Tweet
This is the first time i have properly cleaned and corrected a car, i have helped my other half do his cars but I am very new to this, so any feed back is appreciated 
So the sun came out yesterday and I noticed a lot of swirls and light scratches in my paintwork which I'm gutted about. My other half has a lot of detailing gear so thought it would be easy to correct it but when I used the paint depth gauge it read around 80 on most panels, I'd forgotten to read the bonnet which was actually 115 so decided to start there and see how much I could do without making the paint much thinner. I only had the choice of what's in the shed and to be honest I didn't really know what to use but I read up (and advice from the Oh) about the different things I have to hand and decided on the following:
G101 to remove the surface dirt, rinsed it off
Duet and rinsed again
Fallout remover sprayed over, rinsed then washed again with duet
Used a clay mit to remover any bits of tar or contamination with autosmart reglaze as a lubricant (it was the only thing I could find that would work as a lubricant and that's what the OH uses!) then rinsed
Then it was ready to try the polisher.
I applied autosmart evo1 with a flex 3401 with a drc black finishing pad just to see what it would do as I didn't want to use a harsh pad and compound to start with.
Buffed remaining polish off and retested with paint gauge, it only took off about 4 but results were not too good! I then went back over it with the flex and a drc green light cutting pad with the evo1 and got a lot better results and only another 5 taken off the depth
Finished off with a coat of fusso
Before:
After:
I know there will be some of you thinking why did I do/use that but as i said I have never done this before and I am very pleased with the results I got. I am going to the city at the weekend so will be getting some of my own products to use, definitely getting the maguires ultimate compound suggested by Andy and will do the side panels by hand to see how they come up as the paint is extremely thin so don't want to use the flex with the compound just incase I go through the paint! I will update with pics as I do each bit and hopefully will have a very shiney, (almost) swirl free DS3!
So the sun came out yesterday and I noticed a lot of swirls and light scratches in my paintwork which I'm gutted about. My other half has a lot of detailing gear so thought it would be easy to correct it but when I used the paint depth gauge it read around 80 on most panels, I'd forgotten to read the bonnet which was actually 115 so decided to start there and see how much I could do without making the paint much thinner. I only had the choice of what's in the shed and to be honest I didn't really know what to use but I read up (and advice from the Oh) about the different things I have to hand and decided on the following:
G101 to remove the surface dirt, rinsed it off
Duet and rinsed again
Fallout remover sprayed over, rinsed then washed again with duet
Used a clay mit to remover any bits of tar or contamination with autosmart reglaze as a lubricant (it was the only thing I could find that would work as a lubricant and that's what the OH uses!) then rinsed
Then it was ready to try the polisher.
I applied autosmart evo1 with a flex 3401 with a drc black finishing pad just to see what it would do as I didn't want to use a harsh pad and compound to start with.
Buffed remaining polish off and retested with paint gauge, it only took off about 4 but results were not too good! I then went back over it with the flex and a drc green light cutting pad with the evo1 and got a lot better results and only another 5 taken off the depth
Finished off with a coat of fusso
Before:
After:
I know there will be some of you thinking why did I do/use that but as i said I have never done this before and I am very pleased with the results I got. I am going to the city at the weekend so will be getting some of my own products to use, definitely getting the maguires ultimate compound suggested by Andy and will do the side panels by hand to see how they come up as the paint is extremely thin so don't want to use the flex with the compound just incase I go through the paint! I will update with pics as I do each bit and hopefully will have a very shiney, (almost) swirl free DS3!
Attached Files
but I did manage to give it a good clean ready for tomorrow (hopefully!). I started by snowfoaming with actimousse and rinsing off, washed the car with a wookies fist and autosmart auto wash and, of course, the two bucket method, than rinsed again. next i decontaminated the paintwork with fallout remover and agitated it a bit, rinsed again. Sprayed aqua wax on the car to make the water bead off to aid drying, then pat dried with a drying towel. Because it was about to rain again I just went over the car with reglaze quick detailer to finish it off for the day. I also just quickly did all the black trim with auto finesse revive. I didn't get any pics of stages as I was trying to do it as quick as poss before it rained again but have got some final pics, I'm pleased with it and once I have got as many swirls out as poss and finish it all properly it should be even more shiny 
). It got out nice late afternoon so managed to get back out there. I finished off decontaminating the paintwork with Tardis and washed it all off, then I could start with the maguires ultimate compound! I used it with a white G3 applicator waffle pad
Comment