Lexus, said to be top of the line luxury Japanese car brand. In our line of work, we have no prejudice on new/old/make or model of the car, as long you love your car enough to care and upkeep it, we are here for you. Being said, this is a 6 year old Lexus, driven daily to send children to school and back from school. Exposed to all environmental damage for the last 6 years with little to no protection at all for the paint work. Here we are today to revive it.
Upon arrival, we saw nothing uncommon on the car with flightly oxidized headlights, hazy paint surface with poor reflections, dirty wheels and a thick layer of watermark and dust on the paint.
Combination of the worst? watermark covered in dust.
Its all on the flat surfaces of the car.
Dings and Dents on the doors has become a common problem simply because people just don’t care about other people’s car when they open the door.
Deep scratches on the bumper could be caused by the children’s bags when being loaded into the boot.
Scuffed paint. This would be permanent.
Paint transfer from another car.
Some random isolated deep scratches, visible even under natural lighting.
Headlights are semi-oxidized
Although it looks clear but it is rather hazy.
Paint conditions are not too good as well. Swirls are pretty much all over the car.
Light / Heavy swirls on different parts of the car.
As it is quite an old car, we gave a deep cleansing wash while the owner was just standing around and checking out how we work.
After rinsing down the car, we prepared a bucket of new shampoo and started to clay the car. Barely 1 panel, check out how much filth is on the paint.
Some hours were spent on just claying resulting is quite a glossy finish. The owner was already impressed but we are not done here.
We first restored the clarity in the headlights. Before..
After.
Although its is not a major makeover on the headlights, but the clarity restored is quiet obvious. Before…
After.
Remember the swirl damages? We took the effort to document on a tripod, the few steps we took to remove almost all the swirls. This is before.
After the first stage.
After the second stage.
Finally, after the third stage.
Pictures from other areas of the car.
There were some minimum amount of swirls we were unable to correct as it is too deep into the paint.
And after a torturing 1 day, we had to stop for the day and continue on the next day for the correction and coating application.
Wheels are one of the most filthy areas of the car, it not only generates brake dust, it also collect sand from the roads.
Finally, a Before……
And After.
This revival took us 2 days to complete but the results, its pretty satisfying. Don’t take it from us, you be the judge.
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All posts for the month October, 2014
An annual detailing is a must for most uncoated cars. Oxidation and paint deterioration usually happens when the car is exposed to our daily environmental damages like rain, UV, bird dropping, tree sap, etc. This is not just any CRZ we have with here today, its belongs the infamous PocRoc from ZTH. So, it begins.
On the paint work, we get the standard swirl damages which is caused by improper washing techniques.
Basically is was all over the car. Road side car washes causes most of the swirls on this car.
Some permanent damages or also known as battle scars are a common scene on cars of this caliber.
Some high speed stone chips?
We also found some unknown red spots on the paint from unknown origin; together with some tar spots which are common on white cars
We began the correction procedure for the car by giving her a good detailed wash.
Washing itself took about 2hour.
We continued to remove the stubborn tar marks on the paint. Before..
After tar marks removed.
Remember the red spots? We had to clay the entire car to fully remove these unknown defects. Before..
After decontamination.
For the paint work, we used top of the line products to remove 90% of the swirls.
Like we mentioned, 90% because there were just some random isolated deep scratches that were beyond recovery. It is not noticeable but there is actually a fine line on the top left edge of the round led.
Entire car took us about 6 hours which gave a almost flawless and super wet finish. Because this is not a coated car, we applied good quality waxes onto the paint and some glass sealant onto the windows. There you go, enjoy the gloss and shine.
Yes, a 9 year old Volvo is right in front of us today. The condition is as terrible as you may have guessed. Oxidation, Swirls, Scratches, Repainted panels, Paint shop bad finishing, you name it. Its a bundle of almost all the surface defects into 1 long Volvo Wagon.
Looks can be very deceiving as the owner explains how good is the condition of the car for a 9 year old. From a distance, of course it does look shiny and glossy. But why would we be here if he is satisfied with the condition??
Closer look and we spot obvious watermark issues, a faded windscreen nozzle, and some polishing residue stuck under the nozzle.
As we made our usual inspection around the car, we found more unknown spots/stains/glue residue.
Even the side mirror signal markers were oxidized.
We found more stains on the paint, this is a dried up polishing residue that the paint shop couldn’t remove and just left it there. How irresponsible!
This is a pretty shot of watermark issues on the paint just like how we take photos of our water beading
The paint shop painted the side rubber trims with clear coat and it came our bad!
We found more polishing residue on the trims, door handles, etc.
After the longest residue compilation in our life, we move on to inspecting the paint condition. On LED/Camera Flash it doesn’t look too bad.
With the help of the sun, it became worst. This is what we call a Hologram Nightmare. Holograms are polishing/buffing marks caused by uneven usage of the polishing pads and the painter just didn’t finish the paint properly.
How can we forget our good old pal, Swirls.
The swirl damages coverage was a full body coverage, top to toe.
We first gave the car a good wash which took us about 3hours to complete.
Claying is an essential step in this type of correction. Here is the dirt collected from merely 1 panel.
After claying, we rinse the car down and prepare it for the correction procedures.
Notice the top section is still covered in hologram and the bottom is cleared of all damages.
A closer look on the paint under the sun.
Zoom in further!
a Before correction and..
After correction.
A Tri-Stage polishing, Before.
During.
After.
We put alot of Love into the wheel although they are just standard factory fitted wheels.
We didn’t wash the wheel barrel as it was beyond recovery
Here is a before.
And After + Optimum Coating / Opti-Coat Pro
Check out the shine on the wheels!
After a gruesome 10hr detailing, we are proud to present to you, probably one of the glossiest and shinest 9 year old Volvo V50 Wagon ever! As usual we will not caption the results Gallery for your viewing pleasure.
