This beautiful sepang blue pearl Audi A3 s-line came to us for a basic new car detail with stone chip repair. Being a new car it was in good shape but not perfect, three or four stone chips were dotted around the car, there was some plastic transfer marks on the boot lid and for a new car the paintwork was dull. All the above was fixed and the owner was delighted.
This is a write up on the process, i hope you enjoy!
First thing as always is to remove the bulk of the dirt and road grime, this lessens the chance of inflicting swirl marks in the hand wash stage.
Because this car is pretty dirty and hasn’t been washed in a while we used a traffic film remover on the lower half of the car and in around the door and booth shuts, these areas are always the direst.
After letting the traffic film remover work on the dirt and grime for a couple of minutes we pressure rinsed the whole exterior.
The hard to reach areas were cleaned with a soft bristle brush and a mild all purpose cleaner.
Next the exterior got a hot hand wash
Now the exterior was clean and free from dirt and road grime we concentrated on removing any bonded and embedded contamination. First the lower half was dried and a bodywork solvent was used to remove any tar deposits after that we tackled the embedded iron contamination. Here we sprayed on a pH neutral fallout remover, this product turns purple on contact with metal. The metal deposits come off the braking system which is very hot and these metal partials then stick to the paint. Metal fallout can also come from when the car is being transported from the factory via train.
The final part of the contamination removal process is to address any remaining bonded contamination and this is done by a hot, clay towel wash. Think of a hot towel shave but instead of a blade we use a clay/rubber towel to gently remove anything stuck on the paint leaving behind a super smooth clean surface.
Next we cleaned the wheels and tyres, again the same pH neutral fallout remover was used on the wheels as on the paint and a hard bristle brush with strong all purpose cleaner to remove grime from the tyres.
Final part of the wet work was to dry the exterior using a soft microfiber towel.
With the paint dried we moved the car into the garage where we noticed some plastic transfer marks which most likely happened while the car was being washed with a brush, we removed these with a solvent and soft cloth.
With about two hours of washing and cleaning down the car looked very (eeerrrmmm) clean, but this was not good enough as there would still be remaining residue on the exterior from the previous stages. Here we used a pre-wax cleaner to lightly polish and cleanse the paint it was also applied to the exterior glass and wheels.
Finally we touched up any stone chips with the correct OEM Volkswagen paint (LY5Q/E9) and as seen in the last clip of the above video we applied a high quality PTFE carnauba wax to protect the paintwork through the winter until the car returns again in the spring for the same treatment.
A quick walk around showing the level of gloss and colour enrichment achieved.
Thanks for looking!
