(Condensed Version--see full writeup with more pictures
HERE)
Today's detail is a great looking black Audi S4. From afar it looks pretty good, but look up close and you start to see the issues.
Because this detail ends after the sun is going down, the final pictures are taken during the golden hour and thus aren't in direct sunlight, however, to allay any fears that may be all just smoke and mirrors and trick photography, take a look at my test spot showing the significant improvement. My goals were to make the paint as flawless as possible regardless of whether being viewed under bright sunlight, under a streetlamp at night, or in the shade during the day, remove or minimize existing defects, and remove the haze off the finish to be crystal clear.
During the detail, the customer commented how great the finish looked in the shade, but horrible under the bright sunlight. I replied that you can't improve what you can't see. When I'm trying to do my absolute best on dark paints, I set up my custom lighting rig in a dark environment so that I can see the true condition of the paint as I work. This allows me to see the actual condition of the paint and achieve a nearly flawless finish under extremely critical lighting. And further it enables me to remove paint only in the areas that need correction.
The trunk lid has some bird poo damage and scratches.
You can see a very light amount of swirling.
But the paint has a haze over it. It doesn't look good at all!
I started by washing the paint using Prima Mystique and the two bucket method. I used Meguiar's Wheel Brightener on the wheels. I dried the car using mf waffle weave towels, and used air to blow water from all the crevices. Then I clayed the paint using Meguiar's Professional Mild Blue clay and Last Touch for lube. Then I used blue tape to tape up all the cracks and crevices and used the drying towels to cover the vents at the base of the windshield, the wipers and windshield.
The Hyperblue MINI on the right was another car I was working on.
The existing paint condition on the left shows the swirls. I initially thought I was going to just use the UDM for paint correction, but the test spot showed I needed a bit more power for the time that I had--so I ended up using my Makita RB with the LC CCS Orange Pad which I wasn't all that fond of. The pad worked fine, but eventually it gets saturated and I couldn't clean the pad with traditional means like holding a towel against the pad or using a brush. Guess washing it is the only way. I eventually ended up using the Orange VC pads and that worked fine. I used this pad with Prima Cut and Swirl. Then I polished using a special version of Prima Finish with a white pad, then Meguiar's M82 with a W9006 finishing pad on the rotary (debated between using Amigo and M82--and M82 seemed to give better results in this case), then Prima Swirl with the PC on the White Pad, then Prima Epic for LSP.
Process:
RB (Rotary Buffer) with Prima Cut and Swirl on LC Orange Pad
RB with Prima Finish (special) on LC White Pad
RB with Meguiar's M82 on Meguiar's W9006 Pad
UDM with Prima Swirl on LC White Pad
UDM with Prima Epic with LC Black Pad--two coats.
This shot shows the panel I'm working on from a bit further away--I use a two light system consisting of 50 watt halogens.
And finally the shots after about 9 hours of polishing. Glass was cleaned with Prima Clarity, chrome was cleaned up with Slick. Logos cleaned up with cotton swabs and Slick. Wheels were cleaned with Slick. Tires were dressed with Endurance High Gloss. Wheel wells were dressed with Hyperdressing.
The owner left extremely pleased with his "new finish". While these "golden hour" pictures show only the car in it's best light, I took great pains to ensure that every panel on the car looked as good as the test spot by going over every inch with my lights. Another tip is to change your viewing angle. Get on the ground and check over the car to change your vantage point. And once the car is outside in different lighting, you will surely see more areas that need wipe down that you didn't see before.
