The client purchased this car from Pickles Auctions without seeing it, and trusting it was in great condition. Being a nice guy, he actually bought it for his wife, as he is due to be married in a week, and wanted it to look perfect for when he presents the car to her after their wedding overseas.
Upon showing us this car, despite having only 38,000KM on the clock, it was easily the worst condition car we've ever had to work on. Fortunately, money was no object for this client, and he wanted it to be as perfect with possible, gearing towards 100% correction, topping it with the best (and most expensive) coating on the market. Having recently acquired a couple of bottles of Modesta BC-05, Modesa P-01A, and Modesta M1 from Japan, this car was the perfect test of Modesta and our skills!
Two of us spent at least 50 hours each on this car, and this was truly an exhausting week but the client was gobsmacked with the results. And to be honest, so were we. There's been a lot of hype about Modesta, and like most things in the detailing world, thats all it is, hype. But we can honestly say, this product blew us away.
As always click on pictures to see them larger.
Starting with the interior, it was filthy:
The mats were removed, scrubbed, pressure washed, and extracted. Optimum Power Clean (OPC) was used on the leather and the mats in different dilutions to get them like new. OPC is a fantastic product and great value - great to use around the house too, to remove crayon marks and the like from walls!
After a few hours, the interior looked and smelt new. It was protected with Optimum Leather and Vinyl Protectant:
Unfortunately that was the easy part. It was now time to inspect the paint:
Plenty of thickness thankfully:
It looks like the previous owner washed it with a combination of steel wool, scouring pads and a broom!
After testing what worked, we had to use our most aggressive combination available, due to the deep defects and super hard paint
This left the paint hazy, so we tried different combination to finish up with:
Overall we polished the car 3 times, and the roof and bonnet were done 4 times!
Some areas needed wet sanding to remove deep scratches. However some were so deep nothing could be done, but wet sanding helped minimise their visibility.
Almost the whole roof was sanded:
Other areas were spot sanded.
Before:
After:
Before:
After:
Before:
After:
Several pads gave their lives to this car:
But the results were worth the sacrifice:
After the initial cut to remove deep defects, it was time to refine the paint, and this required more testing:
The whole car was then jewelled, using a super fine polish and super soft pad to give an incredible depth and shine:
Note how you can see fleck of gold, blue, purple and even green in the paint! These look stunning in the sun, and give metallic cars their amazing look!
Stay tuned for part 2!
