Complete 4 day paintwork restoration on a Monaco Blue BMW 135i.

Backstory, in bullets:

-Car was bought with 10k miles on it
-New owner saw car on dealer lot looking clean and very glossy (glaze fillers)
-After a few weeks of washing the gloss was lost and real finish revealed
-Paintwork had very little depth, clarity or wetness and new owner wanted all of the latter brought back to the car

Some before pictures in sunlight. Car had lots of RIDS, swirls and was covered in machine holograms as the dealer attempted to fix the prior damage and ended up making it worse. Along with that caked up wax and polish residue was left in nearly every crack and crevice.

If you dislike lots of correction shots and 50/50's this writeup may not be for you. The main focus was the correcting the finish as NO interior work and NO engine detail was carried out on this detail.

















Wheels cleaned using Sonax wheel cleaner applied to the wheel DRY followed by Iron Cut



Car was beading well due to obvious glaze fillers left over from the dealership, all of which needed to be stripped off 100% before correction. The above sun shots were after the wash stage (no IPA yet)

- Pressure washed the finish followed by a 5 minute foaming using CG citrus wash
- Foam rinsed off and the car was sprayed down with Optimum Power Clean at a 5:1 dilution
- Finally a 2 bucket wash was carried out with a strong mixture of straight Dawn

Clayed using a riccardo bar with ONR as lubrication in a Kwazar bottle, which is an absolute must for at least your wheel cleaner and clay lube.



After clay the finished was wiped with straight IPA multiple times until it was squeaky clean.

Here is the car all prepped and masked after taking the necessary paint readings



Onto correction. After a bit of time playing around with combinations I decided on a process which yielded me the best result, safely. I began playing with foam pads but that was yielding me only 80-85% correction while generating a lot of heat. I decided wool was need to correct the car properly.

Process as follows

M105 on black wool pad (2x)
Menzerna SIP on DD Yellow Cutting Pad
Menzerna 106FA on a LC tangerine hydro
Menzerna PO85rd on a DD Black pad

All 50/50 and correction shots taken after the first 2 correction steps (no finishing polishes) and straight IPA wipedowns to ensure zero filling

Hood under the halogens, deep RIDS







After wool and foam compounding, great difference in clarity without using a lightsource.





Light compounding with 4" foam around the washers, tape removed after wool so I could clean up the areas tightly around the washers and also remove some of the tape lines left behind after compounding.



Closeup of defects under Fenix TK40





Front fender was done entirely with 4" wool and 4" cutting pads as larger pads made for uneven correction on the contours



Trunk section, some more serious RIDS



Cleaning up the wool holograms with a DD cutting pad



50/50 Trunk under halogen



Closer view



Wooling out the rear quarter



Before



After

 

Here is a great example of 2 things, first being general neglect from the original owner and second is heavy machine holograms left by the dealer















The door... I took a bunch of different shots from all angles with both my SLR and Point and Shoot camera to show all the defects and difference in color before and after correction





Under LED light











Before



After



3" pad work here, lowered speed on the makita and spent more time making passes to work out the defects

Before



After



Here is a video 50/50 of the passenger door

YouTube - Street Dreams Detail - BMW 135i Before and After Paint Correction

The funny thing about hacks is, and luckily for me, they are not extremely thorough when buffing out cars.

Notice how the rear bumper has substatially less defect and holograms compared to all the major panels? This is more realistic of how much defect you would find on a car with about 10k miles on it

Before



After



And back to a bit more hack'age but still not terrible







Tailight before



Finishing down with 85rd after 105



After



50/50 on drivers door into rear quarter, few RIDS I was unable to remove



Before



During



After



Only very light marring in this strip between the kidney grill and headlight, knocked out in 2 steps with only little compounding needed, no wool

 

50/50 on front bumper



Once all the compounding with wool and foam was finished I gave the car one more IPA wipedown and moved onto the finishing stages, here is the 135 out in sunlight after finishing down to check my work.











Remember this...





This..



To this..







Car was finished with 2 layers of Menzerna Powerlock, wheels treated with Rejex sealant for protection.

Finished car at 7pm. Finished shots



























The owner came to pickup and was beyond ecstatic with the result, I had kept him updated with correction shots through the process and when he finally came I went over the whole car with him using the LED light.



Remember that door before?




In total after I added up all my hours spent on each day this detail came out to about 39hrs, a bit over my original estimate of 30-32.

The owner wanted his new BMW to look like a proper Monaco Blue BMW should and after talking with him for a very long time before even starting the job I knew how much he was looking forward to the end result. Its great to have enthustastic people who really care about the work that was put in. He asked for a lot of pictures and as you can see from the above writeup... I kindly obliged icture:



Thanks for looking.

 

Wow. The car looks better than the day it came home to its first owner I'm sure. The work you put in really paid off, and the final shots look incredible. I'm still always amazed by the 50/50 shots. Awesome work and thanks so much for sharing the pictures and writeup with all of us!

 

Thanks SAL!