As some of you will remember - I picked up my 66 plate F-Type R about 6 weeks ago. I have been so busy with my work which involves detailing other people's cars, I hadn't had time to do my own. So I kept an eye on the forecast and left 3 days free for Mon - Wed of this week. The car had a lot of swirling and fine scratching - I suppose the entire process really began last week when I spent 45 minutes machine polishing the taillights as I noticed how hazy they looked with the amount of brush wash scratching on them. The taillights looked so much better when finished. In general, the car had clearly been the recipient of many brush washes in its short life. White paint hides these kind of defects better than any other colour, but I had to take action and so it all began with a good wash, towel dry with plush microfibre drying towels and then paint decontamination which looked like this...
Iron fallout bleeding nicely...
After this, I then went around the car and removed tar. I then took out some Bilt Hamber medium clay with Farecla Bodyshop Detailer as lubricant to help avoid clay marring and removed any remaining contamination I could find. All in all this process took 3 hours. It was after 9pm and the next day would be a demanding day with compounding the entire car on my Flex 3401 and chosen pads and compounds.
9am the next day, the sun was out and the swirling and scratching was plain to see - this is what the entire car was covered in, it is quite difficult to capture defects like this on camera but you get the general idea in the before and after pic below. Basically, after a total of 12 hours compounding on the Monday and part of Tuesday, another 5 'refining' on the Tuesday to remove compounding hazing and instilling a high gloss finish. I even machine polished the high gloss black bits with my finishing pads as these bits are very delicate. The paintwork and car in general looked transformed...
Before and after compounding...
Then the metallic flake in the paintwork after the 'refining' stage, no swirling and fine scratching left to hide the true metallic beauty of the Glacier white paint and compounding hazing gone...
My favourite wax was used - Farecla Supergloss Paste Wax. I love the glass like finish it gives and it is the easiest wax to remove I've ever come across - you can even leave it in the sun with no removal issues unlike a lot of waxes. Onto some reflection pics...
The exhaust tips were in good condition, a quick hit with autosol was all that was required. The wheels were waxed with Bouncers Lookin' Sweet wheel wax.
Then, onto the final result, finished pics galore, including some obligatory supermarket carpark pics!
Iron fallout bleeding nicely...
After this, I then went around the car and removed tar. I then took out some Bilt Hamber medium clay with Farecla Bodyshop Detailer as lubricant to help avoid clay marring and removed any remaining contamination I could find. All in all this process took 3 hours. It was after 9pm and the next day would be a demanding day with compounding the entire car on my Flex 3401 and chosen pads and compounds.
9am the next day, the sun was out and the swirling and scratching was plain to see - this is what the entire car was covered in, it is quite difficult to capture defects like this on camera but you get the general idea in the before and after pic below. Basically, after a total of 12 hours compounding on the Monday and part of Tuesday, another 5 'refining' on the Tuesday to remove compounding hazing and instilling a high gloss finish. I even machine polished the high gloss black bits with my finishing pads as these bits are very delicate. The paintwork and car in general looked transformed...
Before and after compounding...
Then the metallic flake in the paintwork after the 'refining' stage, no swirling and fine scratching left to hide the true metallic beauty of the Glacier white paint and compounding hazing gone...
My favourite wax was used - Farecla Supergloss Paste Wax. I love the glass like finish it gives and it is the easiest wax to remove I've ever come across - you can even leave it in the sun with no removal issues unlike a lot of waxes. Onto some reflection pics...
The exhaust tips were in good condition, a quick hit with autosol was all that was required. The wheels were waxed with Bouncers Lookin' Sweet wheel wax.
Then, onto the final result, finished pics galore, including some obligatory supermarket carpark pics!
) or the spare cash to pay someone to do it properly. I will clay it and give it a good polish before lemans though.