All righty then, long time no post for us in Show & Shine but that should change shortly. Things been a little crazy of late and I am finally on leave so I can get around to everything thats been put off for a while :drinking2: This lady was in for an extreme makeover, our 1st paying customer for our full house detail in actual fact, and man did she make us work. Not many before pics on this one again (it's becoming a habit I know :sorry: ) as we wanted to get cracking and it had some serious issues at the front end. The usual routine, wash, clay, wash, dry, tape, etc but with the added effort of pulling the wheels off to properly clean them along with the arches, calipers, etc. Wheels off to expose the arches.....some APC and 303 should sort these all out Rims off, the fronts weren't to bad but had some baked on residue from when they fitted the tyres. The barrels of the wheels were a mess however, baked on brake dust, tar, sticker residue from where the balancing weights were :thud: That's better. A combo of Sonax Extreme Wheel Cleaner, Poor-Boys clay, Sonax Tar Remover and some hard manual labour and they were almost good as new Arches cleaned up nicely and treated to some 303 Calipers cleaned up and sealed with Smartwax Rimwax....Terrific stuff for wheels and calipers actually. Even after all the cleaning, claying, etc the Rimwax still made a significant improvement to the looks of the wheels, seen here back on the car With the wheels out of the way we turned our attention to the interior. We decided to finish up all the odds and ends in order to spend the following day concentrating on getting the paintwork back in order. Some after pics of the finished interior. Overall not bad at all and no major issues so this went smoothly. Everything was treated with 303, a terrific product if I do say so myself :worship2: With the interior out of the way we proceded to tape up the car in preperation for the paintwork correction the following day. Some of the defects in the sunlight The front end appeared to have been resprayed at some point and whoever did it clearly hasn't got a clue about painting. The surface was full of tiny 'dents' and was horribly cloudy and full of serious scratches/haziness. We found most of it difficult to photograph during the day but managed to snap these under the flourescents later in the evening. Roll on Sunday and we were ready to tackle the front end. We decided to start on the front end as it was the worst and eventually managed to get it looking acceptable after numerous passes with Meg's Ultra Cut, SIP and 106FA on various LC CCS pads. The rest of the car was polished with SIP and 106FA on orange, white and green LC pads. No pics of the correction stage I'm affraid but overall we managed to get the front end looking proper again and the rest of the paint 95% free from swirls/RIDS. Some afters from Sunday evening and Monday morning before the client arrived to fetch his baby :headbang: Bonnet looking alive again Lovely finish on the red from the Poorboys EX Sealant we applied. And finally some random reflection shots and finished pics of the wheels Tailpipes all shined up And engine dressed ready to go Overall a fantastic car to work on and we were both really impressed with the results. Thanks for looking :thumb:
Gorgeous S3, that red looks very nice. How about some more pics of the Mk1 I spot in some of those pics!
Thanks guys P1et the Mk1 is my wife's car, it will be getting some TLC now while I am on holiday and will post some pics as soon as it is done
I'm really Impressed with the results too. Never thought to use 303 like you do and I use it all the time for mostly Interiors. What a great job you guys did and the write is just as good. thank you for sharing...Bravo...:thumb:
Great write up and superb detail. You and rustbucket nailed this one! I love the car and you have the red just dripping wet. I bet the client was thrilled as I know I would have been.
Very nice results on the rim(s) and wheel wells :applause: The rims look great too, you'd be amazed the difference nice clean rims make to a vehicle :nod: The rest of the vehicle turned out great, love that aggressive stance these new Audis have :thumb:
We cleaned them 1st with the Sonax Extreme Rim Cleaner then rinsed and dried them. Gave the barrels a light misting with the Sonax Tar Remover and let it sit for about 2 minutes before giving them a good rub with a dry microfiber to remove the tar (the Sonax Tar remover starts to dissolve the tar as soon as it comes into contact with it). Once that was done it was another rinse to neutralise/clean off the tar remover and then used some hard manual labour + more tar remover to remove the sticky residue from where the balancing weights used to be. After all that another wash with regular soap and then dried and sealed up with Smartwax Rimwax :thud: Alot of work but well worth it at the end :angel: We only just got it in a few days before we got this car in so naturally we tried it on everything we could :applause2: Thank you, I believe the S3 Sportback will be making it's way over there soon. Terrific cars and they go like the clappers as well. Thanks JL, couldn't have done it without the goodies you sent over to us. We got another red lady in at the moment that we hoping to try out some Jetseal and a good nuba on.....Some terrific detailer I know told me red + JS109 + a nice nuba is the shizzle :applause: Thanks again. Thanks Nica, as I said I think the results on the wheels were well worth the effort we put in Yea, the bonnet spray work was terrible but at the end of the day we got it looking a whole lot better and the client was thrilled. At the end of the day so long as they happy thats all that counts :mounty:
Great job. I really wish our we could get the S3 2 door here! Your threads are getting me too interested in Sonax for my own good! We can get an A3 2.0T with DSG and Quattro, but ours have 2 more doors and a lot less power
Wait a minute...they got the steering wheel on the wrong side of that thing!!! J/K, man, looks terrific coming from a fellow Audi owner. Yeah, wish we could get the S3 in the states.