare slightly)

 

 

So job done.. drive home... walk in the door at......

 

1:15am

 

Didnt enjoy doing this at the time as it was a pig... but it came up well and looking back im pleased i got to work on a great car.

 

the owner emailed me today and is over the moon with the results. The car came 3rd in a concours event at the weekend only 4 points behind the winner due to the engine bay (which i didnt touch)

 

Thanks for looking

 

Nathan

[jedi-knight83 0]

This car was done over a week ago but i had forgotten my camera on the day. It has however sat under a car cover since i detailed it and as i was back doing another car for this client today i took the time to give it a carefull wipe down and take some pics of the completed car.

 

It was also my first go at using my new camera and it wasnt until half way through the day i realised i had the white balance set wrong! Whoops.. im also waiting for my new lens to come through so had to borrow a friends 18-55 which isnt the sharpest or fastest in the world.

 

Camera for those into that kind of thing is a Nikon D200 body with Nikon 18-55 lens.. although the lense i have on order to taking pics of my work is a tamron 17-50 with a f2.8 through the range

 

 

The car had recently undergone a full bare metal respray so was already pretty shiny but had buffer trails and light marring on all panels.

 

Polished using menz 106fa on a finishing pad

Cleansed with Dodo Juice PWC

Waxed with 61% Vintage wax.

 

Thanks for looking.

[jedi-knight83 0]

Last one for now.. and again.. on the same day i was getting use to the camera so pics were taken on a wrong setting for the best part of the day!

 

56 plate 335d is my clients latest daily driver and he wanted the full treatment to bring it up to his usual standard.

 

Before..

 

 

Wheels cleaned with AG acid free

Foamed with Megs Hyper wash

Shampoo'd

Clayed with sonus green

Polshed with menz ip3.02 on a polishing pad.

 

Most areas had minor swirls... apart from a rear quarter which was crazy! swirls gallor. Looks like it was buffed prior to collection.

 

Before

 

 

After

 

 

Paint was cleansed with HD Cleanse and then waxed with 61% vintage wax.

 

Leather was cleaned using bum

[jedi-knight83 0]

Wow its been a while... and I'm STILL getting links to my site from this :)

 

Slight update to the website since last posting here... now almost 200 cars in our portfolio. click the image to take a look.

 

 

Also started doing a few youtube videos of the work.

 

Might be worth a look too if your interested in detailing or just like shiny cars in general :)

 

[video=youtube;4-562LuLbhk&hd=1]

Can be seen in HD if you change to 720p

 

All over and as well so follow us there if you like..

 

Hope everyone here is good... still miss my old VR6 :(

[Pete 0]

Wow! Can you turn that trick with a red VR with pink wing mirrors etc lol?