What did you do today Auto Detailing related?

[CG6Lemon]

Background story:




This customer contacted me on a forum about almost 2 months ago to talk about some "rust" looking damage on his trunk lid. We exchanged information briefly and I set up an appointment with him to drop the car off so I can go over the car and his concerns for the car in person.


Upon arrival the car was clean since he mentioned he didn't drive it for a long time and he just garaged it and drove his daily beater. He went over the problematic areas and I noted them down in my mind as we were going over the car. The areas of his concerns were headlights, iron particles all over the car, but mostly concentrated on trunk lid, improving neglected muffler tips, and improving rear diffuser since it's faded.

I explained to him what caused each defect and what my process was to correct each problem. He felt very confident in my approach, knowledge, and expertise. We set up an appointment to drop off the car for me to work on. Before he took off I quoted him a 6-7 hr job. I underestimated the muffler tips, and the design of the headlights which required more time to get it presentable so total time came to 8 hr 30mins.










Car: 05 Mazda RX8









Started off correcting and restoring the headlights first. Taped off ready to go









Ran into a minor circumstance that I did not factor in for the quote. My 3 inch sanding disks were not able to reach the corner of the headlight design. I sanded by hand and polished by hand














Dry sanded 800, wet sanded 1500 and 3000














Before and afters



















Other side





























Moving onto the beat up exhaust tips. Used 0000 steel wool and metal polish. Both the customer and I were extremely happy with the outcome



















Just to show how nasty it was inside the tips














Cleaned up the textured, porous plastic trim with Opti Power Clean to prepare for Carpro DLUX trim coating









Washed









Decontaminated the paintwork using Iron X and clay sponge



















The problematic spot on the trunk lid turned out spotless









Applied Opti Lense Coating on the headlights









After shots. Will add a couple more in the future. Some shots did not turn out good














Things learned from this job:


Factor in headlight design to determine more accurate quoting

Cleaning exhaust tips is not rocket science but requires a lot of time and elbow grease

Rear diffusers are known to badly fade on this model

The plastic for this headlight did not scratch easily even after OEM coating was sanded off

 

[CG6Lemon]

Product Review: Carpro DLUX









Product description borrowed from Detailed Image:




The CarPro Cquartz DLUX Plastic and Wheel Coating is a semi-permanent coating that will protect and restore your automotive pieces. DLUX contains more than 50% pure silica. This high purity percentage ensures having the most transparent glass coating over the surface, high levels of water repellency and long lasting paint protection from dirt, road salt, ice, snow, and other environmental contamination. DLUX will also coat plastic and rubber while restoring faded pieces and providing a low-gloss, like-new factory finish. CQuartz DLUX forms an incredible bond with the surface it lasts for up to one year! Check out the application instructions below and make sure you clean the surface thoroughly before applying. Protect your wheels and restore your rubber and plastic with the CarPro Cquartz DLUX Plastic and Wheel Coating!










I used the rocker panel as my test subject due to it looking extremely faded and an eye sore



















I used an all purpose cleaner to clean off the dirt. Sprayed on cleaner and agitated with brush









Make sure to keep flipping the towel to not reintroduce dirt back onto the surface. First round









This is how your towel should look like for the final wipedown with water. Clean!









Water behavior without coating









Used Carpro Eraser for final wipedown to make sure the surface is as clean as possible before applying coating. After pictures
























I will update the durability on this product every month. The coating definitely darkened the plastic during initial application. Only one coat was applied. Did not have to wipedown for high spots, the plastic absorbed the coating really well.

 

[CG6Lemon]

Customer came back to apply some touch up on rock chips. I was able to grab some good pictures this time.

 

[spacemonkee23]

Another De-Badge post...

Before

Process:

- Heat gun to loosen up adhesive
- Used dental floss to remove embelm
- Rubber wheel on drill and goof off to remove residual adhesive
- Masking and wet sand with 3000 grit
- Meguires machine polish with pad on drill
- Wax

Pics (Cell phone camera, soory if they are pooor quality)

Emblem removed rubber wheel used

Rubber wheel

Not much of a color fade or out line so I just hit it with 3000 Grit wet sand to knock out some of the outline left by the emblem.

After polish

Complete:

Re-did the plasti dip on my H emblem. Used the black as a base and glossifier over the top this time to get a little shine as opposed to a flat black before.

Put the Emblem up where it belongs... with the others

Thanks for the tips in your debadge post, CG6Lemon!

 

[Teesak]

^^^ How hard/easy was it to plasti dip the emblems? I've wanted to do the rears on mine for a while but thought picking plasti dip out of all the corners would be too much of a pain (especially on the "ACCORD" badge).
Another quick questions, I wanted to do V6 emblem black and fill the lettering with red, I assume hand painting the red V6 would be my best bet?
Thanks guys

 

[spacemonkee23]

^^^ How hard/easy was it to plasti dip the emblems? I've wanted to do the rears on mine for a while but thought picking plasti dip out of all the corners would be too much of a pain (especially on the "ACCORD" badge).
Another quick questions, I wanted to do V6 emblem black and fill the lettering with red, I assume hand painting the red V6 would be my best bet?
Thanks guys

TL;DR: Plasti dip emblems. Its easy, you can do it!
Plasti-dip is very easy to do.

Mask a border around the emblem and do a few very light coats to get a base then a few coats a little heavier. Make sure it dries between coats (no reflection, flat finish).
On your last coat make sure you lay it on evenly and wet, the texture you see while wet is the texture it will dry. Also, The thicker it is the easier it is to peel.
When you are done with all the coats make sure you let it dry completely before attempting to peel. The longer the better. I used a tooth pick to peel the inside of the lettering.

Give it a try and don't be afraid to mess up. You can always peel it off and redo it Watch some Youtube vids too. There are a ton of them.

Side notes:
*I would put some newspaper around the border too, I had a bunch of overspray that I could feel but not see - claybar got rid of it.
*There is a happy medium for getting an even coating for texture, if it is too heavy of a coating then you will get little pores from the propellant because its coming from a spray can... like little bubbles that rise to the surface and pop as it cures. If you see them then your coat is too heavy.
*Make sure to spray all the way onto the taped border, plasti dip needs a hard edge to peel easily. If its too thin it wont peel.

Good luck but mainly, have fun!

Maybe Ill do a write up on my wife's escape if I get around to it.

 

[Accord914]

Waced the car with meguiars wax car was dirty hate white cars

 

[CG6Lemon]

Nice debage job. Made me proud!


You have a pic of washing your car Accord914? Here's mine from this weekend.

 

[CG6Lemon]

3 month update on the wax I used: collinite 845














6 month update: Still good, but not as strong as before









Almost 8 months update. The wax is finally contaminated and not as strong anymore.

 

[CG6Lemon]

Water behavior comparison shot