DEL VR6's Corrado (56k get broadband!)

[herisites 0]

Ok not posted up any details for a while mainly because i havent really done any :lol: But i want to post this up because i was really pleased with the results. Some of the guys from the summer scorcher wanted to see this car so here it is ... my mates Alfa 145 Twinspark Cloverleaf which started off looked after and then had a bit of a neglected life for a while resulting in a few dents and scratches (to be sorted out) and generally really dirty!

 

I actually washed the car a few weeks back for him as was doing mine anyway, he drove the car to portugal last year and i dont think it had been cleaned since :shock: so was pretty minging! After the wash i pointed out to him how bad his paint looked, there were swirls, holograms, lots of random scratches and just generally dull so as he is thinking of selling (to get a 350Z!) i offered to tidy it up in return for his help doing my heater matrix and random other jobs with my car.

 

So yesterday he came round around 12 ish and we got started straight away by pre-soaking it using a Karscher foam gun and some snow foam, left to dwell for about 5 mins whilst we cleaned the wheels up. Some before pics (the car actually looks pretty clean as i think he had cleaned it not long before):

 

 

Once the car had dwelled he rinsed it off:

 

 

We then washed the car using 2 buckets and some Autoglym shampoo. We rinsed it off but didnt dry it was i then clayed it using Sonus Mild clay, this was really needed as the car felt like sandpaper! I didnt get any clay pics as we wanted to get it done pretty quickly, plus my mate was lethal with a pressure washer and didnt want a wet camera :lol:

 

After the clay we quickly washed it again and dried it with sonus drying towels. Now the swirls and holograms were really noticeable:

 

 

We moved the car into the garage and got out the machine polisher and the menzerna polish. I asked my mate what he wanted, full defect removal or just bring the paint up a bit using a finishing polish which will remove the holograms but not all swirls. He decided he wasnt bothered about full defect removal he just wanted it to look a bit better so i just used Menzerna 106FF Final Finish on a Megs finishing pad at about 1200rpm paying a bit more attention to scratches. I used Scratch-X on an Ultimate German Applicator on the plastic bumper (still dont fancy using the machine on plastics!) but the scratch-x worked well really!

 

After i had machined the whole car i asked what kind of protection he wanted, sealant or natural wax, i explained the differences and he decided that he wanted the longest lasting option ... so out came the Collinite 476s which can last 6 months easily enough with regular careful washes!

 

Once waxed we polished the windows with AG Glass Polish, dressed the tyres and rubber trims with Megs Endurance Gel and i polished up the exhaust with Autosol and some wire wool!

 

After pics:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Total time spent was about 6 hours, we did piss about a bit though so wasnt 6 hours straight.

 

Now the reason i wanted to show this job is because i was amazed at the difference in paint between the alfa and audi/vw paint! On mine Final Finish polish on a finishing pad barely touches the paint, on this i actually removed the majority of swirls and random scratches let alone holograms! It was so soft and made the job SO much easier to work with! I was very pleased with the outcome and my mate ... well he treated me to a pub meal after :lol:

 

Cheers!

[herisites 0]

Right, thought i would share this one with you all. Done it last weekend but havent got round to posting it up yet.

 

The car in question is my mates new Nissan 350Z which is a lovely machine, just a bit slow :lol: He gave the car a wash when he first bought it and by doing so could tell there was no level of protection on it what so ever so he brought it round to me. He first opted for just some wax adding to it, but i said that if he's going to wax it then he may as well get the finish under the wax as good as possible so it stays looking good for the winter. He agreed that would the best way so opted for my 'Silver Detail' 8) which was basically as good as it gets without using the machine polisher (which wasn;t really needed as its only a few years old and been rarely used so wasn't very swirly plus the colour doesn't really show swirls up!).

 

If you are a 56k modem then go put the kettle on :lol:

 

First some before shots:

 

Car before.

How the wheels looked.

The front end was covered in flies.

 

So the first job was to soak the flies in Autoglym Active Insect Remover:

 

Then it was foamed using Snow Foam and Megs Hyper Wash in the Karcher foam gun:

 

The car was left to soak for approx 5 mins to let the foam dwell and lift the dirt off the paint. Then it was pressure rinsed off:

 

Then a quick spray of Hyper Wash was added to the car using a foam gun whilst i got the buckets filled. Then it was washed using 2 buckets, Megs Hyper Wash was the shampoo of choice which has a dilution rate of 400:1 so lasts a while :wink:, a natural lambs wool mitt was used for washing the cleaner larger panels and a microfibre mitt was used for the dirtier bumpers, lower half of doors, door shuts etc. Then it was pressure rinsed again but left wet ready for claying.

 

I then clayed the car using Sonus Green clay and the Sonus lubricant:

 

The whole car was clayed, and it didnt pick up too much dirt which was nice as made the job fairly easier and quicker. After claying the car i started to realise that even though the 350Z is a 2 seater sports coupe, its fapping massive! I was wondering how they can be SO heavy but they are such a chunky car its not surprising they weigh so much, hence why mine is faster with less power :D

 

Anyway, after claying the car was given a quick wash againt to remove the lubricant and then rinsed and dries using Sonus Der-Wunder drying towels.

 

Once the car was fully dried i then began the polishing, as the machine polisher wasn't really necessary the weapon of choice was of course the one and only Autoglym Super Resin Polish to fill in the little swirls that were there as well as mainly give a nice fresh finish. I gave it 2 coats of SRP and then went for 2 layers of Collinite 476s wax for durability ready for the winter months. I will give it another coat in a few weeks time and maybe a month or 2 after that again even though Collinite doesn't really need too many layers as its so durable the owner wants super durability!

 

Then it was just the odds and sods like polishing the glass inside and out, dressing what little plastic the car had on it outside as well as the plastic arch liners for extra clean-ness when the wheels are turned :wink:, dresses the tyres with some Megs Endurance Tyre Gel. Oh and another neat little trick i did was polish his headlights and tail lights with some Megs Plast-X concentrated mainly on the headlights as they didnt look anything special, after a good go with the plast-x they came up very well.

 

Here are the after shots:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This weekend i should be doing an EVO 8 which is getting the same treatment as the 350Z 8) and the weekend after that is the first forum member which is a full machine polish 8) both these depend on weather though really!

 

Thanks for looking!

[herisites 0]

As promised here is the Evo that i did 2 weeks ago, only just got round to bothering posting it up though lol.

 

Lovely car and pretty rapid as well, the owner loves it and doesnt use it to pose as he does numerous track days in it. He wanted a bit of a better finish from it and mainly some good protection for the winter so he asked me to sort it.

 

The Process

 

No machine work this time just a good 'hand job' :lol:

 

The car was soaked in Snow Foam and Hyper Wash through the Karcher lance and left to soak whilst i cleaned the wheels (which took bloody ages because of them being multi-spokes!).

 

Once the wheels were cleaned i pressure rinsed it off then soaked it again as he left it pretty dirty for me. Pressure rinsed then covered in Hyper Wash ready to start washing with 2 buckets and a lambs wool mitt.

 

Once washed i left it wet and then clayed it using a Sonus Green clay bar. This is how the clay looked after a few panels:

 

So yeah it needed a good claying! Being japanese the paint is very soft so dirt can dig into it quite easily.

 

Once the whole car was clayed it was washed again and then dried.

 

Once dry it then got 2 coats of Super Resin Polish followed by a layer of Extra Gloss Protection and finally a coat of Collinite #476s for ultimate protection!

 

The windows were polished, the tyres and arches were dressed and the exhaust tip was polished with some autosol and wire wool.

 

Finally some after pics:

 

 

Needless to say the owner was very happy with the results and was asking where to get some products from to keep on top of it. He may also get me a few other jobs from fellow track dayers.

 

Cheers.

[herisites 0]

Ok, time to post my first forum member job, the member being Alex303 and the car being his new Vortech charged Golf 4mo which is a lovely car and mechanically was superb but really needed some attention to the paint.

 

First of all i would like to say thanks to Alex for being a really nice bloke. He lives in kent, i live in Northamptonshire so i had to leave mine at 6:30am to get there for 9 ish. Once i got there he took me up to his flat and cooked me a big breakfast and made me a cup of cofee which was awesome. He also left his keys with me for the rest of the day as he had to work so i could make myself a few cups of tea which again is legendary :lol:

 

This is how the car looked before which doesnt look too bad:

 

But up close looked like this all over the car:

 

Now stupidly i forgot to take a hose with me and Alex didnt have one available so i was stuck washing it with just buckets which was dreadful and so unprofessional but i pereservered and i wasnt too bothered as the car was getting a full machine polish so didnt really matter if i swirled it much.

 

As the paint felt really rough due to sitting under trees and near a paint shop from what Alex told me, i sprayed some All Purpose Cleaner over the whole car and wheels first to lift the dirt. Then began washing it which did take a while but werent too bad and i just washed it pretty quickly as i had a lot to do.

 

Once washed i clayed it which it really really really needed and i even made a video to show how rough the paint was it was that bad! WATCH VIDEO

 

After it was clayed thoroughly and washed again i then started the machine polishing. Alex didnt want anything majorly impressive by machine which suited me due to not having the professional equipment but i did give it a much better finish ready for the protection.

 

Here is how the swirls looked on the test area of the bonnet (took me ages to get a good pics as it was light so my halogen light wouldnt show anything up and being silver was realy hard but i found them under direct sunlight!):

 

And after:

 

I didnt get the same finish on the rest of the car due to this being the test section and so got more hits with the machine and more polish/pad combos etc, but i settled with Menzerna Intensive Polish 3.02 on a megs polishing pad and the results were about 90% swirl removal, 100% could easily be achieved with this combo but i went a bit quicker and didnt achieve as much on purpose.

 

Bonnet after:

 

I continued with this method round the whole car. Then gave it a quick coat of Super Resin Polish to fill in the left over swirls. Then it was given a layer of Extra Gloss Protection and then finished with Collinite #476s to give great protection for the winter. The windows were polished with AG Glass Polish and then tyres and arches were dressed with Megs Endurance. I didnt do anything with the wheels, normally i would have given them a coat of EGP and Collinite for protection but Alex is getting them refurbed soon so i didnt bother.

 

Finally some after pics:

 

 

Alex came home as i was finishing it off and he seemed very pleased with the results and treated me to a bacon and egg sarnie and then i had a go in it which was great fun and made me want to get mine sorted even quicker!! I might even be going back at some point to do his boss's car which is a bit special :wink:

 

Thanks for looking, see my Detailing Offer thread if you are interested in a job on your car.

[gg7aph 0]

Hi Mate,

how much does it cost for all the stuff you use for a 'silver service'?

[herisites 0]

Hi Mate,

how much does it cost for all the stuff you use for a 'silver service'?

 

Hi mate, do you mean how much would it cost for me to do it or how much for the products to do it yourself?

 

To do it yourself you would need:

 

- All the washing stuff to start with that depends on preference but a good shampo (can range really, i use Meg Hyper Wash which is in a gallon tub and costs £22 but its dilution rate is 400:1 so lasts ages), 2 buckets (couple of quid from halfords), wash mitt (about £8) and drying towel (about £10-£15).

 

- Clay bar and lubricant, the Megs Quik Clay kit would do the trick (£12) but i personally use Sonus Mild clay and Sonud Glyde Lubricant (£13)

 

- Then once given another wuick wash and dried polish by hand with some Autoglym Super Resin polish which you can get from halfords etc (its been so long since i have bought some as i have a gallon but no more than a £10 for a normal bottle). I apply it with microfibre applicator pads (£4) but you could use a normal cloth really. But i would get some microfibre cloths to buff it off (about £11 for a pack of 3 cloths)

 

- Once polished (i would give it a couple of coats of polish) then seal it with some Autoglym Extra Gloss Protection which again can be bought from halfords etc (£10-11 iirc) and apply with a foam applicator (£1 each for cheap ones or £3 for megs pack of 2). This stuff is like baby oil so easy to use too much, just run a bit on the aplicator and apply to the paint, add more as and when needed, apply to whole car and leave for atleast half hour, an hour would be best. Then buff off with microfibre cloth.

 

- Depending on the level of protection you want you could then add some wax, i often use Collinite #476s for durability (£15 and lasts ages), apply with a foam applicator and you can either do panel at a time or whole car and then buff off etc collinite is pretty easy going. There are loads of waxes to choose from ranging from £10-£7000 yes £7000 for Zymol Royale but not necessary, most waxes around the £40 mark are good such as the new Dodo Juice which is excellent.

 

- Then its just the little bits like glass, i use Autoglym Glass Polish but you could just use normal window cleaner really. Plastics i use Megs Trim Detailer on (£6) and for tyres i use Megs Endurance Gel (£7) which i use on window rubbers and plastics also.

 

All the prices above are from http://www.cleanyourcar.co.uk which is where i get my stuff from and the service is fantastic and delivery is very quick!

[gg7aph 0]

Damn it! Why do you have to live so far away! Where you going to Uni... :lol:

Anyway, my car has had a little cosmetic work done to it throughout it's life. It's not a bad job, but the paint looks a little 'flat' and also has that 'orange peel' look to it.

Would a machine polish do away with this? afterwards I'd like it have the full on protection that you apply to all those cars to protect it from bird crap, tree sap and stone chips as much as possible.

If ever I'm in the area I'll have to book myslef in to see you and get 'the works'.... :lol:

[herisites 0]

Lol yeah Newcastle is a bit far really mate :lol:

 

If the paint looks a bit flat then a machine polish would do it good, but you can bring it up by hand with regular polishing by hand, just dont put any wax/sealant on it for a while and just keep giving it a polish every few days/week until you are happy with the finish and then give it some protection. Some polishes have a small level of protection to them anyway like Super Resin polish for example, so it would last long enough between polishes. But a machine polish ofcourse will do it a lot quicker and get better results.

[gg7aph 0]

herisites,

I found this guy local - can you cast your expert over his website and let me know what you think?

 

http://www.wonderdetail.co.uk/

[herisites 0]

herisites,

I found this guy local - can you cast your expert over his website and let me know what you think?

 

http://www.wonderdetail.co.uk/

 

Looks spot on to me mate, he would most probably be better than me!

[herisites 0]

Ok thought it was about time i got round to putting this detail up. I done it 2 weeks ago now!!

 

The car in question is a BMW Z4 3.0i in a nice dark blue colour (dont know the name!). The owner is Alex303's boss, he saw the job i done on Alex's golf and wanted me to sort his wife's z4 out as he said the paint was looking tired.

 

When i got there i was in awe at his driveway to see the Z4 sitting there looking nice enough but also on the drive was a Q7, BMW 7 series, a DB9 :shock: AND a brand new M6 :shock: :shock:

 

Automotive porn!

 

 

Anyway to the car in question, the Z4. When i looked at it i was wondering why the hell i had travelled over 100 miles for it as it was brand new, only done 4k miles! But i knew that even brand new it wouldnt be great due to the low level of care from dealership valeters so i carried out.

 

Soaked it in snow foam and hyper wash whilst i cleaned the wheels with acid free wheel cleaner:

 

After the wash i clayed it using Sonus Green clay, it didnt bring up too much which i was expecting really, but still needed doing:

 

Then i washed it again and dried it. Then moved it in to the nice big garage :D and thats when the real condition of the paint could be seen :shock:

 

Ouch! The car was covered in swirls and scratches. The roof was a hard top (not the coupe just a hard convertible roof) which had been sprayed and had some dodgy misty sections and bufer trails!

 

I started polishing a section of the bonnet to test how hard the paint was and surprisingly for a german car the paint was quite soft so only needed final finish on a polishing pad to get pretty good results (leaving some behind though):

This was the level of correction i got round most of the car, little worse in tricky tight sections mind due to the contours of the Z4 body but generally pretty good.

 

Done a rough 50/50 shot on the bonnet:

 

And a proper 50/50 shot on the tailgate/boot lid:

 

The boot lid ended up like this:

 

As for after shots, for some bloody reason all my shots turned out blurry :x apart from one which is the money shot:

 

After polishing i went round quickly with some SRP to fill in left over swirls etc. Then topped it up with a coat of Victoria Concours wax which i havent used for ages due to only using it on my corrado and i had forgot just how good it is, left a fantastic finish!

 

The owner needless to say was very very impressed, he would come out and watch me quite a bit during the day and ask for some techniques which i was happy to help him with. His wife was also very pleased, she said the blue looked a completely different colour and looked forward to go out posing in it :lol: I got a rather nice tip as well from him ... apparently you should never eat yellow snow :? ... nah not that kind of tip :lol:

 

I might be going back there soon to do his son's BMW 330 coupe, which will be fun as its BLACK and will be the biggest car i have done so far considering i have only done hatchbacks and my C!

 

Thanks for looking.

 

Rob.

[Phil K 0]

Amazing results Rob! I'm sure you have every right to be proud as it looks stunning now! I love how good black paint looks after a full detail so look forward to seeing your results on the 330 mate 8)

[Jim 2]

I might be going back there soon to do his son's BMW 330 coupe

 

Ugh.. how the other half live!

 

Looks like you did a sterling job on the Z4 mate. Hopefully he'll let you loose on the Aston and the M6 some day :)

[Phil K 0]

Dude - you just need a bird earning half your salary and you're there - just sell the C ;) :lol:

[Jim 2]

Dude - you just need a bird earning half your salary and you're there - just sell the C

 

My girlfriend earns about 30% more than I do!

[Phil K 0]

Fair play...

 

...so therefore, you'll be getting a full detail for christmas - sweet ;)

 

Send her onto me if she's got any more chrimbo shopping to do ;)

[Philuk 0]

looks mint mate!

 

need someone to come and do some paint correction on mine in the new year ( say it like its ages away lol). dunno who to ask yet, there is one person round here that does it all but im not sure if he knows what im looking for lol.

 

BUT

 

on a serious note,

 

Dont eat yellow snow, its not nice rofl

[alex303 0]

Hi Rob,

 

apoligies but only just caught up with this thread, gotta say you did a superb job with the 4Mo matey a few months ago, as you quite rightly said mechanically she's fine but the paintwork badly needed some tlc (downside of buying a car from someone in London), luckily we're moving at work over x-mas too so the fumes from the paintshop vent will be no more! I've stopped parking near the damn vent flu too now i've worked out what the hell it was checking out! :)

 

The aim was to get plenty of winter protection on the car which you did in spades :D mate! the sodding gritters around here go mental ever year and it was nice to know the paintwork was all protected ready for the worst winter could throw at her (just in time too with the weather we've had in the last 2 weeks)!

 

I've been making a bit more of an effort with here since then too, tried the website you suggested 'cleanyourcar' and Tim's a really nice helpfull bloke, bought some Snowfoam, Collinite 476's, various Mitts & drying towels and can honestly say bar one weekend its been cleaned every weekend since then. Gave it a top-up coat of Collinte 2 weeks ago (think you we're doing Jon's Beemer at the same time strangely enough)...bit to cold to be waxing outdoors really :shock: for me but i persevered on!

 

Anyway 2 months on the 4Mo still lookings great, several other friends have commented on what a good job you did so i'm very happy still, suspect i'll probably make a another booking late spring / early summer 08 for a 'silver service'!

 

take it easy mate

Alex

 

p.s. can't seem to see the pics in your post i quoted is this just my Net settings or are the pics / links not there now?

 

Ok, time to post my first forum member job, the member being Alex303 and the car being his new Vortech charged Golf 4mo which is a lovely car and mechanically was superb but really needed some attention to the paint.

[alex303 0]

p.s. Ah now that drive looks familiar Automotive Porn indeed.....told ya he was a complete car nut!

 

worth also mentioning that both Keith & his wife were very very pleased with what you did to the Z4 Rob, Keith told me on the following monday how you'd shown him in the garage the differences in the paintwork as you were working around it! Think they were quite shocked & impressed at the transformation!

 

Guess what he's invested in some of Tim's products too! :)

Alex.

 

Ok thought it was about time i got round to putting this detail up. I done it 2 weeks ago now!!

 

The car in question is a BMW Z4 3.0i in a nice dark blue colour (dont know the name!). The owner is Alex303's boss, he saw the job i done on Alex's golf and wanted me to sort his wife's z4 out as he said the paint was looking tired.

 

When i got there i was in awe at his driveway to see the Z4 sitting there looking nice enough but also on the drive was a Q7, BMW 7 series, a DB9 :shock: AND a brand new M6 :shock: :shock:

[herisites 0]

Hey Alex, thanks for the comments mate, glad you are still happy with the golf, i was chuffed at how well it came up! And well done for keeping on top of it, its always good to hear someone keeps looking after their car after i have spent a days work on it!

 

Yep Keith was rather pleased indeed with the Z4 as was his wife who said it looked a different shade of blue :D

 

I done John's 330 the other week as well, havent got round to putting the pics up yet but being black i think for now you could just imagine how good it looked after!! John was very pleased indeed so hopefully he takes a bit more care with it now as well, im sure he will as i made it pretty clear that it will easily go back to how it was if he didnt and being black it wouldnt be hard to mess up again!

 

I will get the pics up pretty soon of the beemer.

[herisites 0]

Ok, havent updated this for a while, mainly because i havent done any really :lol: but i did do the black BMW 330 coupe before xmas and never got round to putting pics up so thought i would to see if it would swing people into getting me to do their cars pretty soon ish as need the cash :roll: :lol:

 

So the car in question was a BLACK BMW 330 coupe which was rather nice! The owner is the son of the guy who's Z4 i done and who owns the awesome driveway with an M6 and DB9 :shock:

 

This is how the car looked when i first rolled it out the garage (the pictures have lost a fair bit of quality due to rezising them unfortunately :( ):

 

 

The car got the exact same treatment as the Z4 which is my 'Gold' Service which is basically as good as it gets. I got their at around 9:30 in the morning and the car was in the garage waiting for me, i rolled it out, washed it using the usuals Snow Foam through the foam lance and left to dwell whilst wheels were cleaned with acid-free wheel cleaner, then it was pressure rinsed and then washed with Megs Hyper Wash using 2 buckets and lambs wool mitt. Then the car was left wet and i clayed it using Sonus Green clay which came up like this:

 

 

Quite dirty! After it was clayed it was washed again and dried and at this point was already looking good:

 

 

But i knew it was going to look bad once i rolled it in the garage and put the halogen on it which i was right about, here are some before shots:

 

 

Pretty bad! (again sorry for the quality of the pics!)

 

So i set to it with the machine and tested on the bonnet, again being BMW the paint was nice and soft so only a finishing polishing was used on a polishing pad which achieved about 90% swirl removal (all i usually go for due to now having a paint measuring guage) and here are some after shots:

 

 

Here is a 50/50 shot on the tailgate:

 

 

The whole car was polished minus the bumpers as would rather not use the rotary on plastic parts so i just polished them with scratch-x and then Super Resin to hide most swirls and to be that did a great job. After polishing i gave it all a quick polish by hand with Super Resin to fill any left over swirls and then it was given 2 coats of Victoria Concours wax (spit shined). Here are after shots (didnt get very good ones unfortunately as it was pitch black so just garage shots):

 

 

Total time was around 8-9 hours being a fairly large car compared to the Z4 for example. The owner was very pleased with the results and has kept my number so hopefully i will be back at some point for the DB9 8) or just some mates cars or something :lol:

 

Thanks for looking :)

[mic_VR 3]

Can you do mine Rob? Mates rates???!!!! :D Looks awesome. :notworthy:

[alex303 0]

Looks very nice indeed Rob!

 

another cracking job :)

[CorradoVR6-Turbo 0]

he sure does like his cider :lol:

[herisites 0]

Can you do mine Rob? Mates rates???!!!! :D Looks awesome. :notworthy:

 

Just name a time and place mate and im happy to do yours, need the money! :lol: