# The Wifes Car



## DarrenM (Aug 6, 2012)

We've had the car for about four years and other than a semi regular wash, it has generally been neglected.

With a black car, you can only but imagine the condition of the paint (sorry, no befores or durings) and it needed some serious attention. A full recomission was out of the question due to time constraints (plus a lack of machine polisher) and the paint isn't great in places due to supermarket car park trauma so couldn't go too hard at it.

The process was as follows

First, collect my new foam lance and Cotton Candy from Davy at ProCar (whoop whoop!)

Snow foam with CC
Rinse with recently recommissioned Karcher (yay!)
Snow foam again, and scrub panel gaps, trim edges, badges etc with detailing brush then rinse
Wipe down whole car with Tardis
Snow foam and rinse (still a novelty at this stage!)
Iron Cleanse whole car
Snow foam to improve contact time without it drying out (quite a warm day yesterday...)
Clean wheels with Wheel Cleanse and alloy brush
Shampoo using 2BM and Zymol shampoo - incredible how much dirt came off at this stage, even with several foams and a wipe down
Clay using Bilt Hamber clay with just water for lube - pulled off some serious crud
Then an angel appeared in the form of my neighbours son in law (an ex valeter) who produced a rotary for me to play with - so got to work with an old polishing pad and some 3M Finesse (I think) to smooth out some of the finer marks
Once whole car had been buffed, it was coated with Black Hole and buffed with a MF cloth by hand
Waxed using Ion NavCoat and the trims dressed and glass cleaned.

Took about 6 hours in total, but the wife was delighted with the results as was I - see below





































Photos taken with my phone (HTC OneX) this morning.

Hope you like

D


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## jonnyw59 (Jan 31, 2009)

Looking good :thumb:


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## Derekh929 (Aug 28, 2011)

Looking very nice where did you get the sun from it disapeared before i finished mine today


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## m00k (Mar 22, 2007)

Good as new looking!!!

Gd work


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## ArcticVXR (Apr 10, 2007)

Cracking work


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## kcass (Aug 24, 2010)

looking really glossy,good job!!


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## Ronnie (Nov 15, 2006)

Looking great. Great work.


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## Stevesuds (Jun 11, 2012)

Nice work for 'a little play'with the rotary . Gorgeous little schnauzer by the way.


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## DarrenM (Aug 6, 2012)

Thanks everyone, very kind of you.

That was my first time using a machine polisher, looking forward to having another go when I do my dads car - gonna get some new pads first though.

Schnauzer is Oscar, he's 10 this year and a cracking wee dog.

In all his glory...


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## DarrenM (Aug 6, 2012)

Derekh929 said:


> Looking very nice where did you get the sun from it disapeared before i finished mine today


Lol - bit of very early Sun this morning, soon disappeared though but not before burning off the dew so I could get a few photos!


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