Friday night we gave our car a wash in preparation for spending Saturday with Richard at ShowCarDetailing and getting a full detail. The Mini is our daily driver, not to mention only car - so we both took the 82 mile trip down there to watch and help.

I can't thank Richard enough for patiently sharing his knowledge and expertise with us. It's really quite amazing to see what goes into a good detailing session.

We used Dawn for the double washdown, Swirl on the rotary, followed by more swirl on a PC and Amigo with PC's followed by Epic and Clarity on the glass. And of course BlackWow on the plastic trim

Here are some photos, these and others are on my Flickr Pages

Richard - if you have any photos you want to add to this thread, please do. BTW I've got a couple of nice portraits of you from my 50mm lens. Shall I post them up here, or email them to you?


Washdown


Clay Bar


Taping Off


Pre Test


Testing


Swirl applied with both Rotary and then a PC


Tag Team Polishing


Richard teaches my other half


Finished just before we lost the day light

 

looks great! i want to get those OG glasses.


those crown wheels look good on R53's too.

 

Yeah, cool specs, Richard, when did ya get those?? Snazzy!

I really need to de-swirl. I mean REALLY.

Looks great!

 

Nothing like getting a lesson from the best. Turned out really good.

 

car looks great, very very nice job.

 

Great job!

Richard is not only a great guy , but a terrific teacher as well!

 

Awesome pix and writeup!!! And thank you for the kind words everybody!! Nick and Christel ---you guys were great! Nick worked almost as hard as I did on the MINI!! lol.

Just a quick note this picture is of the Nomad 18volt self contained pressure washer. There's more info in the Car Care Products section here
https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...55#post2141255



Claybarring






Both showed intense concentration while taping!




Another view of my test spot--hard to see it here--but it's the squared off non hazy portion that I polished--the light reflection borders the polished and unpolished area. There were quite a few swirls in the paint though the above surface bonded contaminants was quite significant as well.

 

Nice Richard Good to see the owners working on the car too

Mark

 

it's a pretty impressive transformation. what camera did you use OG? the resolution doesn't look as crisp as usual.

 

Depends who's shots you're asking about, lol. But the ones in my post are from the D70s. Most of it was shot under poor lighting so it's a lot grainier than usual.

Haha thanks.

I got them a few months ago. After one particularly long Saturday clinic, I had an eye infection that lasted about a month--so I ended up getting new glasses--I've been wearing contacts since I was in high school, and the glasses I had have always been spare/back glasses that I never liked much. So I finally got a pair that I like for full time use--just too bad that my eyes are so bad that you can see how much correction there is when you look at me straight on, lol.

 

And mine are a Canon 350d or RebelXT as I think you call it over here, but not tweaked at all.

 

OG- aha, those are real glasses, huh? i too have very bad eye sight.
i should get non-prescription glasses just for styling.

 

Oh and as you didn't take the option to protect your modesty - here's the slightly more sensible of the portraits...

 

yah, OG looks better in the zoomed out picts.

 

Even though the lack of daylight doesn't show off the paint as well as if it were mid-day, another great job by OG !

And hey, I don't know about the glasses but I need to get one of those head light thingies for working in my garage. Or if I ever decide to go into mining.

 

Haha, do you wear "fake" glasses with contacts?? lol. Actually, with contacts I can wear polarized sunglasses which allows me to see swirls on even silver cars in direct sunlight, lol. Surgery is in my future--but my doctor has been slow to recommend it to me due to the severity of nearsightedness.
Hahah OMG. Yeah I forgot to reply---send them to me privately! LOL. Delete Delete! Naw jk. Actually the picture doesn't look that bad. I don't remember what I was looking at though. Great pic (photographer)--thanks!

Richard

 

Nick, you should post the Before picture of the mirror cap scrape from your Flickr album.

Here's the link to it
http://www.flickr.com/photos/doesnot...7604416563325/


Richard

 

that was your "look" staring a a nice foot long sub?

 

Oh yes, I forgot about that, and I don't have an after shot yet, but here's the mirror scuff I picked up at AMVIV, which neither of us could figure out if it was paint transfer, or removal.



After copious amounts of claying and a little heavy breathing from OG, plus a sigh of relief from me, it was indeed some sort of transfer. Looks great again now.