Colleague's Peugeot 307 clean.

"Svend" (svend)
03/08/2018 at 22:28 • Filed to: detailing

The car isn’t black-black but a very dark grey and looks okay till you get up close and realise the paint is marred to hell and back from drive through car washes.

I would of liked to of spent a little more on the outside but the interior needed a lot of attention. It wasn’t filthy by any means but general lack of maintenance and staining on seat bases.

So out came the snow foam lances. Washed the wheels first, then degreased the exterior, cleaned the door shuts, snow foamed the car, washed, sealed and dried, engine bay dressed.

Interior vacuumed, shampoo’d the seat bases, anti bacterial wiped down the interior, dress dash and centre console, cleaned glass, dress tyres and wheel arches.

Job done.

DISCUSSION (10)

Chariotoflove > Svend
03/08/2018 at 22:44

You know, my parents need your services more than they know.

Is the paint salvageable with buffing, or it is a loss?

His Stigness > Chariotoflove
03/08/2018 at 22:48

It always depends on how much clear coat you want to remove. As long as you can’t feel a scratch with your nail then generally it’s just in the clear coat so you can remove it with compounding. But the more clear coat you remove (generally measured in micrometers), the less time your clear coat will last before it fails.

That’s also why it’s important to find a detailer that actually knows how to do proper paint correction. It’s actually quite easy to refinish the clear coat, but most guys just take a rotary *shudders* and just mow the shit out of the clear coat. You want to start with the lightest method first and work your way down until you or the customer are happy.

Chariotoflove > His Stigness
03/08/2018 at 22:54

I’m hoping most automated car washes wouldn’t scratch too deep to refurbish well, but I don’t know.

Svend > Chariotoflove
03/08/2018 at 22:55

It’s salvageable but I polish by hand. So it’ll be about six hours.

I have a black glaze (Poorboys Blackhole) but I don’t like cheating, to me it’s cheating because all your doing is filling the scratches with polymer fillers which will then resurface as the rain and UV light breaks down the polymers.

Adam’s GlossGuard may of been a wiser idea thinking back but I wanted to try Gyeon Bathe+ with a touch of Gyeon Wetcoat Essence to see how it behaved.

I had one hour on the exterior and one and a half on the interior.

His Stigness > Chariotoflove
03/08/2018 at 22:59

Automated car washes and seriously eff up a car. And if you go in after someone who had mud and other crap on, it could very well scratch the paint.

I avoid car washes like they’re the plague now.

Chariotoflove > His Stigness
03/08/2018 at 23:13

I use a touchless one that does a nice job, and wax at home after a wash once in a while.

Svend > Chariotoflove
03/08/2018 at 23:18

If you want to use or can only use automated car washes, it’s best to use a lighter coloured car, dark colours just as dark greys, greens, blues and blacks are an absolute no no. The light coloured cars don’t show it anywhere near as much.

You can aggressively correct a car ‘s paint three times in it’s whole life before you really shouldn’t do it again. The clearcote will be on average 60 microns deep, an aggressive wet sand, compound, refine and finish will take about eight off.

In this case, micromarring is less than a micron deep.

But as with washing, polishing a dark coloured car takes a little more care as they are also prone to holograming where you step back after polishing and there is hazing that looks like holograms, so it needs refined properly.

Chariotoflove > Svend
03/08/2018 at 23:22

Noted.

CB > Svend
03/08/2018 at 23:24

Nice work!

And also: sweet new avatar.

Svend > CB
03/08/2018 at 23:34

Thanks. It’s by no means my best work or even close.

You’ll probably know what it is. The Laurent & Clement badge, the original badge that bares the founders names of the bicycle company that originally fixed bicycles and then built them from parts from the U.K. that went on to become Skoda.