e36 ///M3 - Karma's joke after a run of silver cars

[freerider]

EDIT: After some convincing, I have decided to do a little bit of text with the pics, I'm no creative writing expert so just bear with me.

Products Used:

Megs Shampoo Plus
Vikan Body Brush
Mothers Fenderwell Brush
Mobile Image Detailing brush
Vikan Soft Spoke brush
Adams Waffle Weave drying towel
Adams Detail Spray
Poor-Boys Detail Spray
Poor-Boys Soft Clay (Yellow)
Chemical Guys MF cloths
California MF cloths
Scotch 3M Painters Tape
Adams Polishing towels
Adams Metal Polish (wheels and exhaust tips)
Smartwax Rimwax
Flex VRG3401XC
Lake Country Light Cutting Pads
Menzerna SIP (PO85RD 3.02)
Distilled Water
Menzerna Top Inspection
Adams V.R.T (Trim and Tyres)
Autoglym Fast Glass
Vikan Lustre towel (glass cleaning MF)
Chemical Guys - Extreme Top Coat Sealant with 3x Carnauba


Megesh and I didnt realise what we where in for when this beauty arrived on Sat morning, her paint had taken a severe beating and on inspection we considered giving up detailing, as there looked like there was NO hope for this beaut hiding somewhere beneath the dead paint and swirls.

On inspection, we found that you could actually feel the swirls with your finger tips, they had robbed the paint of its reflection almost completely. There where also many RDS's which would need attention and the wheels had brake dust pitted and burnt into them.

These are just a few pics of what we got ourselves into:



























After claying the entire car top to bottom, we found out exactly what we where in for, the paint was absolutely dead and showed no signs whatsoever of a reflection:
It was also clear that the bonnet had been resprayed, and a very poor job done! there was orange peel on the entire bonnet
which would have needed to be wet sanded for proper correction (we are not at that stage of detailing yet so it will have to wait)



As some of you might know, we received the Flex demo machine this past week and what better test than this, so we set of with the Flex:

Any of you who are on the list to receive a flex when they arrive, is in for a real treat. Megesh and I have been looking for that something that would change the way we detail, and this is IT! The Flex does what the Makita does, but in 1/3 of the time and with so much more ease! We found that you needed to move the Flex slightly faster than the Makita as it does generate heat a lot quicker, and with the power it works the product a lot quicker as well.

We didnt even bother testing a polishing pad combo as we knew it would not cut into these swirls, so opted for our fav combo, Lake Country Light Cutting Pad and Menzerna SIP (PO85RD 3.02) which brilliantly, removing swirls with 1 application and RDS's with another on slightly higher speed.

The Flex has 6 speed settings and we found that nothing over 3.5 was necessary to remove the deep swirls on this car. For RDS's we bumped the speed up to about 4.



panel before:



same panel after:





In this pic you can clearly see a RDS running lower right to upper left


This pic is the EXACT same panel and angle as above with the RDS and swirls, after 1 pass with the Flex




Here you can see how the flake in the paint is showing


I also took some shot during the process so you could see how the colour just came back to life:







The yellow Adams - Polishing Towels, kicks the Megs supreme towel's ass! Anyone who can prove me wrong can have it






Finally we topped off with Chemical Guys - eXtreme top coat (It is a paint sealant which offers 6-8 months paint protection and contains 3X carnauba wax), which really worked brilliantly on the dark colour.
some after shots:







































Thanks for looking!