Hello,

 

My Superb Combi needs a polish, and i cant find out if i should buy some clay and a polish machine and do it myself, or i should have it done by a company. Its pretty expensive, like £400 to have it done.

 

Can anyone give me an idea, how long time a single run machine polish of  superb takes ? Just the machine polishing part 1 time for the entire car minus the roof - has anybody done that and can tell me ?

Its a mystery it cost £400-600 for a complete treatment (which is wash, 2 times machine polish and then a sealer). My own estimate just for 1 time machine polish would be like 45 minutes for the entire car ?

11 minutes ago, mikkelvitus said:

Hello,

 

My Superb Combi needs a polish, and i cant find out if i should buy some clay and a polish machine and do it myself, or i should have it done by a company. Its pretty expensive, like £400 to have it done.

 

Can anyone give me an idea, how long time a single run machine polish of  superb takes ? Just the machine polishing part 1 time for the entire car minus the roof - has anybody done that and can tell me ?

Its a mystery it cost £400-600 for a complete treatment (which is wash, 2 times machine polish and then a sealer). My own estimate just for 1 time machine polish would be like 45 minutes for the entire car ?

It's hard to say as it would depend on the level of correction needed and the level/quality of finish you want, e.g it could take multiple passes.  So if you have some deep scratches and marring then a more aggressive pad/compound would be used but then you may need to do additional passes with less aggressive pads/compound to correct and refine the first pass.   Some all in one products are good in that they will polish and refine with a single pass but IME the paint needs to be in generally good state with just some minor top coat issues.  How bad is your paint?  

 

I think 45 mins to do a whole Superb is optimistic. I'd allow for 1-1.5hrs. IME prep is everything so you'd ideally wash, clay, use a fallout remover, polish and then add a last stage product to seal and protect all your hard work.  Each stage compliments the others and my 'list' wasn't very detailed/exhaustive .  On my Superb3, when it was new (so not much to correct) I spent 10 hours on the car.  Which included; wash/decontamination, single pass machine polish and then application of two last stage products. It also included sealing the wheels, shuts, exhausts and glass but I done those things whilst waiting for the products on the body work to cure.   I think you'd be looking at 4-5 hours to do the bare minimum and for your hard work to actually be worth it. 

 

If you intend to polish the car again in future then I'd recommend just buying your own and looking on YouTube for tips on usage and products. A DAS6 Pro random orbital polisher is a good bit of kit and is very user friendly for non-professionals in that you'd have to really really concentrate to do serious damage to your paint with it.  The Checmical Guys channel is very good, as are forums such as Detailing World and the Clean your Car forum (also an online detailing store in the UK).   There's also a detailing section on Briskoda.

 

A polisher is also good to have when you discover some superficial damage to your car from car park scrapes and similar. I've used mine quite a lot over the last 5 years and think they are well worth it.   You could buy yourself some pretty good products to get the job done, plus a polisher, for half the price you'd pay someone else to do the work 

 

https://www.briskoda.net/forums/forum/8-styling-and-car-care/

 

 

 

 

Yeah, 45 minutes is barely enough to wash and dry it properly, never mind polish it.

 

When I did my B5 Passat estate, it took me about 30 hours end to end. That was for:

• Thorough wash
• Tar removal (and wash off the residues)
• Claybar
• Tape off the trim
• 4 passes with the DA polisher and different pads/polishes
• 2 coats of sealant/wax

I'd probably do it in much less time now (better products and skills), but I'm still budgeting for a weekend to do my Superb when I get the chance. If you drop it into a detailer with all of the prep done yourself, they could probably do a good polish in 2-3 hours if it's not badly scratched.

Thanks for your answers, i did not make myself clear.

What i meant with the time, was the time to do 1 polish run. No washing, no claybar, just 1 polish, one time.

Assume the car has been washed and clayed and all that, ready to do a machine polish (but just 1 run).

The time from you switch on the polisher, till you are finish with 1 layer of polish ?

When I did  my old 7 Series (more metal but less fiddly bits to tape and polish around) it took me and my wife about 12 hours of work.

 

We did almost exactly what chimaera listed above but 3 passes with polisher - so 12 hours each = 24 hours in total. 

 

And definitely tape off the trim and badges as chimaera mentioned. Sound advice. 

 

Also a good idea to have a touch up stick/scratch pen handy - you always find some rash when you do a job like this.

My car is in with a local detailer as I type, for a full correction.

 

They've had it all day today and it'll be ready end of day tomorrow. That's with two people working on it.

 

It's a Mercedes-Benz E-Class, but is a similar size to my old Superb Twindoor...

 

On 12/06/2019 at 17:09, mikkelvitus said:

Thanks for your answers, i did not make myself clear.

The time from you switch on the polisher, till you are finish with 1 layer of polish ?

 

After 9 yrs I polished my Superb for fine scratches and because a very fine gradient of polishing liquid was used whole treatment took 6 hours just to do it right and with great care to details. This fine level of polishing allow to repeat the process for several times without whipping out the paint and protective lacquer coat.

 

Edited 18 August, 20196 yr by safari hunter

Its not cheap to get set-up initially, you will need a good amount of polishing pads for one car and a selection of different polishes. If you went down the DA route you could be £200-300 into all the equipment.