Hey guys. Yesterday was our PC-training meet in Toronto. I detailed Sam's (whatacar) car, and it definitely won the battle. In the end I won the war! Here goes.

So inititally I planned on doing two full cars. It didn't work out that way, the '04 coupe that I originally thought would take 2-3 hours took almost 8. A lot of that time was spent explaining processes and answering questions (which I had planned for), the rest was because Sam's G35 had it in for me.

When I first saw the car it was morning and the sun wasn't really out. I washed and clayed and was greeted by this:



No problem, right? So I rolled it into the bay and turned on my halogen lights.







O_O

Sam is a teacher, and while he takes care of the car the very nature of his job seems to entail kids near the car, rubbing against the car, and possibly dancing on the car. Aside from the swirls there were a series of scratches on the hood and near the passenger side rear fender (above the gas cap) that were hideous. I don't even want to know what made them (dirty push broom, maybe?). You can see them in the befores (1, and 3).

Process was:

-Wash with P21S
-Clay (the clay took off an incredible amount of goodies.)
-Test rear fender with Opt Hyper on an orange LC pad...no progress.
-Test rear fender with Menzerna IP on a yellow pad...some swirls removed, almost no progress on scratches.
-SFX-1 on a yellow pad. very little progress.
-SSR3 on a yellow pad. A ton of hazing, almost a sinful amount. A little progress. I was a little worried at this point because I though I'd have to do the whole car like this they take two steps to remove the haze.
-Menzerna PG via a yellow pad. Finally, success. Low to moderate haze and some noticable improvment. I tested this on a spot on the hood and was equally impressed.

Now I was going to break out my rotary, but it was a "PC training day", so it would have defeated the purpose. Luckily PG saved me.

-3/4 of the car got PG or SSR3 via a yellow pad (all fenders, hood, rear deck, tops of doors).
-The entire car got Hyper via orange to clean up haze (and remove marring on bottoms of doors, trunk, roof, and bumpers)

Some areas were wetsanded. I did the top passenger side of the hood with 2000 and 3000 unigrit to take out some of the deep scratches, got them about 90% out. Some spots on doors (people rubbing against them, etc..) and quite a bit on the rear decklid. I used the Hyper to take out the marring.

-Opt compound on an orange to further clean up the finish, finally I was haze free.
-Menzerna FP and some AIO to make it bootiful.
-RMG on the entire car via a black pad.
-EX w/carnauba over the entire car via a black pad
-Nattys Blue
- PB's trim restore on trim, 303 in wells and megs shine on tires. Interior got megs interior cleaner/dressing, leather cleaned and conditioned (z9/z10). Glass and jambs got OCW.

I rolled the car out into the sun after polishing to illustrate to the guys that prep really is 95% of the job. It's kind of amazing how many people think wax is a fix-it-all and will make any car look good. I think they all got the point when I rolled it out with nothing on it (after isa:water rubdown) to show them the difference and how good it looked.I tried to get as many full sun shots as I could, it was 7pm at this point. The swirls were 100% gone, some of the deep scratches are not coming out... I'd say I got them 92.5% out. I wasn't completely happy with the results because there was some marring I think I could have removed that managed to elude me. My process was a little thrown off by the Q&A, but I don't think Sam minded. Next time I see him I'll clean it up a bit more.

Oh, before anyone says "the wheels are dirty", his front wheels got an acid bath that was left on too long - the stripes are the result. They need re-finishing.

Afters:



You can still see the long scratch on the decklid I wetsanded. Not sure what caused it but I don't think it'll ever budge.














Excited (or crazy) owner.



Cheers fellas.

 

Excellent work picus, that is a job well done. Thanks for posting some great pictures.

 

Jealousy owns me.

 

Great job! Question: I have PC'd my car a few times with good results. I have heard people here claim that the G35 paint is soft (chipping, etc). I have almost no experience with different paint, but I did detail my friend's black S2000. The scratches and swirls came off his paint much easier than on my G. In your opinion, is our paint softer or harder than normal? Or neither? Sorry to hijack your awesome thread.

 

No problem. Infiniti paint is funny. I will try to explain.

Honda paint, as a baseline, is very soft - softer than ours. The bad thing with that is it scratches easily. The nice thing is it polishes easily too. I love working on Hondas because my results are almost uniformly great and it's very easy to achieve them. My sisters 2001 Si had worse marring than Sams car but took half the time to finish.

Infiniti on the other hand has soft paint (not as soft as Honda, definitely softer than almost any American or German car, though), however the paint is remarkably frustrating to polish. It requires a more "finesse" approach, rather than straight up abrasion (like Honda). Why? It likes to haze, and it likes to hang on to scratches. Swirls are easy, it's the moderate to heavy scratches that are incredibly difficult to remove from Infiniti paint. Sadly, it picks these up rather easily. I find it's almost always better to do more steps of less abrasive polishes (for example, 2 steps with optimum compound rather than one step with hyper compound), because you'll not only get more marring out, but you'll leave a lot less hazing. A good example of this is trying to touch up Infiniti paint. We get rock chips probably more easily than any brand I've worked with, however the touch up process is much harder than other brands because when you fill the chips the paint likes to shrink and cause low spots, meaning you have to sand twice and fill twice a lot (the guys at the meet saw a perfect example of this yesterday on Peters car). And sandpaper marring is tough to take out in relation to other paints.

The hazing generated by PG and SSR3 on Sams car is a perfect example of how badly these cars haze. The fact that it took two steps to remove the hazing is a good example of how the paint wants to grab on to scratches and not let them go.

The end result is that Infiniti paint is probably my least favorite paint to work on aside from Audi (because it's so hard). It can be done, and results can be good, but it requires a lot more time and finesse. I hope this helps.

 

Awesome job with that, turned out great!

 

i wonder if infinit paint is the same as nissan paint :P

 

GREAT WORK !!! What clay did you use?

 

That makes perfect sense. I got very nice and easy results on the Honda, but can never make mine look as nice as that Honda looked. I thought I just had bad technique. I have Meg's #80. Is that a good aggression level? My current results are pretty decent, but certainly don't make me feel like I felt after that Honda.

 

I don't think so. Remember, all Infiniti's (minus the QX) are made in Japan, and all Nissans (except the Z) are Mexico, US, or Canada. Even if the paint is the same the application process would be different.

Thanks! I used Clay Magic clay. FWIW, almost all clay is made by them, they won a bunch of lawsuits and now they re-sell to everyone and the clay is just re-branded.