Scuba blue Audi A4 - Detailed by Autocare Services

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CARL@ACS
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Scuba blue Audi A4 - Detailed by Autocare Services

Post by CARL@ACS »

Greeting fellow detailers...

I've decided to be a full time Detailer and my first detail was a

Audi A4 sparkling in Scuba Blue...

I say sparkling because this car has amazing sparkle and it really pops out in the sun then you notice the swirls and scratches and then she looks tired and not so good looking.

This detail was concentrated on the paint.

First up

My starting point

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*Wheels / Tyres / Arches*

Start...

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Decontamination

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After rinse

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End results

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Cleaning process

Arches

Rinsed
Sprayed Apc & allowed to dwell
agitated with mothers fender brush

Tyres

Sprayed apc
Srubbed
Rinsed
Repeated 3 times (Meguiars endurance was last used so it was a mission to remove)

Wheels

Rinsed
Sprayed GlossWorx Wheel & tyre Cleaner
Agitated with valetpro detail brush (face)
Agitated with Daytona large brush ( Barrels)
Rinsed
Sprayed Carchems Revolt
Allowed to dwell
agitated with valetpro/daytona brushes
Rinse
Then rinse some more (advice from a friend after using iron remover to make sure to flush the remaining product out)
Sprayed Carchems Apc mixed 10 : 1 to clean up the wheels weights and any remaining residue from the iron.

Before customer could take delivery i applied a coat of carchems tyre gel.

The wash...

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Wash Process

Rinsed any loose dirt
Sprayed apc on to grills, badges and window trims and beadings and agitated with valet pro detail brush.
Foam using a mixture of Dna shampoo and water with my "El-cheapo" Foam gun.
rinsed again
Foamed again and continued to wash using the two bucket method.
Rinsed
Sprayed optimum clay lube (drying aid)
Dryied using Crazy Detailer wafel weave drying towel.

paint inspection under direct sunlight...

Worse than i expected. More swirls than sparkle.

Claying

Shield clay
Optimum clay lube
Monster engery ( it was a hot day )

Now to my favourite part....

Polishing!

Machine - Shield da
Compound - fg400
Polish - Menzerna 3 in 1
Pad- Crazy detailer orange compounding(fg400)
Pad - Crazy detailer white polishing pad(3 in 1)

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Now for some reflection shots

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Exhaust

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Process
Sprayed Apc and allowed to dwell
Agitated with tooth brush
Meguiars Metal polish applied and buffed out by hand.

Thank you guys for taking the time to read my post. Any questions or comments are welcome.

Enjoy guys.
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Re: Scuba blue Audi A4 - Detailed by Autocare Services

Post by lawrence »

Great job bud - well done!

:hurray:
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Re: Scuba blue Audi A4 - Detailed by Autocare Services

Post by Unobeat »

Great work, you have transformed the car. :hurray: :drool:
It looks brand new and i am sure the owner fell in love again.
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Re: Scuba blue Audi A4 - Detailed by Autocare Services

Post by TD HIGH »

Great work there bud, really nice turn around. :hurray:
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Re: Scuba blue Audi A4 - Detailed by Autocare Services

Post by Ahmed.Syed »

Nice one Carl

That colour is indeed very nice :)
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Re: Scuba blue Audi A4 - Detailed by Autocare Services

Post by Uvy »

freaking awesome..
those reflection shots are amazing
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Re: Scuba blue Audi A4 - Detailed by Autocare Services

Post by Rsi huntered »

Nice Work there buddy :drool: :drool: :hurray: :hurray:

car came out really nice.......

Just a questions?

You went with a really aggressive combo on this Audi (any reason why) or are the pics you taking not really portraying the full impact of hammering this car took?
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Re: Scuba blue Audi A4 - Detailed by Autocare Services

Post by lawrence »

Rsi huntered wrote:Nice Work there buddy :drool: :drool: :hurray: :hurray:



car came out really nice.......



Just a questions?



You went with a really aggressive combo on this Audi (any reason why) or are the pics you taking not really portraying the full impact of hammering this car took?
I'll let Carl explain his own reasoning but wanted to chime in on 2 things to bear in mind



(1) The level of cut a polish provides is very much dependent on how hard or soft the paint is...



So... let's take a 'medium' cut polish like Menzerna PF2300... and use it on 3 different types of paint.



Soft paint - it will behave like an aggressive compound, remove a lot of paint and probably leave some marring

Medium paint - it will behave like a medium cut polish, probably remove most of the damage and leave very little marring

Hard paint - it will behave like a fine finishing polish, will hardly do any correction and probably won't leave any marring



In other words, on hard paint, FG400 can act more like a medium cut polish and therefore isn't as aggressive as it may seem at face value



(2) You cannot tell how deep scratches/swirls are by looking at them, or by how many there are on the car.



In other words, even if it appears as though there are very few swirls in the paint, it may be that those few swirls run really deep into the paint, and therefore would require significant effort to remove



I guess the lesson I am trying to share is that the ONLY way to know what specific combination of pad/polish/pressure/arm speed/machine speed you need to remove the damage on that car on that day, is to conduct a test spot... and each and every car you detail will throw up a different requirement.



You simply cannot say...x type of car with x amount of swirls needs x kind of polish... its one of the main reasons I get so :mad: when I think about the production type polishing that happens where there is a one-size-fits-all approach to paint correction.... you have to let the paint guide you.
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Re: Scuba blue Audi A4 - Detailed by Autocare Services

Post by N3mo »

Nicely done..


Rotary + wool pad + P11 is the only combo you will ever need :crazy: :crazy: :crazy:
lawrence wrote:
Rsi huntered wrote:Nice Work there buddy :drool: :drool: :hurray: :hurray:



car came out really nice.......



Just a questions?



You went with a really aggressive combo on this Audi (any reason why) or are the pics you taking not really portraying the full impact of hammering this car took?
I'll let Carl explain his own reasoning but wanted to chime in on 2 things to bear in mind



(1) The level of cut a polish provides is very much dependent on how hard or soft the paint is...



So... let's take a 'medium' cut polish like Menzerna PF2300... and use it on 3 different types of paint.



Soft paint - it will behave like an aggressive compound, remove a lot of paint and probably leave some marring

Medium paint - it will behave like a medium cut polish, probably remove most of the damage and leave very little marring

Hard paint - it will behave like a fine finishing polish, will hardly do any correction and probably won't leave any marring



In other words, on hard paint, FG400 can act more like a medium cut polish and therefore isn't as aggressive as it may seem at face value



(2) You cannot tell how deep scratches/swirls are by looking at them, or by how many there are on the car.



In other words, even if it appears as though there are very few swirls in the paint, it may be that those few swirls run really deep into the paint, and therefore would require significant effort to remove



I guess the lesson I am trying to share is that the ONLY way to know what specific combination of pad/polish/pressure/arm speed/machine speed you need to remove the damage on that car on that day, is to conduct a test spot... and each and every car you detail will throw up a different requirement.



You simply cannot say...x type of car with x amount of swirls needs x kind of polish... its one of the main reasons I get so :mad: when I think about the production type polishing that happens where there is a one-size-fits-all approach to paint correction.... you have to let the paint guide you.
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Re: Scuba blue Audi A4 - Detailed by Autocare Services

Post by K.J »

Wow, impressive
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Re: Scuba blue Audi A4 - Detailed by Autocare Services

Post by Rsi huntered »

lawrence wrote:
Rsi huntered wrote:Nice Work there buddy :drool: :drool: :hurray: :hurray:



car came out really nice.......



Just a questions?



You went with a really aggressive combo on this Audi (any reason why) or are the pics you taking not really portraying the full impact of hammering this car took?
I'll let Carl explain his own reasoning but wanted to chime in on 2 things to bear in mind



(1) The level of cut a polish provides is very much dependent on how hard or soft the paint is...



So... let's take a 'medium' cut polish like Menzerna PF2300... and use it on 3 different types of paint.



Soft paint - it will behave like an aggressive compound, remove a lot of paint and probably leave some marring

Medium paint - it will behave like a medium cut polish, probably remove most of the damage and leave very little marring

Hard paint - it will behave like a fine finishing polish, will hardly do any correction and probably won't leave any marring



In other words, on hard paint, FG400 can act more like a medium cut polish and therefore isn't as aggressive as it may seem at face value



(2) You cannot tell how deep scratches/swirls are by looking at them, or by how many there are on the car.



In other words, even if it appears as though there are very few swirls in the paint, it may be that those few swirls run really deep into the paint, and therefore would require significant effort to remove



I guess the lesson I am trying to share is that the ONLY way to know what specific combination of pad/polish/pressure/arm speed/machine speed you need to remove the damage on that car on that day, is to conduct a test spot... and each and every car you detail will throw up a different requirement.



You simply cannot say...x type of car with x amount of swirls needs x kind of polish... its one of the main reasons I get so :mad: when I think about the production type polishing that happens where there is a one-size-fits-all approach to paint correction.... you have to let the paint guide you.
I hear you lawrence and i do understand and i cant speak for this detail thus asked :grin:

Lets wait for wait for the feedback :thumbup: :hug:
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CARL@ACS
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Re: Scuba blue Audi A4 - Detailed by Autocare Services

Post by CARL@ACS »

Good morning brothers, firstly thank you all for those kind words. I really appreciate it alot.

Rsi huntered...
The reason i went Hardcore is because the paint was severely hammered/bad/frightening it looked so bad to me that i couldn't see sparkle without swirls (very badly) basically it looked horrible.

I did do a test spot on the bonnet using menzerna 3 in 1 (it has the cut of pf2300) and a white polishing pad. I was told that audi paint us generally hard. So my plan was slow arm speed.

The bonnet looked back and laughed. All i got was shine scratches. So i went one step up with an aggressive pad. 3 in 1 with orange pad. It made a very very slight difference .

So i went fg 400 orange pad slow arm speed and went twice over each area but the bootlid took 3 section passes.

So in conclusion the paint was very bad. My camera as much as i tried couldn't capture the swirls because if the sparkle over power it. So i went as aggressive as i could with respect too my limited equipment selection.

Thank you brothers once again.

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Re: Scuba blue Audi A4 - Detailed by Autocare Services

Post by GaVeN »

lawrence wrote:You simply cannot say...x type of car with x amount of swirls needs x kind of polish... its one of the main reasons I get so :mad: when I think about the production type polishing that happens where there is a one-size-fits-all approach to paint correction.... you have to let the paint guide you.
Amen!

The amount of people going "How much to fix my paint up, it just has a few light swirls, hardly noticeable" or " Maybe just do a single stage correction, you can get most out"

What people need to understand that you can't correct paint with a set combo or price.
Each car and situation is different, and needs individual combo and time allocated of which the cost is comprised of.
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Re: Scuba blue Audi A4 - Detailed by Autocare Services

Post by Mbuzi »

Nicely done :drool:
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Re: Scuba blue Audi A4 - Detailed by Autocare Services

Post by CARL@ACS »

Thank you Mbuzi
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Re: Scuba blue Audi A4 - Detailed by Autocare Services

Post by mikhail117 »

nice work bud, love the colour :hurray: :hurray:
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Re: Scuba blue Audi A4 - Detailed by Autocare Services

Post by CARL@ACS »

Thank you Mikhail
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