Hi guys
My name is Michael and I’m a friend of Paul lopes (a fellow mbclub member). He told me about the site, so I thought I would come join up. I noticed you have a detailing section, so thought I would post up my friends dads car I helped get back to good order. The car in question is a 2003 Mercedes SL500 with 73,000 miles on the clock. He purchased the car from a friend and told me that it had lost its depth and shine. He wanted to restore its deep black finish and wanted to see if I could help. On closer inspection the paint was pretty bad. So I advised him it needs more work than anticipated which he was happy with in order to achieve a better finish. The problem was there was a limit to how long the car could be off the road for. So it was a case of knuckling down, and to do what I could the time I had. Below is the wash process used.
-The wheels were sprayed with bilberry wheel cleaner and scrubbed with wheel woollies.
-The tyres were sprayed with a citrus degreaser, and scrubbed with a tyre brush.
-The wheels were then rinsed with water @ 60*.
-The lower half of the car was sprayed with a citrus degreaser and left to dwell.
-All shuts, gaps, badges and vents were agitated using a swissvax brush.
-The rest of the car was snow foamed, left to dwell for 10 minutes and rinsed @ 60*.
-The car was then washed using the two bucket method and BTBM.
-The car was then clayed and iron x was used to remove all contaminants from the paint to leave a smooth surface.
-The car was then re-washed, due to the more aggressive clay and dried using 70/30 towels and a warm air blower. Then helps remove all the annoying water with your shuts, gaps, badges and grilles.
- The car was then given a thorough IPA wipe down to ensure all oils were removed from the bodywork to ensure a true finish.
Once indoors, fully wiped down and under the halogens, you could see how poor the paint was.
The car was covered in lots of heavy swirls, deep scratches and some much larger scratches on the rear passenger wing. Due to typically hard paint (and this was like concrete) there was no choice to step up to compounding. The whole car was compounded using fast cut plus and a compounding pad. This was then followed up with extra fine on a polishing pad. The pictures below show me moving around the car. The panels were wiped with IPA between each set to ensure a true finish and pictures were all prior to refining.
Bonnet 50/50
Passenger front wing 50/50
Roof before:
Roof after:
Roof 50/50
Passenger door before:
Passenger door after:
Boot lid before: (as you can see pretty heavy swirls)
Boot 50/50's
All corrected! Note rear window covered in compound!
Rear passenger wing. This, as you can see, is the panel with some heavy scratches in. These will be the bigger ones over the tops of the swirls going top to bottom and arranged in a line left to right:
Rear passenger wing after. All the swirls were removed, but the deep scratches were too deep to safely remove them completly. So the best method here was to round the edges off of them. This will stop the sunlight catching them making them near to invisable.
Drivers rear pillar before:
Drivers rear pillar after:
Drivers rear wing before:
Drivers rear wing after:
Drivers front pillar before:
Drivers front pillar after:
Drivers wing mirror:
Drivers wing mirror after:
Drivers front wing before:
Drivers front wing after:
Drivers side of the bonnet before:
Drivers side of the bonnet after:
Ones the compounding and polishing was completed, the wheels were remove in order to re-colour the insides of the arches. The wheels were also pre wax cleaned and swissvax autobahn was applied to the inside and outside of the wheels. This will stop the brake dust destroying the wheels and keep them nice and clean.
My name is Michael and I’m a friend of Paul lopes (a fellow mbclub member). He told me about the site, so I thought I would come join up. I noticed you have a detailing section, so thought I would post up my friends dads car I helped get back to good order. The car in question is a 2003 Mercedes SL500 with 73,000 miles on the clock. He purchased the car from a friend and told me that it had lost its depth and shine. He wanted to restore its deep black finish and wanted to see if I could help. On closer inspection the paint was pretty bad. So I advised him it needs more work than anticipated which he was happy with in order to achieve a better finish. The problem was there was a limit to how long the car could be off the road for. So it was a case of knuckling down, and to do what I could the time I had. Below is the wash process used.
-The wheels were sprayed with bilberry wheel cleaner and scrubbed with wheel woollies.
-The tyres were sprayed with a citrus degreaser, and scrubbed with a tyre brush.
-The wheels were then rinsed with water @ 60*.
-The lower half of the car was sprayed with a citrus degreaser and left to dwell.
-All shuts, gaps, badges and vents were agitated using a swissvax brush.
-The rest of the car was snow foamed, left to dwell for 10 minutes and rinsed @ 60*.
-The car was then washed using the two bucket method and BTBM.
-The car was then clayed and iron x was used to remove all contaminants from the paint to leave a smooth surface.
-The car was then re-washed, due to the more aggressive clay and dried using 70/30 towels and a warm air blower. Then helps remove all the annoying water with your shuts, gaps, badges and grilles.
- The car was then given a thorough IPA wipe down to ensure all oils were removed from the bodywork to ensure a true finish.
Once indoors, fully wiped down and under the halogens, you could see how poor the paint was.
The car was covered in lots of heavy swirls, deep scratches and some much larger scratches on the rear passenger wing. Due to typically hard paint (and this was like concrete) there was no choice to step up to compounding. The whole car was compounded using fast cut plus and a compounding pad. This was then followed up with extra fine on a polishing pad. The pictures below show me moving around the car. The panels were wiped with IPA between each set to ensure a true finish and pictures were all prior to refining.
Bonnet 50/50
Passenger front wing 50/50
Roof before:
Roof after:
Roof 50/50
Passenger door before:
Passenger door after:
Boot lid before: (as you can see pretty heavy swirls)
Boot 50/50's
All corrected! Note rear window covered in compound!
Rear passenger wing. This, as you can see, is the panel with some heavy scratches in. These will be the bigger ones over the tops of the swirls going top to bottom and arranged in a line left to right:
Rear passenger wing after. All the swirls were removed, but the deep scratches were too deep to safely remove them completly. So the best method here was to round the edges off of them. This will stop the sunlight catching them making them near to invisable.
Drivers rear pillar before:
Drivers rear pillar after:
Drivers rear wing before:
Drivers rear wing after:
Drivers front pillar before:
Drivers front pillar after:
Drivers wing mirror:
Drivers wing mirror after:
Drivers front wing before:
Drivers front wing after:
Drivers side of the bonnet before:
Drivers side of the bonnet after:
Ones the compounding and polishing was completed, the wheels were remove in order to re-colour the insides of the arches. The wheels were also pre wax cleaned and swissvax autobahn was applied to the inside and outside of the wheels. This will stop the brake dust destroying the wheels and keep them nice and clean.
