So after being out of the detailing world for a couple seasons, i decided to get back in it when my friend asked if i could detail his vette. I was excited to get back into it, and what a car to detail! i don't have all the high end products as alot of guys here, but i think i did a pretty good job with what i've got, and im sure my friend will be very happy. So his corvette came in, and he hadn't washed it in a little while. I told him not to worry about it and i would take very good care of his car. It was too late to wash the exterior, so i decided to just start with the inside and get that all cleaned up. He doesn't drive the car much (only 20,000km on the odometer) so the inside wasn't so bad other than the regular wear. Before After vacuuming, Auto-glym rubber&vinyl for the trim, and auto-glym leather cleaner followed by dura-gloss leather conditioner on all the leather bits The next morning i pulled the car out to give it a wash, and boy did it need one. The wheels were caked in brake dust, exhaust caked, and bugs all over the front (mosquitos EVERYWHERE right now here). I did a dawn wash down to strip any old wax. there must have been something on there before as the water was beading a tiny bit. I also took the time to wash down the engine bay with Dura-gloss orange and a variety of brushes. I then pulled the car into the garage to start clay barring and went with my trusty yellow riccardo clay with ONR as the clay-lube. Don't have any pictures of the clay after, but it was pretty contaminated. Lots of tar on the car but it came out nice after the claying. Upon inspection of the freshly clayed paint, i found that overall the paint was in pretty good condition (assuming because he never drives it). There were some minor swirls, RIDS, and in some spots there was what looked like to be some hazing or some sort of previous detail screw-up. At this point, i decided (with the help of another thread i made on here) to go more for a "jeweling" of the paint and minor correction vs going after 100% with aggressive products. The paint color definitely hides quite a bit of defect, it was quite hard to see everything and took some fidgeting with lighting to see everything. Here are some before's of the clayed paint hazing Most of the car was like this area so i decided that i would try and go with my flex 3401, a yellow sonus SFX pad, and megs 205. I felt that this combo would give a nice correction ability, but at the same time thought that it should finish down pretty close to LSP. After doing my test section, i was happy with the correction (about 95%), and thought that it finished down very nicely. I did try to jewel one area with a white pad + megs 80 to see if i could get the paint to pop more, but i found that it didn't really do anything to make the extra time worth it. i decided to stick with my original combo and go to town. Some areas required an extra pass etc, but overall this one was a joy to work on! After 205+yellow sonus before after hood done Fender 50/50 Scuffing on the front fender all gone Roof before Roof After Even after cleaning the rims found that they still had some water spots etched in. Gave em a little polish with some nevr-dull and shined em up. Rims before: Rims After: Shined up the engine with stoners trim shine And for LSP i used good old collonite 845 and the final product out in the sun! Had fun getting back into detailing and theres definitely more to come!
