Major Paint Correction: Results
 

This is a Black BMW that I was given to work on over the weekend. The car was in horrible condition. It had extremely oxidized paint, scratches everywhere, bad touch up paint jobs and just major damaged all around. Of course the owner said "it wasn't that bad" :P

Parts of this car are unfixable such as the hood where the clear coat has started peeling off. Not my best work as I was only given a short amount of time to correct the entire car. 3-4 hours were spent on the hood alone due to the severe damage. once the car was completely cleaned and clay bared, more damage was revealed.

Products I used:

From Stay Fresh:
Restore 1, Renew 2, Restore 3,Shampoo, Clay bar, Orange Buffing pad,Tire Shine, fabric cleaner, leather conditioner, hex pads, Spray wax, and Sealant. variety of MF towels

The Rag Company Waffle Weave towels
Griots Garage wash Mitt
Mother's tire brush
Meguiar's D101 APC
Eagle One quick detailer (ran out of my regular one)
PC7424



Here are some before pictures. Notice how dull the paint is.

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These are after I clay bared the car, once some of the stubborn grime was removed it revealed a lot more damage underneath.


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Getting those wheels and tires clean! Look at all the grime being sucked out of the tires.
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These are pictures after I started polishing the paint, but some of the deeper scratches still remained along with swirls.


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Here are some progression shots of the hood, the most damaged area on the car. A complete night and day difference.


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And finally, some Beauty shots. While not perfectly swirl free, the car looks pretty good considering the short amount of time I was given to work on it.


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Like I said, the hood is not completely repairable but it looks way better than it did at first. The clear coat peeling is not as noticeable at first.

This is not my best work but still ended up looking okay considering I was in a small rush.


And here is a bonus pic to keep it 86 :P
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You missed a spot. ;)

I think there's a few spots I missed :P Huge improvement over what it was though. I might get ti sent over again to do some final touch ups on it.

You did a good job. Hell, you have the skills to turn your FRS back into showroom condition when it is 5 years old. Well done, sir!

I try to keep my FRS in as good condition as possible but it is my DD so it gets dirty pretty often. I still keep it looking super clean though :) The Stay Fresh products really are great at helping me maintain it looking super fresh.
I don't even do commercial detailing I just do it for whoever asks for it:) I get a lot of requests after people see my car.

i wish i had the time to do this. i have all the products to do it, sadly i just dont have the time like i used too


great job non the less! came out better than what i thought it was when looking at the photos

My is a DD as well. I do the same. I am about to do a detail for the first time before the summer is up.

I know what you mean. Sadly I don't really have much time for detailing either. To do this car I stayed up from 10 pm till 1 pm (yup overnight).

If you have any questions or need recommendations just shoot me a pm :) always happy to help.

Was that car detailed with a Brillo pad previously? Jeez Louise.......

It might as well have been. I believe it might have even seen some off road action since the entire front bumper is full of rock chips. The owner actually had just bought it 4 months ago and wanted to see wjat could be done.

Not perfect and obviously that part if the hood is not easily repaired, but.... YOU DID A HELL OF A JOB. Night and day difference. I'm sure the value of that car probably went up by over a grand XD.


For me, there is no glide in pulse and glide :p

The paint looks like the owner regularly ran it through an automatic car wash that used brushes and never bothered to wax it. That's got to be the worst paint I've ever seen on a BMW. You did a great job considering how abused that paint was when you started.

Really nice job, I'm always surprised how much better the paint can look after some work. I had to do some major work last year on my e30 to get the oxidized paint to look red again.

Before:
http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e1...ps763f9a23.jpg

After:
http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e1...psc50d4a30.jpg

Some work will go a long way:) this car literally had Layers of damaged and oxidized paint. When you ran your hand across it, it felt like sand paper. Now it has an amazingly slick surface. The water also sheets incredibly. When I did the final wash I only had a few water drops left on the paint after rinsing it completely. Drying it was virtually unnecessary.

WOW
 

As Jimmie Dimmick once famously said to Winston Wolfe in Pulp Fiction:
"Wow, you would never think it's the same car!"

Thanks : ) I should be doing another car this month and will be posting the results as well.

hey, I have similar scratches to the 'before" shot under the door, because my condo association manager is a jerk and did some work over my car without letting me move it while I was on vacation. Long story, moral of which is I can't prove he did it.

Anyway, the scratches. They're all over my FRS (both front fender humps, the trunk lid lip, and the roof) and I was wondering how much work you had to do on that door handle pocket? The scratches are clear-coat only but there are a ton of them.

Thanks!

I actually didn't spend much time on them as I would have liked since I was limited on time. I think I spent all of 5 minutes on them. Since I couldn't use my machine polisher in there I used a rough scrub hex pad from Stay Fresh with their polishes, starting with Restore 1. Had I had time to actually work on them I would have gotten rid of most if not all of the scratches in that area. On the other areas, different areas took different times. For example, I spent at least 3-4 hours on the hood alone just to bring it to a decent appearance. On certain areas I only spent about 20-30 minutes. Machine polishing really cuts down on the time needed to remove scratches. PM me if you have any questions : )