My 2006 A4 was in need of a good shine, so I asked my buddy to shine it up for me. I try to keep it nice and clean and looking pretty good. He had never done all black so he agreed to give it a go. Here she is before:



Off he goes. First a good Dawn bath.......



....and then clay barred. He was really surprised at the amount of contaminants in the paint:




That should have been a warning for what he was about to encounter when he got it dried and put some bright light on it. Oh boy.....















As you can see the paint was absolutely trashed. I bought it off lease from someone who obviosly never washed it correctly (brush car washes) and never gave it any real care. He was scratching my head as I didn't know where to even start. It's hard to believe that from 20 feet it always looked so good, only for it to look like this under spots.

He started by taping off the joints. After looking at some of these scratches, he figured that nothing less than sanding with 2000 grit to start with will take them out. He had never wet sanded paint before but had no choice. He just went REEEAAAALLLL slow......





These two were particularly bad:




He figured as long as the water wasn't turning black I was still OK!



After sanding, and before he started polishing.








The kit he used was from Gloss-It. It was the Evolution Paint Correction System utilizing their own proppreitary polishes and the Cyclo polisher. He asked me to include a link. Check the unit out, very nice.

************

He did the hood and front driver fender with the Extreme/ogange pad combo and was surprised to see after an alchohol/water wipedown that many didn't come out. Here's a few 50/50 shots.

 

They were definitely better, but only by about 50%. He decided at this point that it would have taken a rotary polisher and wool pads to get this car right. He didn't think the Cyclo had the guts to get it done inside of it being a 20 hour job. The Extreme Cut works great but due to the hardness of the clear it took awhile. For most of the panels he decided to first use a much more aggressive compound he had from Safety-Kleen by hand and PUSH to get some of these out. It was basically liquid sandpaper and very abrasive, but it was all he had that was stronger than Extreme Cut.

Here's what the fenders looked like with a hand application of the SK cutting compound:



Before, you can see the scratches:



After:



Here's the hood after rubbing on some of the deeper scratches out. Getting rid of them CREATED them....Oh boy.....



Once the sun came up I could tell the rubbing I did the night before was going to pay off once I used the Cyclo again. All be darned, it's starting to shine....





That evening, it was back to it with the Cyclo and Extreme Cut with orange pads. He redid the entire car this way.



After cutting with Extreme Cut on orange pads I moved to Evolution cut on yellow pads. He noticed only a bit of difference for the effort so decided to just go to Evolution Polish on the Green pad and spend a little more time with that. What he got after that was the best he was going to get it for the time he had.

Here's what the car looked like at the end of Evolution polish before Gloss Activator and Gloss Finish ....



Remember, win the battle, not the war.....

Finally it was off to Gloss Activator by hand and then Gloss Finish with the white pad.



Sunday evening, 8pm, brought the car's first trip out of the garage since the clay barring. Not 100% by a long shot, but not bad....









There was no Gloss Enhancer spray on it yet so he pulled her back in and kept working on it.

After a quick coat of Gloss Enhancer It was back to the rear end to rub the wax out of the vinyl and to polish the tips.

Before, they had BAD carbon build up on them. He started with Scotch-Brite pads but the tips laughed at that, so I went to 600, then 800 grit paper. He finished with going back to the Scotch-Brite and then to rubbing compound.

From this:



To this:



For the time he had this was the best he could do. All said I would say the car went from 40% to about 75%, but he just didn't have the time, and possibly the equipment, to take it to 100%. It would have taken him probably 3-4 more hours to get the paint better. All told it was about a 13 hour job over 3 nights.

You can see here even after all that work the scratches are still there, but ya gotta be close to see them. There were scratches on every panel that could have been sanded first.




But all-in-all, it was looking MUCH better in the sun......







What he was most proud of was the deep gouges that he was able to blend and hide on the back.

Back bumper corner. Form this:



To this:




Back wheel well:

From this:



To this:




Center of the bumper cover:

From This:



To this:




Rear quarter. From this:



To this:



PRETTY DRAMATIC!

A surprise shower showed how well the Gloss Finish beads water. He did this car 6 weeks ago......




This kit and this polisher is truly wonderful. Thanks again Rich for great products. He asked me to give out his number. Give him a call at ********* or check out a kit for yourself at **********

 

Quite a dramatic difference!

 

looks better, but will still need quite a bit of work, not sure if 3 hours would have done it

 

can't see pics anymore

 

pics are down... look forward to seeing it since i like to see detailing pics of black cars.

 

Looks like you still got some hazing, but still did a pretty good job.

 

cars looking good. But call me crazy but it looks like most of the scratches came from the claybar, unless a tornado of branches hit the paint

 

looks a lot better than before

your BBS wheels are kick @$$

 

Exactly what I was going to say.

 

thanks! i think the wheels make the whole car really.

 

good job

that is one scary buffer you using.

leaves no room for error. Those exposed center bolts are scarry

 

i see ur a purdouche bag....IU FTW!!!!