# Incredible Detail - 911 Carrera GTS NCP - Buffer trails & iron fillings galore + more



## Incredible Detail (Sep 26, 2007)

*Incredible Detail - 911 Carrera GTS NCP - Buffer trails & iron fillings galore + more*

I thought I'd make an effort to write this one up fully as I love Porsches and this car is awesome. I also felt that it would make a good read as to why you should get your new car detailed. Even the dealer thought the customer was mad getting this done and said his valeter would do it for free. He had no idea what I was going to be doing to the car and understood it a lot more after I'd showed him various things throughout the day.

If you're interested in seing what we are up to then you can follow us on twitter here - . I've been on there for a while and not used it too much but I intend to try and post at least a couple of interesting tweets a day - not loads of spam like many tweeters!

This 911 Carrera GTS was book in for a New Car Protection Detail. More information on this service can be seen in the services section of my website here - http://www.incredibledetail.co.uk/services

Here's how the car looked when I turned up. Transport films remove for PDI and a little grubby from the train ride up and test drive. Unwashed as requested.














































A strange black mark.



















Car was then taken in to the valet bay.










Here's the standard stuff that is would have been used to wash this new Porsche had I not been prepping it. They don't see anything wrong with it and think that this is the best way to do it so I doubt there is a problem with me posting these pictures. It's not exactly a secret.

Tatty sponge










Water blade. How ironic that it is on the GRIT bin. For people that don't know water blades are used to dry cars by running it over the paintwork and glass. This works fantastic and is very quick. However all it takes is on bit of grit of dirty to get trapped between the blade and the paintwork and it will cause big long scratches in the paintwork. I've seen loads of damaged caused by these and it's not nice.










The car was using the standard foam, thorough rinse, lighter foam, the 2 bucket wash with lambs wool wash mitt process. Meguiar's Hyper Wash was used as the foam and as the Shampoo solution.



















No pressure was used when stubborn marks were found. This mark could have been rubbed off but I didn't want to inflict marring in the paintwork so it was removed using tar removed. When washing a car you should never need to scrub at anything to remove it. I also wanted to ensure I caused no marring to the paintwork when washing so that I could see the exact condition it came from the factory in.










After removal of a few stubborn marks around the car I went around the car and sprayed iron X all over it. This product is used to remove iron fillings from the car. It is sprayed on and left for a few minutes. The product goes on clear and turns purple when it comes in contact with iron fillings. These purple areas are then wiped over to remove the iron fillings. A pretty impressive product and saves a lot of time trying to remove iron fillings using a clay bar.

Iron contamination on the rear of the car. Loads of purple here - indicating loads of iron fillings.










If you look at the next 2 pictures you will see a section that is purple and then a straight line where it stops. This is because there was a protective wrap on the car and the areas it did not cover were heavily contaminated from rail brake dust during transportation.










It is more obvious in this picture. Look at the line running from the highest part of the light in the picture. You should see a straight line where the iron fillings stop.










These iron fillings might not be immediately noticeable to the human eye. However over time the iron starts to rust and causes loads of very small rust spots on the surface of the paintwork. If you've got a light coloured car then this can be quite obvious over time if it is not removed properly. If you've got a white or light coloured car you will most likely have noticed these very small brown dots and possibly wondered what they were. If you have no Iron X you can remove these by using a clay bar but this can be quite hard work and can require the use of an aggressive clay bar which may mar the paintwork - meaning a light machine polish or hand polish would be required afterward to remove the claying marks.

The car was the taken inside and a clayed bar was to remove any further contaminants after the use of Iron X. Nothing major was picked up.










This job was to be completed before 6pm so time was quite short meaning I didn't get too much of a chance to picture the defects on this car. Also white is a hard colour to pick up minor scratches etc on it and can take a little bit of time to focus the camera on them.

However with the use of the 3M sun gun (replicates how the car will look in direct sunlight) it was quite easy to pick up the poor finishing from the production line. The following pictures show the mess the car was left in with buffer trails / holograms. These marks would be obvious if the car was in direct sunlight and if you bought a brand new car you would possibly look at the car and think what are those random marks all over my new car.

So what are holograms and buffer trails? If you look at the following pictures you will see loads of random line and scuff looking marks emanating from the lighting source I was using. The marks are where the car has been machine polished very poorly. It can be a combination of many things - mainly wrong compound, wrong speed, poor machine polisher operation or in this case more likely wanting to get to the pub on a Friday. There were quite a few of these marks on other areas of the car but none as bad as this side. It appears that the operator gave up half way through.

All of these marks were taken out using a blue 3M finishing pad and 3M blue top (aka Ultrafina). I suspect that this section of the car was missed when it was being final polished in factory.













































































































This picture and the one above were taken on a tripod to show the difference made from polishing properly. All of the following pictures show the light source on the paintwork only with no random marks (buffer trails) all over the place.




























Once all of the machine polishing stage was completed the car was wiped down with isopropyl alcohol (IPA). The purpose of this step is to remove any polishing oil that are still in the paintwork in preparation for applying wax. The cleaner / barer the surface the better the wax will bond to it resulting in the wax lasting longer. By using IPA to remove the polishing oils it also ensure that all of the defects have been properly removed from the paintwork and not just filled in by the polish.

The car was waxed with Zymol Vintage a couple of panels at a time and the buffed off.



















The wheels were sealed front, back and inside with Gtechniq C5 wheel armour. The car was put on a ramp for this. Had the wheels not had 1 centre nut on them then the wheels would have been removed for this. The guys at Porsche didn't seem to keen to remove them for me but said they'd happily have done it if it had standard wheels.....










Tyres dressed wtih Swissvax Pneu. I've only recently bought this and love the finish it leave on tyre. Shame it's stupidly expensive though.










Engine bay was wiped down with Meguiar's APC and dressed with 303 Aerospace Protection.










I didn't take a picture of all of these steps because as mentioned time was a little short.

Windows cleaned inside and out with 3M glass cleaner.

Exhausts Sealed with Blackfire Metal sealant.

Rubber treated with Swissvax Seal Feed

Interior vacuumed, leather conditioned and fabric sealed with 303 Fabric Guard.

I think that's everything so here are the final pictures. As with the above picture the lighting wasn't best suited to photography in the workshop. Luckily the car was moved in to the showroom ready for collection and looked loads better.































































































































Thanks to the owner for booking me to prep this car for him. It was very enjoyable because as mentioned at the beginning I love Porsches, this one is amazing and I was surrounded by great cars all day - and nice people on the workshop who were very helpful with putting the car on a ramp for me.

Here are some of the highlights from the past couple of weeks.

Firstly this Boxster. These are quite nice cars and this one was a bit tired.










These brown marks under the handles are brake dust particles. This was also on the leading edges of the doors and a few other places. Image what the wheel were like if the handles were like this. This was a protection detail including interior carried out over 2 days.










Iron X saved the day here removing the brake dust.










After washing the car still looked filthy with all the tar and various forms of contamination on it. The clay was black even after iron cut had been used and the wheels took hours to sort out despite using loads of Iron X and wheel brightener.

The car came up pretty nicely though.



















White Discovery 4. Approx 1 year old. Iron X doing it's job below.










After this stage the claying didn't really pick up anything at all which was good and saved a lot of time.

Completed car. Overfinch wheel set it off nicely (not cheap though).










1 year old Audi S3




























Masserati for the same customer as the Flying Spur and Porsche Boxster. Got his Range Rover Sport to correct this week.










A nice Aston (iphone pic hence poor quality).










I'll most likely do a full write up on one or two of the above cars in the near future.

Thanks for reading.


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## SimplyTheBest89 (Mar 13, 2011)

thats shocking that Porsche would use a bucket and by the looks of it an old sponge with a brand new car thats so much money! If Porsche are doing this god knows what other garages are using! Great work though lad


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## nickfrog (Nov 29, 2010)

Great job but shocking standards by the OPC. Lol at the blade on the grit container... the irony !


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## npj (Feb 21, 2011)

Excelent results on the Friday Porsche.


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## -Raven- (Aug 26, 2010)

Thanks for this write up mate, that's a great job done! Nice pics, and the Vintage! :argie:


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## gally (May 25, 2008)

Fantastic work on the GTS mate, very nice car.

If you could post the V12 Vantage write up it would be so appreciated!


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## jay127 (Mar 15, 2009)

excellent work, love the A3 colour


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## tonyy (Jul 26, 2008)

Excellent job done..


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## meraredgti (Mar 13, 2011)

wonderful stuff, cheers for sharing


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## hotwaxxx (Jul 12, 2007)

Great detail and I love the way you wrote down all the steps and the benefits of each and every step of the detail. Really good stuff.:thumb:


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## James_M (May 22, 2009)

Such a nice 911!! great work and a fantastic write up...its scary to think that people think that is an suitable way to wash a car...especially one of this calibre!


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## RandomlySet (Jul 10, 2007)

cracking work mate


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## Incredible Detail (Sep 26, 2007)

Thanks for all the comments everyone.



SimplyTheBest89 said:


> thats shocking that Porsche would use a bucket and by the looks of it an old sponge with a brand new car thats so much money! If Porsche are doing this god knows what other garages are using! Great work though lad


It's not really shocking to most people. It's the norm. Almost everyone uses a bucket and a sponge. A lot higher end dealerships than Porsche use worse.



gally said:


> Fantastic work on the GTS mate, very nice car.
> 
> If you could post the V12 Vantage write up it would be so appreciated!


Thanks. Yeah I'll post that up in the next few weeks hopefully. I noticed you seem to love Aston (from other comments) so I've got quite a few nice ones coming up that you'll probably like :thumb:.



hotwaxxx said:


> Great detail and I love the way you wrote down all the steps and the benefits of each and every step of the detail. Really good stuff.:thumb:


Thanks. Although a lot of people on here know what the point of the steps are it's still nice to explain and make it worth while reading for folk not in the know. I do try to make them interesting so thanks for the comments.


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## gally (May 25, 2008)

Great reply mate thanks. I try as you do, to write some good descriptions of the processes and products used. 

I am an Aston fan. They exude class so much than any other car. The thinking mans choice imo. 

The V12 just happens to be my favourite car of the last decade.
They combined everything i'd look for in a high end car. 

Thanks again for posting.


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## Railsbrough (Mar 24, 2011)

very nice work


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## R7KY D (Feb 16, 2010)

If sex had 4 wheels it would be that gts :thumb:


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## slrestoration (Nov 11, 2009)

Great work on the GTS, all in all one of the most enjoyable write ups ive seen in a while:thumb:


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## tehglu (Apr 11, 2011)

nice job

love that 911!


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## ryand (Jul 18, 2008)

nice write up, useful and informative thanks. how do you deal with the graphics on the sides of the white porsche when machine, tape them up? cheers


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## paulgjohnston (Mar 28, 2011)

Brilliant informative and non patronising post. Many thanks!


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## B&B Autostyle (Apr 4, 2010)

Great catalouge of work there. Love the 911,shocking amount of iron filings and damage.

Lovely stuff!


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## Rowan83 (Aug 21, 2007)

Thank you for sharing, enjoyed reading that! Beautiful.

I can't believe how dealers can think it's acceptable to clean the car with a manky old sponge on a new car?!


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## Incredible Detail (Sep 26, 2007)

ryand said:


> nice write up, useful and informative thanks. how do you deal with the graphics on the sides of the white porsche when machine, tape them up? cheers


Sorry missed this before. Yeah I just put some masking tape over them :thumb:

Thanks again for the great comments everyone.


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## Jav_R (Apr 2, 2011)

Liked very much the explanation, keep on like that


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## Leemack (Mar 6, 2009)

Nice work mate - Shocking by Porsche to allow that to happen in their own valet bay


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## chris141 (Jun 5, 2008)

Great work and write up


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## Incredible Detail (Sep 26, 2007)

Cheers everyone.


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## davidghoni (Jun 9, 2011)

lovely stuff


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