Sometimes an off the peg suit, whilst looking great, doesn’t quite fit and a visit to the tailors is required for that ultimate, bespoke, made to measure service.
Sometimes this is true of detailing, and when your car needs those little individual touches, we can tailor any of our services to fit your vehicles requirements.
An example of this service is shown below, with this rather unique and fairly rare (less than a dozen Alpine white M3s were sold in the UK) E46 M3
Work to be undertaken was as follows
- Remove and repaint both bumpers, the rear one need replacing in the end
- Remove and repaint wing mirrors
- Remove and refurb all the wheels
- Remove and replace all badges
- Remove and replace rear light clusters
- Repaint hubs and calipers
- Full paint correction detail + wet sanding of rear quarter
- Last but not least, wrap the roof with CF effect vinyl
How it looked on arrival
Not too bad from a distance? on closer inspection
First job was to get all the body parts off that were going to be repainted, so after wrestling with bumpers and wing mirrors it was time to get cleaning
With it being white i wanted to clean under all the exterior trim to help prevent staining in the future
Wash procedure was a fairly strong mix of APC to thoroughly clean and degrease all surfaces, followed by a normal wash with shampoo.
Handy part about having the bumpers off was that it gave me a chance to clean all those areas that are never cleaned
Enigne bay getting a clean up
Clayed using a fairly agressive clay, as there was a fair amount of fallout and overspray on the paintwork.
Final rinse then back inside to remove the wheels
Arches were soaked in a stronger APC mix, then scrubbed clean, followed up with Tardis to remove tar
Still some staining but this was improved using a paint cleaner
Calipers and hubs were then repainted using a hi – temp silver paint
The whole back box was then polished and sealed using britemax metal polish and sealant combo, although only the tailpipes are visible when the bumper is on, it was worth doing while it was accessible
Before
After
Next job was to replace the mismatched tail lights, one was a bmw cellis led and the other was a normal one, so both were replaced with some brand new led ones
Area cleaned up and sealed, again to help prevent future water staining on the white paintwork
Other side before just to show how much soiling collects in normally hidden areas
New lights ready to go in
All fitted, better test they work!
Next the badges were removed
Again loads of soiling underneath
Soon cleaned up ready for the new badges to be put on after the machine work
Onto the engine bay and underbonnet area
All the exposed paintwork was cleaned with SV cleaner fluid, then waxed with Saphir, a sort of 50/50
Rubber hoses were treated with SV Pneu and hard plastics with AS highstyle
With all the dirty work out of the way, it was time to inspect the paintwork
With it being white, it was never going to be easy to capture the defects, but I managed to get a few useable shots
And the best (worst!) for last, runs in the clearcoat on the nearside rear wing, and a nice big patch of orange peel on the bottom section, now I’ve seen bad paint jobs before but this was right up there with the worst of them!
After taking reading with the Posi 200a I managed to get a nice set of split layer readings to use as a guide while sanding out the runs and orange peel, for the runs I went 1500, 2000, 3000 by hand and finally 4000 by DA to make it easy to polish back up.
The process for the OP was 2000, 3000 and again 4000 by DA
The runs weren’t totally removed but unless you stood on your head upside down you would barely notice what remained……
Afters
Back onto the ‘normal’ corrective work, fastcut plus on a green 3M compounding pad was used, then refined with Menzerna 203s on a 3M polishing pad.
Bonnet before
After one hit
After second hit
Refined
The above process was carried out on the rest of the paintwork
Some random afters
In the meantime the wheels were back from the being refurbed, and were sealed with nanolex premium sealant before being put back on the car
Next job up was the Carbon Fibre roof wrap, using 3M Dinoc film, which has great abrasion resistance, and will not fade like some of the cheaper printed films
All that was left to do now was refit the freshly painted bumpers and wing mirrors, then apply 2 layers of Swissvax Best of Show to the paintwork, and 2 weeks of work left the car looking like this, truely a one off BMW and one of the most pleasurable details I have done to date.
Excuse the quality of the outdoor pics, but bright sun and white cars don’t make for easy to take pics!
If you wish to book your car in for a similar service, please feel free to contact us to discuss your requirements, and let us tailor make a bespoke detail for you