This car was purchased just a few months ago from someone who lived up in new york. And up in the north, cars are subject to a lot more abuse from road salt, snow, ice, etc. The S430 had some very deep rids and swirls covering the entire car. in addition to that, this car has the rock-hard Mercedez Ceramic clear coat.

Nevertheless, i was able to clean up the paint to 99% perfection, using a combination of Meguiar's M105 and Menzerna polishes. On average it took 5-6 passes of M105 on a wool pad to remove the defects in the paint.

This car was only booked for an exterior job, thus the engine bay and interior were not touched.

Enjoy!

Cleaning

Exterior
-Wash
-1Z Anti Insekt
-CG CWC
-Meg's mitt
-P21s TAW

-Wheels
-CG CWC
-Meg's Wheel Brightener
-P21s TAW
-EZ detail brush
-Swissvax wheel brush
-OXO tire scrubber
-ARO


-Wheel Wells
-P21s TAW
-Meg's APC+
-Meg's Super Degreaser
-DD wheel well brush

Clay
-Special yellow poly clay
-ONR lube


Polishing
-Exterior paint
-Meg's M105 via Black TufBuf wool / LC PFW pads (5-6 passes)
-Menzerna SIP via Orange über pad (2 passes)
-Menzerna PO85RD via blue über pad
-Makita 9227C
-3M Yellow Foam Backing Plate
-1000w halogen lights
-BMW LED flashlight (Someone stole my brinkmann! )
-ISA 50/50 wipedown
-DD über MF towels
-Racatac

LSP

-Paint
-Collinite Insulator Wax
-Swissvax Mystery
-Optimum QD
-CG 530XL MF towels
-DD Fluffy green "no name" towels

-Wheels
-Swissvax Cleaner Fluid
-Swissvax Autobahn
-Optimum QD
-CG Barebones (wheel wells)
-Swissvax Pneu

Glass
-Adam's Glass Cleaner


Before:

Here you can see just how oxidized and scratched up the paint was on this car. at first i told the owner then it should take no more than three days... boy was i wrong...






















After taking the before shots, i drove the car into my garage and prepared all the necessary things for the three-bucket wash. (two for paint, one for wheels)





After washing and claying the entire car, i realized that the imperfections in the paint were a lot worse than i had previously expected. sorry, no brinkmann shots this time around... i think someone stole it from my garage, i couldn't find it anywhere...






























just as an example of how hard this clear is, here's how the passenger side front fender looked after 4 passes of M105






unfortunately i could not find my Brinkmann Dual-xenon light, so i had to use the LED flashlight my M3 came with to check for holograms. it actually turned out to work quite well...






Door before polishing

 

after 2 passes of M105





after 4 passes of M105






6 passes finally did the trick








this one took about the same amount of passes







buffer marks from M105





After SIP












and after 6 long days....











































thats all! thanks for looking!

Dom

 

Nice work! That car had major swirl marks on it.

 

Wow, that car was treated quite poorly over its life. Very nice correction!

 

Beautiful work!!!! But, I gotta ask, what took so long??? It looked like 1-2 days max by looking at the pics. Car looks fantastic though.


John

 

thanks!

Jon,

for me these things take a while to do... i like to take my time and not rush through anything that way you end up with a perfect end product. plus i do it all by myself, theres only so much a single person can do in a day...

 

Amazing result! Keep up the great work.

 

ohhhhhhh man you really brought that paint back from the dead, nice work!

 

What is it with Benzes and the lug bolts? They always rust. I did an E320 once and had to remove all of them one by one and buff. The guy was more happy with that than the 15 hours I spent on the paint!

 

Great work, Dom.

Looked like the finish was in pretty bad shape. After you're done I'm sure it's rewarding to stand back and look at the beautiful black German paint.