Here is a fun little car with lots of potential to look much better! Black cars are always the toughest to maintain, and this owner understands that. After picking this car up from the dealership, he brought it over to me to have me correct the paint, and get it looking like it should…a deep, wet, glossy black!!!!

A total of 10 hours went into this turn around with a fast working three step process. I say three step process as in three polishing steps (I only count the polishing steps because all the steps in the prep work are mandatory). Luckily for myself and the owner, the infamous BMW jet black paint correct quickly. On a harder paint, I would not have been able to get through 3 steps in such little time.

After washing and taping off the car, I proceeded to figure out my game plan via my test section. At first, I tried a combo that would “possibly” give me the results I was looking for, but I was let down as the amount of damage to the paint didn’t allow that combo to work. So, I had to step it up to achieve desired results.

My game plan for the whole car ended up being the following:
washed with chemical guys citrus wash
clayed with DI light clay bar
Taped with meguiars masking tape
compounded with surbuf and meguiars 105 on the PC
polished with menzerna powerfinish on a hydrotech tangerine pad
refined with menzerna 85rd on a black LC pad
paintwork cleaned with chemical guys EZCream
paint sealed with blackfire wet diamond
tires dressed with meguiars hyper dressing
wheels cleaned with sonax full effect.
wheel wells dressed with chemical guys barebones
windows cleaned with meguiars glass cleaner

Here are some before shots of how the car arrived. Dirty all over, very unclear paint, dirty wheels with lots of brake dust, and overall lacking in the appearance department!

Claying did not remove a lot of contaminants, which is a good thing after all!

A few 50/50 shots of in progress work (also my test section). Also, you will see that I actually removed the side marker from the fender. Just like removing the license plate and anything else that is not glued, double sided taped, fixed to the car, removal allows much better polishing work to be done as you do not have to polish around things. If at all possible, I will remove anything anytime! Some detail jobs will get the car slightly dismantled and bumpers removed in order to get behind areas!

Here are the after shots that I had taken. Please note, there is ZERO wax on the car at this point. I wanted to make sure I could get some decent sun shots so these were taken after cleaning the paint. I took the wheel after shot while the BFWD was setting up on the paint!

If you have any questions, feel free to ask away!

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