As usual, we'll start off with the background of the car owner. Julian is an avid detail kaki.
Breakdown:
Washing frequency: 2-3 times a week.
Wax: Once every week - Once every 2 weeks.
His car was coated with MMC a couple of years ago - therefore the shine does look a tad better compared to most of the NightHawk Black Honda City's out there. I informed Julian that if we compounded his car, we would be removing the MMC as well. He understood all the consequences and he wanted to move on anyways.
To save some time, Julian clayed the car down 2 days before our detailing session (so we skipped that part for this detail)
Here we go.
BEFORE DETAIL
Front View
Trunk/ Rear/ Roof View
DETAILING BEGINS
Rims cleansing
We started off by cleaning the Rims. Here are some of the tools I have to clean the rims:
- MOTHERS Fender Well Brush
- MOTHERS Detailing Brush
- Melody Wheel Brush
- Some Tesco Floor Scrubber
- Some other stuff I stole from my mum's toilet cleaning arsenals
The Rims were first sprayed with Multi-Purpose Cleaner and left to dwell for a few minutes.
They were then rinsed off. With all available tools, me an Julian started scrubbing and scrubbing to remove all the grime in the wheel wells and between spokes. The rims were then finished with an application of Apple Scented GLO (to make sure the rims were extra clean).
Here are the Before & After shot of the rims.
SHOWERING THE BODY
As usual, a 2 Bucket System was used to wash Julian's car using a Microfiber Chenile Wash Mitt.
Each bucket consisted of:
a) Blue Bucket - Clean Water
b) Red Bucket - MOTHERS California Gold Shampoo
Shampoo is applied to each panel first. As soon as you finish on a panel, rinse immediately.
Work from a top down method meaning do the:
Roof > Hood > Trunk > Upper Panel of Doors > Lower Panel of Doors
The Wash Mitt is then rinsed on the Blue Bucket to remove any grit that was collected during the shampoo application process.
In the meantime, a General Multi Purpose Cleaner was then sprayed in between crevices, rubber linings, emblems, and whatever cracks we could find. We went over these parts with a regular paint brush - This is to remove any dirty stuff/ grit/ old wax residue that was trapped in between these super hard to reach areas.
The car was then rinsed down. Notice the 2 buckets - especially the Blue Clean Water Bucket used to rinse the Wash Mitt.
Now, do we still want to wash the car using traditional methods? I hope not!
We proceeded to spray the whole car with a Bug & Tar Remover. It was left to dwell for a few minutes and then wiped down. The purpose for doing this is to remove any old waxes, tar, and whatever grime that got embedded onto the surface of the paint. Also, it prevents these "contaminants" from sticking to the machine pads (promotes longer pad life).
Check out the before & after pictures below (Not too bad as Julian had clayed his car 2 days ago):
Since Julian clayed the car 2 days before, we skipped that part and went on to taping all rubber linings/ emblems/ plastic parts or stuff that we didn't wanna screw up when performing the machine work.
This probably took us a good 1 hour.
BEFORE COMPOUNDING
I am not very familiar with taking pictures using the halogens to identify the scratches. Therefore, please bear with me. I just managed to take pictures of a few significant panels. Julian had a heavier workload of lifting the Hot halogen lamp to allow me to get these shots. Thanks man!
Anyways, here are the pictures beginning with a shot from the rear left passenger door.
A further away shot of the same door - the swirls or spider-webs were horrendous on this car.
Swirls and water marks on the roof.
The Left A-Pillar
The trunk - check out the lower portion of the photo. It looked like an aged person's skin.
The Hood View
Another shot of the Hood.
My favorite angle of the Honda City - swirls galore.
MACHINE WORK BEGINS
Compounding
The FLEX 3401 VRG is busted out. Since we didn't want to waste time (by testing which chemicals paired with which combo of pads), we fitted the Lake Country 6.5 inch Orange Pad used for light cutting. We paired this up with DACP M83 to remove the swirls. Thus began the tedious compounding work.
- The Orange Pad is then primed initially with a lot of M83 to ensure that the friction between the paint's surface and the pad. As this goes along, less product is used (a primed pad no longer needs that much of a product to work smoothly).
- Product is then dabbed onto the paint's surface.
- Next, a slow speed was set on the Flex to spread out the product to a 2x2 feet section.
- Once product is spread, the Flex was set to ferrari speeds to work the product onto the paint.
Here's 1/4 of the roof view after it was done with the M83. I noticed a lot of powdery residue which puzzled me as the previous NightHawk Black Honda City detailed did not produce that much of residue. We would discover the cause of this much later...................
Some pictures of me grinding the A pillar. Notice the combination of M83 + LC Orange Pads produced what they call "Micro-marring".
Here you see Julian hard at work, grinding away on his beloved ride. The end result looks good right? Hop on over to the next picture.
Excited to see the real results? After rinsing the car, we shined the halogen on the rear left passenger side door. Say hello to massive "micro-marring".
Remember when I mentioned earlier that it was weird that the M83 was producing so much dust? Well, we totally forgot about the MMC. As we compounded the lower panels of the car, more and more dust and powdery residue was appearing and I'm very sure we were removing the MMC or at least part of it. Going through each panel, there was MMC Residue appearing everywhere. When we grinded the trunk - it appeared as if fibers were coming out.
An additional thing I noticed was that with MMC applied paint, the surface is very sticky ( you can actually hear the pads squeak when you work your way ) compared to traditional paint non MMC coated - which feels much slicker.
Check out the trunk to view these fiber-like substance.
After rinse pictures of the trunk. More Micro-marring.
The 50:50 view of the Hood. For comparison purposes, the Right hand side of the Hood was compounded and the left part of the hood was left untouched.
If you notice - The untouched portion's swirls are more evident compared to the portion done with the DACP.
Front Right Corner View
POLISHING
Next came the Polishing Step.
In order to remove the "micro-marring", the combo used were White LC CCS Polishing Pad + Menzerna's P106FF.
Julian hard at work again
Some shots of the Panels after Polishing/ M6000 wipedown. As expected - all of the micro-marrs were removed.
PROTECTION LAYER
Waxing
The final step was the protection step - Wax. This step is a traditional last step process in order to protect your paint.
- We applied MOTHERS Reflections Advanced Wax as a first layer of protection.
- Next, we applied MOTHERS Top Coat as a Last Step Product for maximum protection.
- All of this was done via hand application.
And the results speaks for itself:
There's no shine like Mothers!
I can say this is probably the hardest car that we have done - probably because of the MMC factor and also the heat. I don't know why, but I noticed everytime we detail a car - conincidentally it's a super hot day. Not to mention - we took almost 12 hours to complete this car!
Anyways, here are the credits:
To my wife and in laws - For putting up with me during this hot day (me incurring so much noise with the machine)
To Julian - For allowing me to practice on his car
To guru Kenneth - For providing me some tips on some detailing work
Till the next detail.
1 comment:
thanks larry for helping me detail my car...no more MMC for you eh?
Post a Comment