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Pictures from July 23rd, 2011 - Saturday Open Class
What a great group we had over the weekend - thanks for making my job so much fun!!!
We had a little twist on things this time around; we usually select a car that one of the class attendees drove in so that we can demo both hand application and DA application process for swirl removal and then talk to the other attendees about some isolated issues they may have. While we did that, we also rolled a second car into the garage because of the horrific level of holograms present thanks to the dealer doing a bit of touch up - we just couldn't resist this extra bit of challenge. You see, the car in question is a brand spanking new Audi TT in non metallic black, and all over the good ol' Interwebs we read about how incredibly hard Audi paint is, how difficult it is to correct, etc. More on that later.
First, let's run down the regular demo we did following the classroom portion of the day.
This is the condition of the hood on a 3 Series BMW that's just a few years old. Not the worst we've seen, but bad enough for a non metallic black car.
After removing all the loose contaminants we felt the presence of some bonded contaminants, so we clayed the hood before going any further.
Once the bonded contaminants were gone the paint was already looking a bit more glossy.
On with the next step - the fun part of removing swirls in order to give the paint that clear, glossy look we all want in our vehicles. After taping off a section of the hood to give us an area for hand application and DA application, we set to work. As per our usual process, we started with Ultimate Compound, followed with Ultimate Polish and finished with Ultimate Liquid Wax.
Here, the initial application of UC is worked against the paint.
People are often surprised to see just how little wax we apply, so it's fun to take someone who admits to having a tough time wiping the hazed wax off their own car and letting them wipe off our demo application. A big grin is a typical reaction here!
Following that exercise (and, yes, hand removal of swirls from an entire vehicle can be considered exercise!) we moved on to DA application. We used the same three products, Ultimate Compound, Polish and Liquid Wax.
Pad selection, tool speed, arm speed, cord placement and other fine points are critical to proper buffing. Technique is key as even the best product in the world can't do the job without your help.
UC is applied first using a W8207 Soft Buff 2.0 foam polishing pad mounted to a G110v2 DA buffer set at speed 5.
Following the UC application and removal we swapped over to a W9207 Soft Buff 2.0 foam finishing pad for application of Ultimate Polish, then a fresh W9207 for application of Ultimate Liquid Wax. The end result?
On the left is the hand applied test section, on the right the G110v2 test section.
This shot isolates the G110v2 test spot. There is some pitting present that the owner is going to have to live with, but the swirls, water spots and other defects are gone and the paint looks deeper, richer and even blacker than the rest of the hood.
At this point we roll the car back into the garage and let the attendees have a go with the DA as we provide assistance along the way.
With the demo completed and the attendees getting familiar with the G110v2, we turn our attention back to the Audi and those nasty holograms.
Here's the rear quarter panel of the TT. Since this and the rear spoiler were the only impacted areas it wasn't really suitable for our demo car, but for a little experiment it would do nicely.
Pretty spectacular, isn't it?
Now, some people might go straight for M105 and a small pad because they've read about Audi's having crazy hard paint. But we wanted to see how it responded to our typical classroom demo of Ultimate Compound, W8207 foam polishing pad, G110v2 set at speed 5 and moderate (ie, "normal") pressure. So we taped off a section and set to it.
We did just a single section pass using the above mentioned combination, and here's what we got after that single pass. Remember now, this is after a single pass UC only - no polish, no wax. Oh, and just for giggles, we did an IPA wipe down of the corrected area just to prove that we weren't merely filling in the holograms. We weren't.
Of course we couldn't leave the car looking like that so we had the owner finish the quarter panel using the same product/pad/tool combo. He cleaned it all up, even though he'd never before used a buffer.
So what's the lesson here? Well, it appears that not all Audis (or all BMWs for that matter) have such crazy hard paint and that you don't necessarily need anything extremely potent (liquid, pad or tool) to correct them. Now, we aren't saying that all Audi or BMW paint will respond like these two cars will, just that there are differences in paint systems even within a given brand. We have no doubt that some Audi paint can be quite hard, and we've personally worked on some BMWs with extremely hard paint. But they aren't all like that. Not even close.
Bottom line - no matter what kind of car you have, and no matter what you've read online about the supposed hardness or softness of that paint, do a test spot first and find out for yourself. What you're reading online is someone else's experience on a different car.
Great job on two German luxury cars. 
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