# Polished Bliss®: 996 GT3 Club Sport



## Clark @ PB (Mar 1, 2006)

Being a bit of a Porsche nut I'd looked forward to this one for months!

The car was a fairly new purchase by a member of the Porsche Club and he had been told by the previous owner that if he had any problems and needed some detailing work carried out then come and see us 

As far as I'm aware the previous owner is possibly a member on here so if they read this then thanks very much for the referral :thumb:

The car itself was already in fantastic condition with the underside almost as immaculate as the bodywork, the only thing letting it down was the defects in the paint so that's where we come in.

On arrival, this is about as dirty as I've ever seen it to be honest:
































































As with any detail I started with the wheels, these had some really stubborn stains on the inner rims so I decided it would be quicker to just remove them:



















I gave them a good pre rinse and applied Wolf's Decon Gel and left them for 10 minutes while I gave the arches a quick going over:



















After Auto Finesse Citrus Power (10:1):










The Decon Gel had done its thing by now and was ready to give a quick agitate and rinse:










After rinsing there was some minor tar spots and transport wax type overspray, this was easily removed with Autosmart Tardis:

















After being dried off with the Black Baron (or Metro Vac as it's now called) I applied a coat of Swissvax Autobahn:




























The other 3 corners were repeated in the same way before carrying out the usual wash and decontamination process.

With the car now inside I dried it off with a "Dry Me Crazy Towel" before blasting out any excess water with the Black Baron:










After collecting paint depth readings it was time to start polishing. I'm not going to make out like the car was riddled with massive deep scratches everywhere as it wasn't - but it did have a fairly even distribution of intermediate defects with the odd deep one here and there. Red is a nightmare to capture swirls on camera but this was about as good as I could get without wasting too much time:










The GT3 badges were removed from the engine cover to get at the defects behind them:










The plastic panels such as the bumpers, side skirts, rear wing and engine cover were corrected with Menzerna 3.02 & Lake Country foamed wool @1800rpm's. I then followed up this step with a Meguiars V2 Polishing pad and Menzerna 203S @1500rpm's leaving just the final stage of refining later on.

Here's a few before and afters:












































































































Rear Bumper:

















Door handles were done with a Meguiars Polishing Pad & Menzerna 106FA @600rpm's:

















As expected, the metal panels were extremely sticky to polish so the Meguiars Microfibre System was used to correct them. I don't use the MF system much but it's a god send on sticky paint as the polish doesn't dry out or weld itself to the paintwork.

I tend to work the polish for longer than Meguiars suggest as I find you get better results correction wise but it will inflict a bit of micro marring now and again as you can see here:










Of course, this is easily removed with a refining stage and Menzerna 85RE and Meguiars Polishing Pads were used with the DAS 6 Pro to get that crystal clear finish.

With the paint fully corrected & prepped it was time to protect with Swissvax Crystal Rock:










This was applied to the whole car and left while I sealed the glass:



















Amongst all the little details that remained the tyres were dressed with Swissvax Pneu, Tailpipes polished with Auto Finesse Metal Polish and the engine bay was protected with Swissvax Motorshine (this was done before polishing so any light overspray was removed).

The interior was given a quick going over but it didn't need much, just a good dust down and hoover, wiped down with a damp MF etc and glass cleaned with Auto Finesse Crystal:





































Back on the exterior now and all that remained was a final wipe down with Auto Finesse Finale and jobs a good un' :thumb:

As already stated, the car wasn't exactly bad to begin with so it was nice to be able to pretty much fully concentrate on the paintwork.

Due to the weather being proper dull I had to use the Sun Gun to replicate some sunlight to try and at least give an impression of what the final finish looked like:






















































































































The rest of these pics were taken with Rich's new Canon:































































































































And as a little extra, here's a short video Rich put together just as a quick play around for future plans we have (click on 1080p HD if your internet connection is half decent)






Thanks for looking, total work time for this one was approx 40 hours.

Clark


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## Ronnie (Nov 15, 2006)

Loving it Clark.. Stunning car thats for sure..


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## Fish (Nov 16, 2011)

Cracking job there. 

Fish


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## paranoid73 (Aug 5, 2009)

Great work as always Clark :thumb:

Was that a new GT3 badge or did you manage re glue the old one?


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## bigslippy (Sep 19, 2010)

Lovely work as usual Clark:thumb: , I'm not a red fan but have to admit that looks stunning.Thanks for sharing ........looking forward to the RS4 Avant write up now


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## Clark @ PB (Mar 1, 2006)

Ronnie said:


> Loving it Clark.. Stunning car thats for sure..


It had a big influence on me, I've now ditched the turbo idea and now want one of these in Speed Yellow, just have to save a bit longer once the scooby's sold! 



paranoid73 said:


> Great work as always Clark :thumb:
> 
> Was that a new GT3 badge or did you manage re glue the old one?


That's the original one mate, I just used the same thickness of tape as the OEM stuff and made a template before removing (Place a bit of tape accross the letters before removing so you keep the spacing correct) so I could re-fit it exactly where it was before


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## Clark @ PB (Mar 1, 2006)

bigslippy said:


> Lovely work as usual Clark:thumb: , I'm not a red fan but have to admit that looks stunning.Thanks for sharing ........looking forward to the RS4 Avant write up now


Starting that one now


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## Scrim-1- (Oct 8, 2008)

Fantastic work good to see auto finesse products being used.


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## DonB (Jan 23, 2008)

Always look forward to PB writeup! Good work as always! :buffer:


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## Ronnie (Nov 15, 2006)

I know have got a few GT's on the books and I know exactly how you feel its just the rawness (is that a word). Speed yellow is a brilliant colour for these!


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## Clark @ PB (Mar 1, 2006)

Ronnie said:


> I know have got a few GT's on the books and I know exactly how you feel its just the rawness (is that a word). Speed yellow is a brilliant colour for these!


That and they're a good investment, the 996 Turbo is a hell of a car for the money but it's certainly not appreciating at the moment...


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## Ronnie (Nov 15, 2006)

tell me about it a customer bought a turbo for £20k with more history than the National Museum one owner from new and all reciepts 95k miles needs rads and heat shields but bar that is a minter! no chance of a GT for that money thats for sure!


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## North east Car Care (Jan 14, 2008)

Cracking work Clark


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## matzagrin (Nov 1, 2009)

Great car and great work... love the photos!


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## Vision2k1 (Sep 26, 2010)

nice car and nice job! :thumb:


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## carrera2s (Jun 28, 2009)

Cracking job mate!:thumb:

love all things 911, have owned 5 variants over time.


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## cdti_sri (Jul 17, 2006)

There is something about a red porsche that just makes me stare. Love it great work.


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## Trip tdi (Sep 3, 2008)

That really does look stunning, so much gloss and attention to detail here, the paint has a liquid shimmer to the paint, never seen red so glossy, massive credit to you guys.

Amazing work Polished bliss.

Have a great Chritmas and new year from me :thumb:


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## matt_83 (Apr 28, 2009)

Fantastic attention to detail! :thumb:


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## Gleammachine (Sep 8, 2007)

Looks great Clark, nice work mate.


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## magpieV6 (Jul 29, 2008)

stunning work Clark


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## Huw (Feb 16, 2007)

Stunning result. Another fan of the 996 GT3.


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## DMH-01 (Mar 29, 2011)

Cracking job mate.


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## ford nut (Dec 12, 2011)

stunning job . What was the Canon camera he used?, fantastic colour balance..:thumb:


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## Wax-IT.be (Feb 3, 2011)

Great work


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## Jesse74 (Jul 19, 2008)

Justice served... nice one buddy


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## JJ_ (Oct 26, 2005)

Three words ; Oh Yeah Baby !

What camera did rich plump for ? Bit of a canon nut myself.


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## wish wash (Aug 25, 2011)

Car looks great, such a deep shine. Crystal rock never fails


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## scooby73 (Mar 20, 2007)

Nice work Clark! The finished shots look fantastic.:thumb:

Enjoyed the short video at the end. It complemented the write-up nicely.


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## tonyy (Jul 26, 2008)

Amazing finish..


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## joshhatton (Jan 10, 2010)

My fav car ever. Amazing turn around


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## Auto Detox (Dec 22, 2007)

Beautiful car & looks awesome now Clark, I do miss my 996 

Baz


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## Kev_FTD83 (May 6, 2011)

Excellent work as always guys! Thanks for sharing!


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## Alzak (Aug 31, 2010)

Great car and in right color :thumb:


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## AlexTsinos (Oct 10, 2010)

Stunning results!


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## Clark @ PB (Mar 1, 2006)

Thanks guys! 



ford nut said:


> stunning job . What was the Canon camera he used?, fantastic colour balance..:thumb:





JJ_ said:


> Three words ; Oh Yeah Baby !
> 
> What camera did rich plump for ? Bit of a canon nut myself.


It's a Canon EOS 60D :thumb:


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## gb270 (Aug 22, 2008)

great work there stunning


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