Cleaning the Clio

[PaulVW]

A colleague of mine recently bought this nice Clio Sport and was tailgated soon after the car was transferred to his name! (I swear I see more bumper bashings here in Cape Town than in JHB - It must be the relaxed atmosphere here or something. I also drove into a Fiesta the other day – my first non racing accident since I got my license in 1992!

Anyway, I inspected the damage at work one day and told him that the damage does not warrant a visit to a panel beater in my opinion and that we should first see what we could do at my house

So with the long weekend coming up we monitored the weather during the week and decided to do the work on Friday. He was keen to learn something about detailing and offered to help where he could. We made an early start and tried our best to finish by 15:00 when he had to be back in Stellenbosch, but in the end he only managed to leave my place after 18:00. Never the less, still the fastest detail for me to date and my first experience on a black car.

Some random before pics:














Again, using my usual arsenal of products we started off with a hand foaming job - no Karcher followed by a good wash down.





Even in a dirty state the paintwork looked good, apart from the normal swirls and a few signs of parking lot abuse. Nothing too serious….










The reason why one should insist that your wife finishes off her nails with something finer than 400 grid



The roof also had a few nasties…


Work in Progress:
Claying the car did not reveal high levels of contamination, except for the tailgate. I guess that huge diffuser is doing its job!



Some random after pics:













Final reflection shots:






This was my first experience on a black car and I was amazed at the transformation. Due to the time constraints, I only used Menz P203S polish, followed by PB Black Hole and topped with Collinite 845 on most of the car. I would have liked to do a pass with Menz FF before the Black Hole, because on the damaged areas, this looked even better. Anyway, we were still very impressed with the outcome!

Thanks for looking