brad@tirerack.com

Now that our brutal winter here seems to be over, many of the guys here at work are ready for their cars to be shined up.

My next victim is a year old 335i Obsidian Black Metallic. One of their prettiest colors, when clean that is....

After a good washing and a trip down claybar lane my brand new bar looked a bit worse for wear.



I still cannot believe what these things can remove from a car's paint. When I moved from the side to the back of the car the increased friction just about took the bar out of my hand. Most of these contaminants were from the back.

After clay and rewash it was ready to polish. The car has been driven through 2 Indiana winters and a summer season so it was in need. Unfortunately the car has seen automatic car washes several times, and it shows.



These scratches were on every panel of the car about as bad.








This one is my favorite as it shows the paint can still be glossy, yet very scratched. My mother in law was complimenting me on how nice the car looked until I told her it hadn't even been polished yet. She was amazed at how "nice" it looked when I shined two 500 watt halogens on it.



Good thing was the car was in fine shape other than these scratches. I only had one other semi-deep scratch on the trunk that needed attention from my 3.75" wool pad.

The tailpipe was caked with carbon as well.



For the heavier cutting I used my rotary with 5 3/4" and 3 3/4" wool and white pads and Gloss-It Extreme Cut. I'm still learning a rotary, so on this car I did only horizontal surfaces and deeper scratches with it. I did the rest of the car with my Cyclo, Extreme Cut again, and orange pads. Here is the front fender after taping it and spending only about a minute on it with the 3 3/4" lambs wool pad and Extreme Cut:



Pretty impressive. This Extreme Cut really is good stuff.

I went from there to the trunk. It had rub marks from a bike carrier the owner was worried about and the 5 3/4" wool took them out in about 10 seconds flat. Here's a 50/50 on it as well. Again this is with only about a minute, literally, of work. Not done by any means, but much better:



I was having fun with the wool and the rotary so I decided to do the door. This is 5 3/4 wool pad, Extreme Cut, and about 3 minutes worth of passes with one spritz of Gloss Enhancer to keep working it until was fully broken down.



The rest of the car I did with the Cyclo because I was behind on the project (mother's day weekend) and I needed to get it done. I knew the Cyclo would not leave trails the rotary did until I get some more practice. Again the cutting was done with the orange pads and the Extreme Cut. This removed about 75% of the total scratches before final polish.



After cutting I moved to Evolution Polish and yellow pads. This quick stage left a finsh of about 85% scratch free from when I started. More were still in the paint but I just did not have the time to keep at them until all out. I decided from there to finish with Concourso Gloss on my new Cyclo blue pads. I made the mistake of applying it to the entire car and letting it dry before trying to remove it. This stuff dries good and hard and I found that it left pad trails until I went through with a distilled water and 100ppi red pad wipedown followed with a Glosss Enhancer final wipedown. The results the next morning were very good. While my point and shoot isn't up to the depth, the paint looked deep like you could put your hand in it.





This is a great picture to demonstrate the Concourso swirls I battled at the end. The haze over the arch came right out to a crystal clean panel after a quick spritz with water and rebuff.



Tips after cleaning. Nothing I had took the carbon off, so I sanded them with 600 grit wet/dry paper then cuick polish:


I would have love to have had another hour with it, but the owner seemed very pleased with the job I did.

Until my next victim.....