A car that belong to a friend and a fellow touge kaki.
This car was painted quite recently (about 3 months ago) but have been sent to outside car washes specifically the fast and cheap RM5 drive-thru machine wash. These have been quite a popular thing here. Little did we know, the damages done by these machines are very severe and irreversible.
The car was washed, clayed, masked, and all ready to be worked on.
An inspection was first done to assess the damage.
A test spot was done to formulate an appropriate treatment. An initial trial using a set of well-known compound and polish managed only to slightly reduce the swirls. Throughout the car, swirls and scratches were plenty and deep. Left: Before. Right: After
Seeing little effect, I left the car, went and bought some stronger compound and then resume the job. Got a 3M Step 1 compound which is quite good I must say. Some decent cutting power. In the end, swirls were reduced but not completely eliminated even after multiple passes of compounding. As this is a daily drive, we decided not to cut too much paint.
Combo used: 3M Step 1 on wool pad (Rotary); Osren Perfect Finish 8 on polishing pad (Rotary); Osren Perfect Finish 8 on polishing pad (DA) on certain areas only.
Headlamps and tail lamps were also corrected
Muffler was polished with Autoglym Metal Polish and Finished with Autoglym Super Resin Polish
Finally coated with 22PLE VX3 Signature Glass Coating. I would say that the biggest achievement is the massive improvement in colour and gloss. Compromises had to be made in terms of swirls and scratches as this is a daily drive.
Too tired to snap reflection shots. More pictures tomorrow. Thanks for reading
This car was painted quite recently (about 3 months ago) but have been sent to outside car washes specifically the fast and cheap RM5 drive-thru machine wash. These have been quite a popular thing here. Little did we know, the damages done by these machines are very severe and irreversible.
The car was washed, clayed, masked, and all ready to be worked on.
An inspection was first done to assess the damage.
A test spot was done to formulate an appropriate treatment. An initial trial using a set of well-known compound and polish managed only to slightly reduce the swirls. Throughout the car, swirls and scratches were plenty and deep. Left: Before. Right: After
Seeing little effect, I left the car, went and bought some stronger compound and then resume the job. Got a 3M Step 1 compound which is quite good I must say. Some decent cutting power. In the end, swirls were reduced but not completely eliminated even after multiple passes of compounding. As this is a daily drive, we decided not to cut too much paint.
Combo used: 3M Step 1 on wool pad (Rotary); Osren Perfect Finish 8 on polishing pad (Rotary); Osren Perfect Finish 8 on polishing pad (DA) on certain areas only.
Headlamps and tail lamps were also corrected
Muffler was polished with Autoglym Metal Polish and Finished with Autoglym Super Resin Polish
Finally coated with 22PLE VX3 Signature Glass Coating. I would say that the biggest achievement is the massive improvement in colour and gloss. Compromises had to be made in terms of swirls and scratches as this is a daily drive.
Too tired to snap reflection shots. More pictures tomorrow. Thanks for reading
