Soundwave Posted August 17, 2007 Report Share Posted August 17, 2007 Wow! That tap looks feckin awesome! ...oh, and the Aston aint too bad either.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steelwind101 Posted August 17, 2007 Report Share Posted August 17, 2007 Good work as ever. Did you find any changes in looks when you used the foam app?? I have had Destiny for about 4 yrs, never sure how to work it out. In some ways you get less of the 'oils" on the paintwork (the app. absorbs them), at the same time they only seem to seep out as the wax cures. Geoff Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ex_scoob Posted August 17, 2007 Report Share Posted August 17, 2007 I'm new to this site but am loving following this thread. Both the cars and the detailing work are out of this world Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke Posted August 18, 2007 Report Share Posted August 18, 2007 Nathan, I've noticed that you always clay and use a paint cleaner. Is this the best way to go to get the paint back to its oriinal state prior to waxing? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jediknight83 Posted August 18, 2007 Author Report Share Posted August 18, 2007 Fridays job was a lovely 993 RS in midnight blue. Arrived just after 9 and started on the wheels. Autoglym (AG for short) acid free cleaner with the swissvax wheel brush then pressure rinsed and repeated for stubborn marks Then the car was foamed with AG PM3 (still the best cleaner ive used) Then for those who are not familiar with the pre-wash tachnique.. foam allowed to dwell for a few minutes before being pressure rinsed off. The aim is not just to remove the foam but really remove as much dirt as possible before touching the car with shampoo so go round the car slowly and deliberately with the pressure washer from the bottom up getting all the drit and grime off. This process more than any other is what will save the car from swirls which are inflicted from poor washing of dirty cars Car was then shampoo'd with AG shampoo and conditioner, Clayed with Sonus Green, Rinsed, Dried and put inside. And now for a few swirl marks... Not showing up on the camera as well as in real life and even in ambient light you could easily see the marks in the panels! Polishing was done with Megs polishing pads and ip3.02 on some panels and FA106 on others. Strangely for Porsche paint IP3.02 wouldnt give a hologram free finish.. softer paint than usual i guess??? So FA106 was used after the IP and on most panels FA106 did the trick on its own. Before and after with the camera tripod and lights unmoved. Before After After in the sun Polishing work was finished about 6pm, car was then rinsed down to remove dust. Now for the Dodo Juice Pre Wax Cleaner. For those who dont know this is a brand new product which has been knocking around for testing for a few weeks and should be in the shops within a month. I have tested these on a few panels at home and have been very impressed with the results.... so much so i thought it was time for its first use on a whole car. 10p sized amount of product on a round foam pad and rubbed over the paint in straight lines passing each secton 3 times. "Oh no i've just got it all over the rubber... thats going to be a pain to get off... oh no ... wait it rubs off easy and.. .0oh flipping heck... that rubber looks good" Yes Dodo Juice Pre Wax Cleaner is pretty amazing on both smooth and textured rubbers and plastics leaving them lovely and glossy. The residue on the paint cleaned off easily MUCH easier than HD Cleanse and left the surface glossy and very wet looking but literally squeeky clean. HDC doesnt give that squeek (possibly the fillers the HDC lays down giving a very temporary protection??) Yes Dodo Juice Pre Wax cleaner breaks all the rules and is easy to use, leaves a great clean finish, safe on rubbers and is going to be very cost effective :doublesho Other brands better either pull their finger out and produce something better to rival this new cleaner or they may be in trouble Anyway.. back to business.. Car all cleansed it was time for the 61% Vintage wax. Applied wax to roof, rear, rear wings with a foam pad and then buffed. Then did the doors, front wings and bonnet and buffed. I found this better personally than doing the whole car before buffing. Windows cleaned, Arches dressed and tyres dressed with non slip, non greasy dressing, final wipe of the paint and finished at 9.51pm Now throughout the day both myself and the owner were pretty impressed with how wet and glossy the paint was looking and at how the colour was changing with light from different angles... but when it came time to photograph the car i was tired and had the camera on the wrong settings so they pics look a bit dead and boring (compared to in the flesh) Thanks for looking and reading Nathan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rachel Posted August 18, 2007 Report Share Posted August 18, 2007 WoW! You could put aside 6 weeks out of every year just to do the contents of that garage. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steelwind101 Posted August 19, 2007 Report Share Posted August 19, 2007 Nice work, does the DoDo juice pre-wax have a nice smell!?!? LOL. I would like to try this, i have PPCL and ditched HD cleanse. As you just polished and dont need the cleaning part of a prewax cleanser why dont you get a dynamic set up of glazes so you can tune your details more to specific colour sets and paint types? I changed all my process for each of my cars and different products for each paintwork does make a noticable difference. Geoff Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AudiPartner Posted August 20, 2007 Report Share Posted August 20, 2007 Was that a car auction or something?? The RS I mean... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jediknight83 Posted August 20, 2007 Author Report Share Posted August 20, 2007 [ QUOTE ] Was that a car auction or something?? The RS I mean... [/ QUOTE ] nope its a small second hand car business and that is the lockup but the RS and the 930turbo in the back ground are the owners Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Figure11 Posted August 21, 2007 Report Share Posted August 21, 2007 [ QUOTE ] [ QUOTE ] Was that a car auction or something?? The RS I mean... [/ QUOTE ] nope its a small second hand car business and that is the lockup but the RS and the 930turbo in the back ground are the owners [/ QUOTE ] The owner of a 'small' second hand car business can afford an RS and the 930 turbo! I'm in the wrong job! Mike Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R4V_S3 Posted August 21, 2007 Report Share Posted August 21, 2007 Loving the wheels propped up against the wall... why do they look so familiar!? and any idea what vehicle they are for?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R4V_S3 Posted August 21, 2007 Report Share Posted August 21, 2007 Oh and obviously loving your work even more!!!!!!! keep it up mate! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jediknight83 Posted August 21, 2007 Author Report Share Posted August 21, 2007 [ QUOTE ] Loving the wheels propped up against the wall... why do they look so familiar!? and any idea what vehicle they are for?? [/ QUOTE ] they were off a 996 C4S that was put back on original wheels for sale Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil330 Posted August 21, 2007 Report Share Posted August 21, 2007 They are Kahn alloys arent they? I am sure I have seen those on all sorts of cars, Bentleys/ Astons/ Ferarri's etc. Nice work btw! Whats the deal with the pre-wash foam thing? Is it really worth it even if you are really careful during washing process? If so, where can I get my hands on one? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ian_m Posted August 22, 2007 Report Share Posted August 22, 2007 [ian_C]They are Kahn alloys and they were featured on here when Insurance Jon had them on his S8 [/ian_C] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tarmac_Terrorist Posted August 22, 2007 Report Share Posted August 22, 2007 [ QUOTE ] [ian_C]They are Kahn alloys and they were featured on here when Insurance Jon had them on his S8 [/ian_C] [/ QUOTE ] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jediknight83 Posted August 22, 2007 Author Report Share Posted August 22, 2007 [ QUOTE ] They are Kahn alloys arent they? I am sure I have seen those on all sorts of cars, Bentleys/ Astons/ Ferarri's etc. Nice work btw! Whats the deal with the pre-wash foam thing? Is it really worth it even if you are really careful during washing process? If so, where can I get my hands on one? [/ QUOTE ] definately. its the most important part for me. Even if your very carefull.. its always better to pre wash the dirt or without touching the car. Also its amazing how much cleaner it will come up. Ive tested and just shampooing a car makes it 'look' clean but if you then use the pre wash and shampoo again its amazing how much more comes off. I use megs hyper wash or AG PM3 via a foam lance from autobrite direct but the glimore foam gun is also good from www.cleanyourcar.co.uk remember after foaming when you pressure rinse.. your aiming to wash the dirt off the car .. not just remove the foam. The foam will just soften the dirt Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil330 Posted August 24, 2007 Report Share Posted August 24, 2007 Thanks for the info, I think I will get one! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jediknight83 Posted August 25, 2007 Author Report Share Posted August 25, 2007 Good evening Been another long week with some lovely cars. Mercedes CLK230 deswirl Porsche Carrera GT topup BMW E28 M5 valet BMW E30 M3 valet Alpina B5 valet VW Passat W8 estate deswirl Aston Martin DBR2 recreation protection Aston Martin DB9 valet Range Rover Supercharged valet Rover 75 estate valet Nissan Primastar SE valet Ok so some lovely cars and others just cars.. Monday morning was wet.. something that is become all too familiar in the UK! The CLK was washed down in the drizzle with PM3 via the foam lance, Shampoo'd, clayed, taped and PTG checked. Being a lighter colour and being outside (although under a car port) it was hard to capture the swirls. After menz 106ff on a polishing pad at up to 1800rpm this combo worked well on the whole car with a couple of hits needed on some areas. Paint was cleansed with dodo juice PWC and then waxed with 61% vintage wax. Interior was vacuumed and wiped down. Leather cleaned and conditioned with gliptone. Tuesday was the cars i look after regularly. CGT, M5, M3 and B5 needed cleaning and a wax toptup for the CGT which was sporting its lovely new anthracite wheels. Wednesday was back to a customers ive been to before and i knew i had the luxury of working in a nice warm, well lit garage with a good stereo system Sadly before i was able to get the car in the garage i had to wash it outside and my goodness how it rained!! i got soaked to the bone and ended up having to detail for a while in the locked garage with my trouser on a radiator! Before Anyway.. Car was pre foamed with Megs Hyperwash, Shampoo'd and then clayed with sonus green. As the daily hack it was pretty filthy as shown by how much came off on the clay after a pretty thorough pre wash Then taped up and PTG checked ready for polishing. The swirls.. Polished with Menx IP 3.02 on a megs polishing pad at up to 1800rpm. The menz behaved the best i have seen it in a long time! The pillars were pretty bad so these were also taped up and polished with the polish residue that was left on the pad after doing a major panel. Before > taped > during > after After polishing Then on with the dodo juice pre wax cleaner applied to one half of the car at a time and then on with the 61% vintage wax by pad and applied to 50% of the car then buffed and then the other 50%. Throughout the detail i was impressed by the paint colour. Kind of purple / blue / green very similar to the 993 RS i did last week. Anyway the finished shots.. at about 10:30pm!! And worth a pic.. i didnt wash this on the day.. but this is the TT i did just over a month ago and its still beading like new.. which is nice Friday i had been looking forward to all week. Aston Martin DBR2. Ok so this is actually a recreation. The originals go for close to £1m. Some history [ QUOTE ] Some years after the two original Aston Martin DBR2 works sports-racers had retired from active competition and begun to appear occasionally on the historic racing scene, an enthusiast commissioned a well respected racing car designer to recreate one of these fabulous cars, while incorporating a number of improvements. A multi-tubular spaceframe chassis was constructed, duplicating the original track and wheelbase dimensions but providing much greater torsional rigidity than the DBR2’s old Lagonda V12 chassis. This was panelled around the cockpit in aluminium. Measurements and templates were made from drawings of the original aluminium DBR2 body and used to construct moulds and subsequently a strong, rigid glassfibre body identical in form to the original. While the recreation’s rear suspension remains true to the original DBR2, consisting of a De Dion axle located by trailing arms and Watts linkage, a simpler and more effective arrangement of unequal length wishbones and an anti-roll bar was installed at the front. The suspension is fully Rose jointed and damped by AVO adjustable shock absorbers front and rear. Disc brakes are fitted all round (ventilated at the front) with dual circuit operation, rear parking brake, copper pipes and Aerquip braided hoses throughout. The wheels are 16 in wire-spoked knock-ons shod with recently fitted road legal tyres. A Cosworth limited-slip differential transmits power via up-rated driveshafts. Steering is by rack and pinion, while other noteworthy features include fully fused 12-volt alternator electrics, battery cut-off switch, Lexan windscreen and side screens, 13-gallon aluminium fuel tank and full tonneau cover in double duck fabric. The engine is an ex-DBS Vantage-specification (325bhp) 4.0-litre unit breathing via triple Weber 45DCOE carburettors and fitted with a fabricated tubular exhaust system. The cylinder head, which bears markings indicating that it may have been fitted to an original DBR2 in the past, has been gas flowed and converted to accept unleaded fuel, while the distributor is driven directly off the end of the camshaft, as on the DBR2, and not via worm gears. Drive is transmitted via a 10 in Borg & Beck clutch to the ZF five-speed gearbox and thence by means of a short prop shaft to the differential. Claimed weight is an impressive 935kgs (2,057lbs) compared to a DBS’s 1,588kgs (3,494lbs) so performance should be nothing less than electrifying. The interior boasts two specially made bucket seats, trimmed in authentic check material sourced from the AML factory, while four-point safety harnesses restrain both driver and passenger, for whose comfort a leg warmer/heater is installed. The car came equipped with a quick release Nardi wood rim steering wheel and also the correct Aston-pattern wood-rim steering wheel, the black crackle-finish dashboard boasts a more comprehensive set of instruments than the original. To enhance the car’s practicality, two small soft pockets have been incorporated in the doors, while the boot lid lifts off to enable access to the modestly sized boot compartment. [/ QUOTE ] My job (sadly) was to prep it for sale in an auction down at goodwood as the owner didnt have enough time or garage space to enjoy it anymore. I didnt have the luxury of foaming the car down on this occasion as the interior was far from water tight... so instead i mixed up a hyper wash solution in a bottle with a foam hand trigger and applied to the body of the car in this way. Then rinsed down with the hose (which had quite a bit of pressure). Shampoo'd, clayed. After practicing with dodo juice on the rotary some more i was more confident with what it could acheive.. and as the owner had said not to worry about a fully correction i thought dodo juice PWC would be a great one hit alternative while also getting the paint ready for the wax. Before dodo juice PWC After PWC (if you flick between the pics you will see the difference. Its not huge in the pics but i was very impressed. Engine bay was wiped down. 61% vintage wax was applied to the whole car via foam pad then buffed from the whole car and wiped down an hour later witha couple of sprays of last touch. Interior vacuumed and wiped out Then i also cleaned the owners DB9, Rangie, Rover work horse and gave my own van a once over. Thanks for looking. Have actually booked a week off next week but no doubt i'll end up cleaning something.. __________________ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rachel Posted August 26, 2007 Report Share Posted August 26, 2007 Beautiful. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jediknight83 Posted September 1, 2007 Author Report Share Posted September 1, 2007 So I was supposed to be having a week off. But i got a call about this car which interested me and so i ended up at 7am in central london. This is a 1961 Maserati GT. 3.5 straight 6 engine. It was pitched against the Aston DB4 at the time. Only about 200 of these were ever made and this is one of only 2 in the UK that are in this kind of restored condition. There are not many photos in this detail. As time went along and i realised how much work was going to be needed i just didnt stop to eat let alone take pics. Sorry Started off in the small underground wash bay by foaming the car with megs hyper wash, then cleaning the wheels, then shampooing. Car was then clayed and rinsed and moved to the owners parking space to dry and get ready for the polishing. The owner had said that there was 'alot of paint' on the car.. but quite how much paint i wasnt expecting. PTG read up to 1200 on some panels and didnt drop below 400. It turns out that the roof / boot and bonnet are original single stage paint and the sides have been resprayed and lacquered. Paint correction proved extremely time consuming and difficult. I started on the megs polishing pad with 106fa which only knocked out about 60% of the marks. ip3.02 got 95% in one hit but left horrible buffer trails no matter how finely i tried to finish it down. In the end the whole car was machine with 3.02 on the polishing pad and then i went round again with 106ff on a finishing pad. This gave 100% on the original areas and about 95-98% on the resprayed areas which i think was about as good as it was going to get after testing with 3 hits of 3.02 on one of the lacquered areas and it still not improving! :wall: Possible defects under clear???? not sure.. but i was confident this was as good as the car was going to look in the time allowed. Once all the polishing work was complete the car was pressure rinsed to get any redidue out of gaps etc. Car was dried and treated with Dodo Juice PWC followed by the 61% Vintage wax. windows cleaned, dressing applied, final wipe and done. 13.5hrs of solid back busting work. The owner who had been at work all day returned and was almost speachless and over the moon with the transformation (which cheered me up after the long day and my slight frustration at not getting some of the lacquered areas perfect) Unfortunately at 8:45 on a late Aug eve in london its pretty dark so the plans for a photo shoot outside were scrapped.. Enjoy what pics i do have though. Thanks Nathan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alastair_A3 Posted September 1, 2007 Report Share Posted September 1, 2007 Looks totally stunning Wasnt there a black one on the orginal Italian Job? Love the Dino in the background also Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke Posted September 1, 2007 Report Share Posted September 1, 2007 Wow that looks totally amazing, if you are only 95-98% happy with some of the results than hats off to you Nathan for your level of detail and professionalism. It is one beautiful looking car, what do you reckon its worth? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tarmac_Terrorist Posted September 1, 2007 Report Share Posted September 1, 2007 That's a fantastic car Looks stunning - rewarding work eh? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jediknight83 Posted September 13, 2007 Author Report Share Posted September 13, 2007 Been a little while since posting a write up. Been busy with topups so didnt bother posting the same cars again.. also forgot my camera a couple of times! Anyway this brand new A4 cab was sitting in the collection bay looking filthy! In the sun it was also looking a little scratched and a few dodgy buffer trails in places which the sales guy was shown and then the aftersales manager. Car was foamed twice with Megs hyperwash. Shampoo'd, Tar and Glue remover sprayed and wiped, Foamed again and dried. Fabric hood protected. Inside the areas that needing polishing were polished. Paint cleansed with HD cleanse (temp ran out of my prefered pre wax cleaner which is Dodo Juice PWC.. but the end result is pretty much the same.. just the Dodo Juice is better to use i feel) Waxed with 61% Vintage wax. Leather fed, glass cleaned, dressings applied. Slightly nervey when ALL the sales staff came in to see what i had been doing for 6hrs but all of them were very voacl about how they could see the benefit and how they wouldnt actually get the inhouse cleaners to do their cars. Customer booked ni for bi-monthly top ups. Thanks for looking.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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