# Mirror Finish : Nissan Nirvana Buffer Trailes to make your eyes water!!!!



## Mirror Finish Details (Aug 21, 2008)

Remember This?????










This is how I viewed the car a few months ago and today it was booked into be fixed. It had been mopped quite aggressivly with G3 and a wooly bonnet. Some of the marks were quite deep but nothing that me and Eric would not turn around in a day between us.

The car was only really booked into remove the buffer trails, but on closer inspection the car was also pretty well swirled, so it was decided to carry out a two stage polish to remove the swirls and trails and refine to bring back the clarity to the paint.

Swirly.



















A few combos were tried out and I settles on 3M yellow pad with Menz 3.02 with a bit of UltraFina for some extra oils. The ExtraFIna yellow top just failed today clumping up in the humidity.

Two sets of polishing with the combo gave us this.




























Back Door before.










Again after two polishing passes.



















Bonnet Before.



















Bonnet after.



















While I was getting reagy to start on the other side Eric was refining the finish with the DA and after all the problems with the polishes clumping up we decided to use Lime Prime instead. Due to it's oily make up and slight cut it was ideal for the refining.

Front wing. You can see how the swirls are taking the clarity away from the paint in this shot with no extra lighting.










With 4700k bulb.



















Quite deep swirls as well.










After two polishing sets not yet refined leaving me with this.










The rest of the car was polished this way and refined with the Lime Prime.

Leaving the car looking like this.



























































































Just before the customer picked it up. LSP was Opti Seal.










Customer was over the moon with it. So looks like we now have his brothers car to do, his wifes car to do and tint. All in all a good days work.

Took us in man hours about 10 hours between the two of us I (I could have said 30 hours to get more views, but even I can't concentrate that long!!). This was no way a full correction, as I do not think it could be corrected fully. But it certainly shows how you can turn around a battered car into a nice example. Plus in the real world it has seen some use and there are the details I enjoy doing as it is a challenge.

Here is a picture of a Rolls Royce Phantom in the car wash next door last weekend, just thought you would all like to see this.










Thanks for reading and was a great car to work on with a great customer.

Cheers
Steve :detailer:​


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## 888-Dave (Jul 30, 2010)

Some of the finest trails I think I've ever seen :lol:

Nice 1 Steve :thumb:


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## stangalang (Nov 27, 2009)

Nice work Steve it needed it. I particularly like the guys 2 sponge method in the last shot, 1 in hand 1 ON THE FLOOR READY TO RUIN EVERYTHING!!! Also had those arches/wings been really badly painted? Sup wit dat?


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## Danno1975 (Mar 30, 2009)

Cor, that first pic made me laugh.

Looks like my brother in laws new Audis bonnet.


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

Cracking work Steve


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## DamianBPhoto (Jun 23, 2010)

stangalang said:


> Nice work Steve it needed it. I particularly like the guys 2 sponge method in the last shot, 1 in hand 1 ON THE FLOOR READY TO RUIN EVERYTHING!!! Also had those arches/wings been really badly painted? Sup wit dat?


+1 on that the arches look like matte finish almost.

I wish I had a car that bad to polish. I like challenge.lol

The previous owner left mine in a state like yours 









Lucky enough it wasn't as bad as yours.


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## james_death (Aug 9, 2010)

Great to see the trails gone....:thumb:


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## Mirror Finish Details (Aug 21, 2008)

stangalang said:


> Nice work Steve it needed it. I particularly like the guys 2 sponge method in the last shot, 1 in hand 1 ON THE FLOOR READY TO RUIN EVERYTHING!!! Also had those arches/wings been really badly painted? Sup wit dat?


It was the arches that started the whole detail off. They sprayed them, covered the car in paint hence the mopping.

I only touched the arches with the DA as I tried a test bit where you can't see and it was already peeling off.


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## Mirror Finish Details (Aug 21, 2008)

stangalang said:


> Nice work Steve it needed it. I particularly like the guys 2 sponge method in the last shot, 1 in hand 1 ON THE FLOOR READY TO RUIN EVERYTHING!!! Also had those arches/wings been really badly painted? Sup wit dat?


That floor sponge is his doing the lower parts of the car sponge. Usually most of the sponges are on the floor.

When we have a quiet period we get the chairs out and just watch the carnage going on next door.

Personally i have given up, when you see a £250,000 Roller going through then you realise 99% of people just want a clean car, I just laugh nowerdays.


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## CraigQQ (Jan 20, 2011)

i noticed the floor sponge too.. :doublesho... 

ahwell.. owners choice and all that.. if thats how he wants it cleaned then so be it..

nice work on the navara steve.. orange peel similar to mine.. maybe a tad worse.. 
before wet sanding ofcourse.. now its much better!!


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## Mirror Finish Details (Aug 21, 2008)

CraigQQ said:


> i noticed the floor sponge too.. :doublesho...
> 
> ahwell.. owners choice and all that.. if thats how he wants it cleaned then so be it..
> 
> ...


I quoted him for wet sanding it, but he declined my offer of removing a wad of notes out of his pocket.

Would have looked ace wet sanded though.


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## Leemack (Mar 6, 2009)

Nice job dude.


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## CraigQQ (Jan 20, 2011)

Mirror Finish said:


> I quoted him for wet sanding it, but he declined my offer of removing a wad of notes out of his pocket.
> 
> Would have looked ace wet sanded though.


certainly would have mate.:thumb:


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## scooby73 (Mar 20, 2007)

Nice work, it looks great!:thumb:


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## Brian. (Sep 21, 2009)

Brilliant save there mate! Horrendous buffer trails, how could you hand a car back to someone when it looks like that!?

As for the RR Phantom, just goes to show that even the rich can't afford to keep their car looking tip top and resort to some idiots with 4 sponges between them. You must sit outside and cringe at those people wishing you could at least throw them a £3 wash mitt from kent car care. 

I suppose it might work out well for you when owners see what's happened to their cars, then go next door to you to have it corrected?? You never know, you might see that Phantom sometime again soon!!


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## ads2k (Jul 12, 2006)

Can I have a 'T-cut and Buff' please :lol:, bet the Roller was having that done :wall:

Great job to make it look at least 'half' decent with what you were allowed to do :thumb:.


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## PrestigeChris (Nov 17, 2009)

good work, 

T Cut N Buff £60 haha brilliant


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## Flawless (Sep 26, 2010)

Fantastic turn around guys, those reflections threw me for a second, looked again after my morning coffee and realised what I was looking at, awsome.


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## Matt_Nic (Apr 15, 2011)

Whats the deal then, do you do a proper job on these things right next to a dodgy car wash?

Do people ever come up to you and say "ow much for inside 'n aaaaaaht mate?"

Good job on the Navara, now it's polished to perfection, will your mate be bringing it to you to clean every week now instead of the dodgy local car wash?


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## The Cueball (Feb 8, 2007)

Nice work... love the fact you are beside a dodgy car wash!!

Don't people wonder why the cars coming out of your place look 100% better then theirs after the £3 floor sponge wash! :lol:

:thumb:


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## WEDEL.1 (Aug 11, 2009)

That is a great result, and a job well done.


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## tonyy (Jul 26, 2008)

Fantastic work done...


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## uzi-blue (Mar 16, 2011)

Amazing work Steve, great results, another one saved. :thumb:


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## Kneller (May 13, 2011)

Amazing work mate, it looked shocking before! Well done


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## McClane (Dec 9, 2010)

Great work Steve, looks much better (now the tyres are dressed) :thumb:

:lol:

http://www.detailingworld.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?p=2712014#post2712014


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

First spotted this in the chat forum. Great work Steve,a proper job.


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## DMH-01 (Mar 29, 2011)

Cracking reflections there mate, good job.


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## 123quackers (Jan 29, 2009)

:doublesho thought that was wax curing for a minute........

Some people, as for the Phantom in the car wash hope he has some C1 on it that would help a bit..................

Great work:thumb:


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## cool (Jan 18, 2011)

hi guys,
wow steve...i havent seen the before pictures OMG there is no way i wud have taken the car in that state. 
the customer had been claying the car ( 3 times i think ) and has been hand polishing it ever since he got it back from bodgers-r-us lol
i must say i was really impressed with the lime prime...so much so i ended up spending £150 with the guys from shinearama ( top guys ) and today ive lime primed and black holed my own car with my new DA lol
i really thought using the lime prime on the hilux was a good move on steves part...but only because it was easier for me ( thanks mate ) 
as the customer pulled up with his wife..steve was busy showing him wot we had done while i started to speak with the real person in control of the spends....his good wife lol  she couldnt believe that it was the same car...to say they were over the moon was an understatement.#
all in all more valuable experience gained from steve.
oh and btw i have a golf mk4 r32 in indigo blue being dropped on fri nite so feel free to volunteer a helping hand lol 
im thinkin of the usual tbm...clay...tardis...lime prime and black hole along with optiseal as my lsp.
wot do u guys think? ill post pics on sunday if i get a chance


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## R0B (Aug 27, 2010)

So this is the Navara you were telling me about Steve the other day,wow lol

Great save mate :thumb:


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## StuartCheshire (Jun 2, 2011)

*Steve's treatment of my navara*

Hi Folks… I am the owner of this Nissan Navara and I thought it might help if I tell you the full story....

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin....

My car was scratched on the passenger side of the cab at the rear one Saturday afternoon on a supermarket car park. The offending vehicle and it's driver had scarpered and thus, I was left with the repair to be done out of my own pocket. I asked for bodyshop recommendations at work and several people recommended a local family run garage saying that they'd all had good bodywork repairs from this place. I rolled up at this garage a couple of days later and got a good quote with a bit of discount because I had come on recommendation. A week later I left the car with them and collected it 2 days later.

I was absolutely dumbfounded by what I came to collect… the scratch had gone alright and in fact the scratch removal was a good job, but the entire car was covered in oversprayed laquer. Now when I say the entire car, I mean the tires, the glass, the *&%$ aerial…everything! I asked if he was 'having a laugh' and he said he'd not noticed (a bodywork repair shop and he'd not noticed that a very black pick-up truck was now a kind of rough grey….?). I told him I was not going to pay him for ruining a good car and that he would have to repair the damage and return the car to me in the condition I gave it to him. After an argument and lots of naughty words he agreed that they'd made a mess of it and arranged to take the car back and clean it up.

A week later I again dropped the car off and collected it the next day at around 5.30pm on a dark November evening. The car was outside and wet and the garage owner was using a chamois to dry it off. I told him that I was not going to pay him until I'd seen the car properly in daylight. He wasn't happy at this and threatened not to give me the keys, once again after a few naughty words from myself he handed the keys over. The following day I could have cried… when I saw what they had done to it I was speechless (apart from a barrage of expletives). It looked 10 times worse than the photo on here. I drove firstly to an accident repair centre that was nearby. They looked at the car and told me that it had been "butchered" and that "garages like them give the rest of the trade a bad name". I drove to the offending garage at 10:30am and confronted the owner who went into great detail about how it looked worse than it was and promised this time that he would "do the car properly". He demanded half of the money for the original job and promised to discount the balance when he'd polished the car properly….!! (awww good of him eh?). I told him to pucker up and kiss my butt. I also told him that I had extensively photographed the car and had been in touch with a local solicitor who was prepared to take the case on if after the 3rd attempt the car was no better. I arranged to take the car back a week later.

A week later I drove to the garage to find it locked. I hung around for a bit and nobody came to open up. I asked around and nobody knew why the garage wasn't open. I came the next day, the day after that and then a dozen times over the next 3-4 weeks. The last time I visited, there was another guy waiting outside who told me he'd just found out that the garage had gone out of business and the owner had fled leaving unhappy customers and debts all over the place.....

So, it wasn't for the want of trying to get my car sorted out and it's certainly not that I'm stupid enough to accept my car back in that condition. I was extremely apprehensive at letting them have the car again to do anything to it at all, but I was advised by a solicitor that I should give them 'reasonable opportunity' to repair their mistakes. After they went bust with debts all over the place, there was only one realistic thing to do - cut my losses and hope the garage owner doesn't start up somewhere else and ruin other people's cars…. or preferably that he dies painfully!!

The people who recommended him were devastated too. They had shown me bodywork repairs he had done for them and the work was excellent. I had apologies from them for weeks afterwards.

As Steve has said, I clay'd the car from top to bottom 4 times which carefully removed 90% of the 'buffed-in' lacquer. It has been hand stripped and aggressively polished (again by hand 'cos I haven't got a buffer) a few times and by the time I gave it to Steve, about 50% of the swirls and holograms had been removed by hand… if you think it looks bad on Steve's pics, you should have seen the state of it before! It looked like 'circle-swirled' stainless steel. Some people said "it took some skill by the idiot to put such evenly spaced swirls all over the car".

Prior to this minor scratch on Morrisons car park, the truck was very well looked after indeed. My usual routine was to pre-treat any stains, tree-sap, bugs, bird-crap etc and then wash properly (2 x bucket method), using AutoGlym to pre-wash, Sonax gloss for the main wash. I then used a paint cleaner (Meguiars) followed by Sonax premium carnauba to give it a glossy 'wet-look' shine. It's always had a few bumps and scratches because it is a working vehicle but it often drew looks from people and I was asked a few times "how do you get your car to shine like that".

I wouldn't hesitate to recommend Steve for doing a great job for a great price, in a little less than a day. I've got my baby back now and boy is she gonna shine!!

Since having it back it's had 2 applications of Sonax carnauba… and before you say anything, I know it's not a perfect paintjob, I know it's not a Lambo, I know it's not gonna win any concours d'elegance but she's my baby and I'll wax her until I can see clearly enough to shave in the doors!!!

I guess the moral of this tale is... erm.... if your pride and joy gets butchered by a pillock with a buffer - give it to Steve Hughes for a day!!!


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## gavin davies (Apr 29, 2009)

i love the sign on the left t-cut and buff hahahahahahahahah morons!!!!!!!


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## herbiedacious (Sep 27, 2010)

I'm intrigued by the 't-cut and buff'


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## james_death (Aug 9, 2010)

*Stuart.... Welcome to the forum...:wave:*

*Shame its under such terrible circumstances,:wall:

Great to hear all sorted by Mr Mirror Finish....:thumb:*


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## remagel2507 (May 2, 2011)

If I'm right the owner of that Phantom has and always has had some really nice machinery - I hope he doesn't treat them all like that


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## Superspec (Feb 25, 2011)

Nice job Steve.

People like that should be hunted down and butchered. It amazes me people in business are happy to leave things in such a state and argue with the customer when shoddy work is pointed out.

Glad it's sorted out Stuart.


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## Mirror Finish Details (Aug 21, 2008)

Thanks for the post Stuart really appreciate it.

I tried to get some sun pictures as well but Mr Sun did not want to poke his head out.

Was a pleasure doing the job for you.

Now I think a few days sanding out the orange peel would really make her shine, I'll give you a quote!!!!


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## Mirror Finish Details (Aug 21, 2008)

Matt_Nic said:


> Whats the deal then, do you do a proper job on these things right next to a dodgy car wash?
> 
> Do people ever come up to you and say "ow much for inside 'n aaaaaaht mate?"
> 
> Good job on the Navara, now it's polished to perfection, will your mate be bringing it to you to clean every week now instead of the dodgy local car wash?


I tell you what fella, the guy owning the hand car wash must be taking £1-2k at least a day. He has 2 Rollers, an E Type jag and a Merc. Think he has a better business plan than me.

Plus he does not have to get wet and proberbly does not have a bad back like me.


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## cleaningfreak (Sep 3, 2011)

Mirror Finish Details said:


> Remember This?????
> 
> 
> 
> ...


:lol::lol::lol: i cant believe when im looking at this picture ! 
Perfect job mate ! 
P.s nice orange peel as well


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## autoaesthetica (May 13, 2011)

I can't believe it, a little over a week ago I was working on this exact same situation, Frontier(USDM) as well. Man, these poor vehicles.

Excellent work, I know what went into this hard to finish down monster.


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