Zeking's RX8 - Paint Correction

[Caffeine Fiend]

With Zeking's permission, I thought I'd post up some photos of the paint correction work I did for him on the weekend

When he brought me the car, it looked like the previous owner had at some point gone over the entire car with a brillo pad.

The scratching/swirling was truly something to behold. Being a black car made it stand out all the more, as you can see from the photos below. Worst hit was the bonnet, which was in fairly sorry shape:








Different exposure:




The roof wasn't immune either. Neither was the boot, though aside from a couple of fairly major scratches, it was certainly nowhere near as bad as the bonnet












Wind the clock forward several hours and here's a 50/50 shot that I took with a line of tape down the bonnet to highlight the non-corrected/corrected sides (the white flecks are mainly polish dust, but some are stone chips which I unfortunately can't do anything about):






After 6hrs on the bonnet alone, multiple passes with both the Flex rotary polisher and the Ryobi Random Orbital (working my way through three different pad types and three levels of compound/polish):









Finally, the whole completed car. Total time = 11hrs (and I could really have spent another complete day on it)





Product-wise, I effectively had to pull out all the stops for this one.


Products used:

Flex PE 14-2 Rotary Polisher
Ryobi Random Orbital Polisher
Lake Country Hydro-Tech Blue and Orange pads
Lake Country CCS Orange Cutting Pad
Optimum Compound II
Optimum Polish II
Meguires Ultimate Compound
Prima Amigo
Prima Banana Gloss

[LittleredMPS]

Youve done well mate.

That was some serious swirls and holgrams too by the looks of things, poor car.

[Caffeine Fiend]

Thanks dude.

It's not Sayan's fault. The guy who owned it before him really did a number on it. Sayan's been maintaining it well, waxing it every month etc, but unfortunately waxes simply won't cover up that sort of damage


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[naasif]

Geezz..that looks awsome ! That final photo is like glass !

[MPSed]

Fantastic job Dan!!

[Bakis]

Dan i'm going to need a full detail service from you, thats awesome . Is much paint being removed with the buffer or is it a gentle cutter/polisher?

The MPS has been outside (since i got it) and is due for a good wax but atm no time with uni and work , it's washed 1 - 2 a week thou so not all bad.

Can't wait till I have a garage spot, cause it's coming straight to you then back to mine for a Victorian Wax

[Caffeine Fiend]

Cheers guys . Nice to know my work's appreciated.

Jim, the amount of clear removed is directly related to how deep the scratches are. In this case they were quite deep, but there were only a couple on the boot lid and one on the roof where I felt I would sacrifice too much of the clear coat in order to fully remove them. It's a call you have to make as you're going along.

As a rule I always try to get away with removing the absolute barest amount of clear possible. Often that means a bit of trial and error in the beginning while you're working out the best pad/compound combo to get the right balance of effective scratch/swirl removal versus taking down too much of the clear in one hit. I reckon I spent probably 45 mins working with variations of lighter pad and compound combinations before I resorted to the 'big guns' (Hydro Tech Blue pads and Optimim Compound II - both pretty serious products). It's not something I would ever do unless I'd exhausted the other options with more 'finesse'.

Having said all that, Sayan will still have a healthy layer of clear coat on the car as we're talking in microns here

Buzz me when you've got your garage situation sorted and we'll set a date


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[zeking]

Thanks Dan for the photos, now I can appreciate how bad it really was and convince people how good you are at what you do :P

Before giving it to Dan I tried with quite a few products which claim to remove all those marks (courtesy of the previous owner!) by hand but nothing made much impact on the swirls/scratches.

As Dan mentioned the car is garaged and waxed monthly but those swirls were driving me crazy.

Thankfully the swirls are now gone and the car looks brand new, except for the stone chips (hoping to get some touch up paint).

Haven't driven it since lol just enjoying the shiny-ness before I go and dirty it all over again!

[Caffeine Fiend]

Thanks Dan for the photos, now I can appreciate how bad it really was and convince people how good you are at what you do :P

Before giving it to Dan I tried with quite a few products which claim to remove all those marks (courtesy of the previous owner!) by hand but nothing made much impact on the swirls/scratches.

As Dan mentioned the car is garaged and waxed monthly but those swirls were driving me crazy.

Thankfully the swirls are now gone and the car looks brand new, except for the stone chips (hoping to get some touch up paint).

Haven't driven it since lol just enjoying the shiny-ness before I go and dirty it all over again!

I'm glad you like it Sayan. One of my favourite bits is seeing people fall in love with their cars again

I do love those RX8s. I also enjoyed the challenge

In terms of convincing people, it's sometimes hard because until they see before and after photos like that, they don't realise just how good their cars can look or just don't notice how much paint marring is on their car. Since I've had the lights put in it's become easier to just show people. The lights do not lie

Dan



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[ZAS]

Mate that last photo is first class. Very nice work.

Would love to see photos like that posted on our Facebook page!