The BMW 1M, only 740 cars were sold in the US making it a highly sought after car in the enthusiast world. With a 335 horsepower engine and a journey through BMWs performance parts bin, together you have one cool driving machine.
The car had been taken to the racetrack on a few occasions and was showing some signs of wear on the front bumper and rocker panels. We decided with its track history in mind that a complete front end paint protection film install would keep the dreaded paint chips at bay and preserve this future classic. The paint had some other issues aside from the chips. The paintwork had become dull due to swirl marks and scratches, and required some polishing to bring the luster back. We agreed on doing a single stage paint correction to eliminate the swirl marks and start to bite into the deeper scratches on the Sapphire Black Metallic finish. We also decided to apply 22ple VX Pro2 Glass Coat to the entire vehicle after the film installation to ensure the finish stays immaculate for years to come.
We started with our standard decontamination process by foaming the paint down with Iron-X Snow Foam.
We also cleaned up the engine bay with Sonax Multi-Star APC at 10-1 using various brushes.
On the hood we found that HD Adapt polishing compound, paired with a Rupes 6″ UHS Pad on the Rupes 21LHR did just the trick. We proceeded to the side panels and quickly realized that a one step wasn’t going to eliminate some of the deeper defects. We fine tuned our process and found that using a Meguiar’s 5.5″ Microfiber Cutting Disc with Meguiar’s M100 compound cut out most of the defects while leaving a decent finish. We then refined the finish with Sonax EX 04-06.
After the polishing process was finished, we re-washed the vehicle with a Citrus Wash and Dawn mix to remove the polishing oils and dust build up. We coated the vehicle with 22ple VX Pro 2 Glass Coat for 3-4 years of jaw-dropping gloss and protection. Once the coating had cured we finished it off with two coats of 22ple VS1 Final Coat for added gloss and slickness. 22ple Final Coat, if used often, will protect the coating layer and provide even greater scratch resistance.
We sealed the wheels with 22ple VS1 Final Coat and applied 22ple Perfect Vision Window Coat to all the glass.
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