BMW Z8

Polishing a Z8

This Z8 seemed to clean up well with just a washing, but the paint felt like sand paper. Not sure if it was covered with tree sap or what, but it took clay bar, compound, and multiple passes with polish to remove. The 23 year old paint was thick but hard. I used Meguiar’s M105 …

The value of PPF and coatings

If you have a car that you take to the track often, you know how hard it is to remove the rolled-up rubber marks you get on the exterior. They don’t often damage the paint, they just require some intense polishing to remove. And that’s the risk: If you aren’t careful with the polishing, you …

Nothing to polish

Sometimes there’s just nothing left to polish. This is especially true with cars from the 90’s. When the auto industry switched over to water-based clear coat paints, many of the earlier products started to fail before the new-car warranty even expired. The other area which caused problems was in door jams and trunks. The flexible …

Good better best

In a previous blog post, I mentioned that my core service is a detail with ceramic coat, which I offer at three service levels: good, better, and best. Since I’m working mostly with cars that are drivers, it makes no sense to do a concourse-level detail. That said, some cars do need more attention than …

Fender flair repair

As a general rule, I try to do minimally invasive work, only removing enough paint to get the desired level of shine and clarity before coating. But occasionally there isn’t anything to work with as was the case with this fender flair. A good bit of paint was scraped off down to bare metal which …

Bumble bee

This E36M3 was really loved by someone. The roof was painted black by brush and the front of the car sprayed yellow with rattle-can paint and no clear coat. Much of the factory clear is failing or missing on the rest of the car and there appear to be at least two layers of yellow …

Polishing an icicle

This is a 200K mile X5 we had in the shop this week for a detail and ceramic coating. White paint is tough. You wash it and it looks white. You clay bar it and it looks white. You polish it and your pad is filthy, and it looks white. But then when you ceramic …