Palmball
MB Enthusiast
Devastated and done over. 
Thats was how I felt after I set eyes on my Maserati an hour after I first washed it (about a week into ownership). I know this isn't MB related but I do think some of the pics below are eyeopening and for anyone in the East Midlands and looking for a reasonably priced detailer, this is well worth a look at!
I actually thought I'd bought my car very carefully - mechanically, the car was still under warranty and it was a very low ,mileage so i wasn't too worried about that. What I did inspected carefully was the paintwork and I did so under florescent lights and under bright sunlight (both of which are notorious for showing up swirls and paint defects). The car even came with hundreds of pounds worth of invoices for Swissvax detailing from Maranello. So, I'd visually checked the paintwork and the car came with what should have been good 'detailing' history.....what else could I have done to make sure I bought a car with pristine bodywork?
However, it appears the previous owner and/or McGurk who I bought it from had used some kind of filling polish to hide the multitude of sins including various scratches and widespread coverage of swirls and holograms. As soon as I'd washed it, whatever was used to hide these defect came off which was when I first saw the disgraceful paintwork that has blighted my aesthetic enjoyment of the car since I've had it.
After being quoted some ridiculous prices for paint correction (some people want to charge sums into 4-figures) I finally found a local guy called Ben Griffiths from Demon Detailing www.demondetails.co.uk (who's based just outside Loughborough and as you'll see below, I can recommend very highly). Ben came out to look at the car and quoted a very reasonable £275 for a days work to correct the paint. His credentials looked good...he does work for various main and specialist dealers, he is super-car club Ecurie-25's detailer and his gallery of previous work looked impressive.
He did the car at Graypaul, my local Ferrari/Maserati dealer when it was in there for other work (some of you will not be surprised to hear that the work was for suspension mods!) although he wasn't too impressed to begin with as the car had just been to Rockingham for a wet handling day with the Maserati forum guy's. This means it was covered in limescale and was in significantly worse condition than when he quoted to do the work (he had to spend a couple of hours polishing out the stains caused by the baked-on limescale).
Despite this, the end result was stunning after he washed, clayed, polished, corrected and waxed the paintwork. Unfortunately, it appears someone at Graypaul then wiped section of the front of the car between him finishing and me collecting it a couple of days later so he came out to me again this afternoon to re-correct some of it. This evening before it started to rain, the car looked incredible
Here's some pictures of what he did last week...enjoy!
Before (checkout the limescale!):
Prep work:
Paint Correction (check out how many swirls before and after!):
It didn't look THIS bad until I saw how good it could be....
The types of wax used....
The finished results:
Thats was how I felt after I set eyes on my Maserati an hour after I first washed it (about a week into ownership). I know this isn't MB related but I do think some of the pics below are eyeopening and for anyone in the East Midlands and looking for a reasonably priced detailer, this is well worth a look at!
I actually thought I'd bought my car very carefully - mechanically, the car was still under warranty and it was a very low ,mileage so i wasn't too worried about that. What I did inspected carefully was the paintwork and I did so under florescent lights and under bright sunlight (both of which are notorious for showing up swirls and paint defects). The car even came with hundreds of pounds worth of invoices for Swissvax detailing from Maranello. So, I'd visually checked the paintwork and the car came with what should have been good 'detailing' history.....what else could I have done to make sure I bought a car with pristine bodywork?
However, it appears the previous owner and/or McGurk who I bought it from had used some kind of filling polish to hide the multitude of sins including various scratches and widespread coverage of swirls and holograms. As soon as I'd washed it, whatever was used to hide these defect came off which was when I first saw the disgraceful paintwork that has blighted my aesthetic enjoyment of the car since I've had it.
After being quoted some ridiculous prices for paint correction (some people want to charge sums into 4-figures) I finally found a local guy called Ben Griffiths from Demon Detailing www.demondetails.co.uk (who's based just outside Loughborough and as you'll see below, I can recommend very highly). Ben came out to look at the car and quoted a very reasonable £275 for a days work to correct the paint. His credentials looked good...he does work for various main and specialist dealers, he is super-car club Ecurie-25's detailer and his gallery of previous work looked impressive.
He did the car at Graypaul, my local Ferrari/Maserati dealer when it was in there for other work (some of you will not be surprised to hear that the work was for suspension mods!) although he wasn't too impressed to begin with as the car had just been to Rockingham for a wet handling day with the Maserati forum guy's. This means it was covered in limescale and was in significantly worse condition than when he quoted to do the work (he had to spend a couple of hours polishing out the stains caused by the baked-on limescale).
Despite this, the end result was stunning after he washed, clayed, polished, corrected and waxed the paintwork. Unfortunately, it appears someone at Graypaul then wiped section of the front of the car between him finishing and me collecting it a couple of days later so he came out to me again this afternoon to re-correct some of it. This evening before it started to rain, the car looked incredible
Here's some pictures of what he did last week...enjoy!
Before (checkout the limescale!):
Prep work:
Paint Correction (check out how many swirls before and after!):
It didn't look THIS bad until I saw how good it could be....
The types of wax used....
The finished results:
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