2006 Porsche Cayman S Restored with Swirl!

[OctaneGuy]

This is what I worked on today, a preowned Cayman S. Full write up coming later. Just a teaser. I started at 10AM and just finished at 9:30PM, and had both the owner and Jay helping. We spent nearly 4 hours to wash, clay, and tape before I got to polishing.

Started out as:





After about 4.5 hours of polishing with the rotary and PC. I only used Swirl and Epic on this one with the Prima Orange and Prima White pads.


****************Here's the full writeup. I preserved the original part of this post for historical continuity.

The owner of this great looking 2006 Porsche Cayman S contacted me to see what I could do about the swirls on this car. It was preowned and he's had it for about 3 months, but it never looked as good as he wanted it to. Let's take a closer look at what he's talking about.

Preinspection



I see some holograms on the hood


Some light scratches and smudges on the rear quarter panel


Ohhh and lots of swirls!


Look the swirls are everywhere!


Nice combination of swirls and holograms. Somebody has been working on this car!


Well so far, it's pretty convincing that the swirls are over the entire car.






Uh oh, I see a dent!


Yep it's a dent alright!


I also see light scratches around the door




Wax/Polish residue from somebody!


Factory wheels seemed to be in decent condition.




Yep, even from a distance those swirls are visible!


Oooh a Black Wow opportunity!






After washing the paint, the Cayman S was brought inside the shop to be prepped. Washing was with the two bucket method using Dirt Guards, Prima Mystique soap, lambswool wash mitt and a variety of brushes. I walked the owner through the proper techniques for washing the paint. Most importantly because we didn't have shade available to wash the car in was to keep the surfaces wet so that water spots couldn't form on the paint before we got it back into the shop for drying.

Drying was with two microfiber waffle weave towels. You can see the swirls pretty clearly.




This detail was more than a polish job. It was a teaching session which the owner fully embraced. He got to see his car transformed and actually take part in the process. Here we are claying the paint. I talked about the reasons why you clay and how it works. I then demonstrated it, and let him try. His first attempt was good, but not very effective. So I reclayed the section he did, showing that he needed to apply more pressure and vigor to the process. He was amazed at the result, and in just minutes, he was claying just as effectively! I also showed him the new high tech body sponge aka foam rubber clay bar, but we opted not to use it for this car.


Here I'm explaining how bonded contaminants form and how they are more likely to be found on the horizontal surfaces rather than the vertical. Simple explanations like that help in determining where to focus your efforts.



That's me wearing the Italian Job t-shirt talking and claying. The temperature inside the shop was probably hovering around 85 deg.






Even my employee Jay got into the act--he was taking the photos, so I gave him a break so he could have some fun too!


Ok after nearly 4 hours, with the paint fully prepped (washed, clayed, taped), I laid down my mf towel for the test spot. With the swirls pretty deep and my experience with Porsche paint, I decide to use Prima Swirl with a LC Orange Pad on my rotary.





The orange pad worked great.


I followed it with polishing using the UDM, LC white pad, and Swirl.


And check out these results! Looks superb.






After some polishing, I realize that the orange VC (variable contact) pad isn't the ideal pad for this paint. A flat pad conforms better to the curves on the Cayman, so I switched to my white LC pad that's flat. But there were several instances where the white pad just wasn't aggressive enough to get out some of the defects for the nearly flawless finish I seeked, so I still had to use the orange pad at times.






Porsches can all benefit from my Black Wow. Here I did the side by side test.


Incredible improvement in just seconds.




So with the sun going down and about 5 hours of polishing, I had the owner pull the car out into the sun to check the progress.


Looks fantastic as expected.




Ooops, see some slight surface defects below the sun spot. Will have to work those out. That was because I used the white pad. The orange pad knocked those out with ease.







Saw some slight marring still on the fender edge. Will do some more polishing here.


Yep, Black Wow looks great outside too. LOL.
















I had the owner face the car towards the sun to light both sides. Saw some light hologramming on the doors. That made sense since I hadn't yet PC'd them.








Otherwise, all in all, the finish looked pretty darn good.


Only 10 minutes later and the sun went down. I showed the owner how to use air to clean the crevices. At one point he noticed particles inside the rear brake light housing, and after looking at how it was attached, I suggested that maybe using air might blow out the particles, and sure enough it worked.













Ok, another 4 hours of polishing and now I'm done.


Unfortunately no more sunlight to really capture the beauty of the paint, so I had to make do with these.


This was a night shot as the owner was leaving. I could see a lot of reflections in the paint, so I put the camera on the ground and took this shot before he left.


This was a great day. All in all about 12 hours of work using a combination of the Makita rotary with Prima Swirl and the UDM with Prima Swirl and LSP was Prima Epic synthetic polymer wax. The owner got a crash course on how to wash, polish, and wax his car the "OctaneGuy way", and as he said, his car was now "Better Than New".