Hello all,
A good friend of mine recently purchased a new VW Jetta. He knows about my side business that I have started and he came to me after telling him about Opti-Coat. He was interested in the product and scheduled a date to work on his car. Unfortunately, before the day of the detail, a scuff was found on his front bumper. Not sure how it got there, but he wanted it gone.
Onto the products used:
800 grit 3M sandpaper
ONR
Meg's clay with ONR as clay lube
Adam's APC for the tires
PC 7424XP
Meg's Cutting Pad
Meg's Polishing Pad
Meg's #105
Meg's #205
IPA Solution
Opti-Coat 2.0
Detail Process:
He was kind enough to take it to a touch-less car wash to wash away all the salt. So I decided to not bring out my foam gun and went ahead with an ONR wash. This is how it looked when it arrived.
The scuff
Even though the car is new, the door jambs would need attention
After washing the exterior and cleaning the mud-flaps, I began claying the whole exterior. The good news is that this car was shipped with the plastic wraps and removed upon arrival at the dealer. The clay was pretty clean besides some embedded grit and dirt. It's a great practice for car companies to ship their automobiles in such a manner.
Here is the clay before
And after
I then cleaned up the door jambs
After that was done, I finally turned my attention to the major defect. This was actually my first time wet-sanding so I was extremely cautious. I tried compounding the defect first with #105 but I didn't do much as expected.
I let the sandpaper soak in clean water for a couple hour and used my ONR clay lube to keep the defected area lubricated. I used a single motion technique where I applied the least amount of pressure and kept the direction of my passes the same. I forgot to take pictures of the process because I was so much in the zone that I didn't want to break concentration.
After wet-sanding, the paint was cloudy but level. I then took my trusty PC with #105 and began compounding. It was to my relief that after compounding I could clearly see the reflection of my hand again. What a relief! I then polished it down with #205 and my polishing pad. I then examined the rest of the car and polished out some of the swirls that were present. To my surprise it was kept in great condition.
I then did an IPA wipedown and began Opti-Coating. It was my first time using this product, so I made sure I did as much research and watched as many videos as I could to get the best understanding possible before putting theory into practice. I was surprised at how easy it was to apply and it took me about an hour to do the whole car. Here are the after pictures:
The scuff is gone!
Afterwards, I picked up my first client and drove him back. I made sure I drove up slowly to his car because I knew the anticipation about the outcome of the scuff was killing him inside
. I am evil. He had the biggest look of surprise on his face when he could not find it. We did a walk-around and he couldn't stop commenting on how glossy it looked.
We went out for drinks later that night and he told me his parent's looked at my work and said "Autos einai filos," which the English translation from Greek is, "Now this is a friend." It really touched me and I took great pride in that statement.
Thanks for reading!