We’ve always been a fan of the Proton Preve since its birth but never had we seen such a well kept and tip top condition Proton Preve. The owner is one of our longest friend and supporter, he decided that the car needed some love and attention after the front section had been repainted. This was merely a simple polish and restore. Read to find out more.
Upon arrival, the car was pretty hazy. With the complete R3 bodykit and an upgraded aftermarket wheel. The car sits just perfectly.
Being a rather well maintained ride, the paint was in quite a good condition. Just a few minor fix and some accidental damage that we could not restore.
Here is one of the scuffs that cannot be restored.
Paint wise, you can see that the paint shop did not do a very good job at the finishing. It is a common problem for cars that had been repainted. The typical paint shop are just not capable of that finer finish you are looking for, hence we are here to fix that.
We let the car cooled down before washing. Since it was rather straight forward, there wasn’t much to document. We’ll skip to the paint correction. Here is some photos of after polish.
A little haziness on the paint after the first pass.
Final finish cleared it off and you can actually see that metallic flakes more clearly.
Here’s a quick example of swirls detected under the sun.
After a minor polish, we cleared off the minor swirls.
Another minor swirl spot found under the sun.
Cleared it off. After shots.
After about 5hours, we finished the polishing and restoration process.
As a alternate finishing unlike our usual coating application. We finish the car with a generous coat of premium high quality wax. Check out that glossy mirror finish.
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Today we have quite a special customer that drove all the way to leave the car with us for an entire day. This Mazda2 is barely 6 months old but already met so much abuse that its crying for a full makeover.
Have you ever expected that the underside of the front bonnet is glossier, shinier and more wet look than the entire car?
Here we have the car, just arriving from Singapore. With the bonnet area and wheels still piping hot, we had to let her cool down first. Meanwhile, our routine inspection for the paint was done.
There was a dull shade on the paint when looked closely.
Stains from bird droppings were quite visible on the paint.
There were even some very much hardened bird dropping splatter. We’ll be expecting a bad etching later.
Black cars can be rather deceiving in photos because they may look very reflective but their true condition is hidden behind that gloss.
6 months of poor car wash resulted in stains in areas like this.
Side mirrors were covered in bug splatters as well.
Moving on to the paint damages, we found some rather interesting amount of swirls on the paint, this doesn’t look like a 6 months old car with these amount of swirls.
More swirls and holograms found on the paint.
Holograms spotted on the door. Well, basically the whole car is covered in holograms and swirls as a result to “restore” the car but failed miserably.
We did a detailed wash and decontaminated the surface. Check out what the clay bar picked up from just 1 panel.
As we mentioned before, we’re expecting a bad bird dropping stain on the hood.
Another bird dropping stain visible after the wash.
After a few passes of polish, we came to a swirl free result.
More areas swirl free.
The door previously covered in holograms and swirls are now clear of damages.
Finally, a quick before.
and After.
We also manage to clear off the bird dropping stains that was etched into the paint. Fortunately the damage was not catastrophic yet. PS: pardon the polish residue as we only clear it up when the entire polishing process is over.
We spotted some rather deep scratch on the roof. Probably from an attempt to rub off bird dropping.
Manage to recover the damage. Dear readers, please do not rub off bird droppings as bird eat from the ground, sand does not get digested and the bird droppings actually contains sand in them, rubbing the bird dropping off will only result in scratches. In this case, we’re lucky to be able to remove the scratch, you might not be as lucky everytime.
Final outcome from the detailed polishing, the car was ready for the Opti-Coat™Pro.
After the final wash and coating application, the night came. Before we showcase the finishing, we did some quick final checks on the paint under LED and also the street lights. Results were amazing.
So here’s the final results of this makeover on the Mazda2 all the way from Singapore.
Well, we like to start by saying, this is a sweeeeeeet ride, as much as we love the styling factor and the performance of the brand new Honda Civic Turbo, it really sucks to see how a dealership can wreck a brand new ride to this extend. The owner of this sweet ride did his homework and consulted many “specialist” on this matter, even his bosses, parents and friends said the same thing, “Its UN-SAVABLE! or NO WAY this can be restored”. Instead, We say BULLSHIT! Read on to find out more.
For this ride, we were given the keys to drive the car back as it would take longer than usual for the entire process to be done and the owner had to go to work. So yeah, we drove the car back at 8.30am in the morning. Cool down the paint and started the insane makeover.
As usual, we did our routine paint diagnosis on every panel of the car. Before this, we had already inspection the car prior to the appointment but now we found more damages.
Deep holograms were also spotted on the door.
More swirls and waterspot stains on the front bonnet.
The line you are looking at is actually a long hologram marks.
We initially thought the marks on the roof were glue marks but turned out to be holograms as well.
Watermark etching on the front hood after a polish? Imagine how good was that FREE polish now?
To give you a picture of how bad the paint is for a 15 day old car, check out this sun shot.
We started the process with a 4 hour wash to clear up all the polish residue left behind by the dealership’s detailer and also to clear off the stains from day to day usage.
After the 4 hour wash, we started to experiment on different polish solutions and different combinations to find out what’s best for this scenario.
Another 4 hours went by as we struggle to find the perfect combination to treat this paint. As from our experience with working on Honda(s), they tend to have very soft and delicate paint quality, which in this case, a lousy detailer would cause these severe damages. Fortunately, we found that finishing that we were after, check out the result.
This is a section on the front bonnet whereby we saw swirls and holograms.
After 1 pass of polish, the paint was not fully clear of the swirls too. In this case, not only did the so called “detailer” at the Honda dealership gave free hologram damage, he also scratched the paint as well.
By now, the owner was already stoked and very happy with this result. But we were not, as it was still lacking a little more shine.
After a little more kung-fu we settled for this final finishing on the hood.
We the night came near, we were unable to continue polishing the car and had to stop for the night. This is the before shot of the door.
This is the after. Cleared of all damages.
We updated the owner on the process and we also stated that we needed more time. He was understanding enough to know that this is not a process to be rushed. We sent the photo of this side mirror to the owner and the feedback was “I’ve never seen my side mirror so glossy ever!”
Happy with the result, we end our Day 1: with this final finishing for now.
Day 2: We started at 10am, the sun was out and we started work at the back of the car. Check out how severe the paint condition is.
After much effort to restore the paint, Check out the difference.
Sun shot reveals the before to be full of swirls and hologram.
And magic happens. The determination to prove the people that deemed this paint un-savable wrong.
After about 15 hours out, we finally finished the polishing process and was ready for the final wash.
We gave the car a final detailed wash to remove all polish oil, polish residue and polish dust. She was ready for Opti-Coat™Pro now.
We took about 18 to 19 hours split into 2 days to complete the process. Check out the final caption-less photos.
PS: The bosses, family, friends were speechless when they saw the comeback from this deemed total lost paint.
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