Paintwork treatment tomorrow

[MOCAŠ]

Car goes in tomorrow for a full wash, clay bar treatment and buffing, followed by a paint sealant.


First time I've had this done in the five years I've owned the car, and it's long overdue. Areas to be addressed as part of the job include:

• Stone chips on the nose and bootlid
• Chips on the trailing edge of the driver's door
• A light scratch on the offside rear wing, running from the light cluster to the petrol cap
• Further light scratches on the boot lid (thanks to a local cat )
• Scuff mark on the offside side skirt
• A small stone dent by the offside rear wheel arch, which they may be able to smooth out
• Swirl marks just about everywhere!

The car hasn't had a wash in over two weeks, so at the moment it's covered in rain spots, dead flies and other detritus, and the alloys are filthy. Should give them something to work with.

Here's the 'before' photo, taken this afternoon. 'After' shots to follow in due course.

 

[LTD]

Nice one - a guide on pricing would be nice to allow some of use to consider viability of your treatment

 

[219]

The 'before' shot looks pretty good to me !

 

[iscaboy]

I'm just looking at the hedge in the background, and thinking, hmmm, car topiary...

and if you get bored, or lonely..

 

[MOCAŠ]

Nice one - a guide on pricing would be nice to allow some of use to consider viability of your treatment

The initial quote is as follows:

Valet: £75.95
Clay bar treatment: £29.37
v2K 2-stage buff: £50.00
Supagard sealant: £75.00

Paint correction on the scratch (if it doesn't just polish out): £30.00
Removal of stone dent (if possible): £50.00

Not sure whether those prices include VAT, so I'm assuming they don't. All-in cost should be somewhere between £270 and £370.

 

[whitenemesis]

Will anyone actually notice the difference? You will, of course and that's all that matters in the end.

 

[MOCAŠ]

The 'before' shot looks pretty good to me !

I think the camera is being a little kind to it.

You should see it in bright sunlight.

 

[MOCAŠ]

Will anyone actually notice the difference? You will, of course and that's all that matters in the end.

Believe me, I'll notice - or at least I hope I will!

Have to say it's only through reading about detailing on this forum that I decided to get this done. Would never have occured to me otherwise.

 

[whitenemesis]

Mine is silver, I'm not at all sure paint correction would make much difference

 

[A-AvantGarde]

The initial quote is as follows:

Valet: £75.95
Clay bar treatment: £29.37
v2K 2-stage buff: £50.00
Supagard sealant: £75.00

Paint correction on the scratch (if it doesn't just polish out): £30.00
Removal of stone dent (if possible): £50.00

Not sure whether those prices include VAT, so I'm assuming they don't. All-in cost should be somewhere between £270 and £370.

This sounds quite reasonable, looking forward to seeing the results. As others have said the 'before' pictures look decent. Did you take any pictures of the other areas, such as the scratch and paint chips? Particularly keen to see how they look following this.

Have you used the place doing this before?

 

[MOCAŠ]

OK, so I dropped the car off at around 08.30 this morning, spent the day in Chelmsford, and went back to pick it up at 15.30.

Now, some people become very vocal when they're impressed by something (I call them the "OMG!!! Brigade"), while others will just think to themselves, "Hmm, not bad at all." I fall firmly in the latter camp - call it reserve, understatement or what you will, but I just tend not to succumb to so-called "wow factor" moments. So when I say the results are not bad, you'll see where I'm coming from. Well, you can judge for yourself below.

The weather did its best to mess with my mind. It was pelting with rain on the way over to Chelmsford in the morning, but by the time I arrived it had eased off. Then, by 1pm the day was bathed in glorious sunshine, such that I was looking forward to seeing how the swirl-free paintwork stood up to what had been its worst enemy. Well, by the time I arrived to pick it up, the sky was overcast again, and around 15 minutes later as I drove off, it started to rain.

It pelted down all the way to the M25, but it gave me an opportunity to observe something I've heard mentioned many times but don't recall having seen before: the rain droplets were beading as they hit the bonnet, and as I gained speed, small beads became big beads, and then dispersed. Goood sign, I thought, but had visions of stepping out of the car to find it covered in streak marks. Once I'd joined the M25 the rain had abated, and I had a dry run as far as the A1 junction (South Mimms), where I decided to stop off to get some snaps while the work was still relatively fresh.

So, bearing in mind that I had just driven through 15 miles of constant and at times fairly heavy rain, followed by around 25 miles in the dry, here's how it looked. More details to follow.

 

[MOCAŠ]

Another shot at South Mimms, with no rain streaking to be seen anywhere. The two after that were taken when I got home, after it had started raining again - hence the rain spots on the bumper. Yet more details to follow.

 

[MOCAŠ]

Sorry about the multiple posts, but there's a limit of three attachments per post.

This shot was designed to show the beading, but to be honest most it had just been blown away as I drove along...

By the way, I'm no photographer so these are very much snaps, taken with a yonks-old Kodak 4 mega-pixel camera.

 

[MOCAŠ]

Next, some detail shots of the problem areas. First up, the chips on the trailing edge of the driver's door. Now you see them; now you don't...

 

[MOCAŠ]

Next, that scratch that ran from the light cluster to the petrol cap. Although I thought it was quite light, the guy who did the paint correction said it was deep enough to catch his fingernail. Anyway, it's history now...

 

[MOCAŠ]

Then there was the scuff mark on the side skirt that had defeated the best efforts of the local car wash crew. Abracadabra...

 

[MOCAŠ]

And the nasty stone chip just to right of the star (at about 2 o'clock)...

 

[MOCAŠ]

Finally, the stone chip on the edge of the bootlid. This was tiny really, and barely noticeable, but it annoyed the hell out of me and was starting to go brown. They neutralised that, primed it and filled it in by hand. Even less noticeable now...

 

[tpwuk]

Lot of stones flying about around your neck of the woods!

 

[MOCAŠ]

So who did the work? The company is called New Again, and I reckon that's a pretty fair description of how they've left my car.

Total bill came to just under £320 in the end, and this included taking out the small stone dent that I mentioned but found difficult to catch on camera. But hey, it's gone now...

:bannana: