We don't get too many threads of this nature, but now I have run out of cars to clean, I'm bored 

 

Apologies in advance for some of the rubbish pictures and lack of decent light source

 

Between doing some DIY in the home, like some on here I have been passing the time cleaning and detailing vehicles since I became Furloughed back on 23rd March. I'm fortunate to have a little safe area in front of my house that I can retreat to when needed

 

 

After cleaning my lodgers van, detailed my Fabia vRS and wife's Fiesta Zetec S it was time to turn my attention to this Audi. Very much been looking forward to this since my mate bought it  

 

So, this is my friend and neighbours 2009 Audi S3 in metallic black. He bought this as the second owner with 40k on the clock about three years ago. This is his daily and is often used to visit customers of his around the country, so the S3 is now sitting on 90K. As such, he has not really looked after it, even handing it over to the local £5 car wash every now and again Such a waste!

 

 

I initially said that all I was going to do was correct the paintwork and apply protection once done, but as it turns out I couldn't go and correct paintwork and leave the rest of the interior and engine bay as it was. 

 

After setting up my kit, the most important part of the day was next .... a brew!!

 

 

The above, essential piece of kit saves me at least an hour a day! I can get 4 cups of tea in there and it will keep it in the exact same temperature as when I put it in, all day :thumb: (of course, it will also keep cold drinks icy cold for those hotter days)

 

Back at the task at hand and I almost failed at the second hurdle (first being the cuppa, of course!) .......

 

 

The hose that connects to the gun would not stay connected once pressurised I've had my Nilfisk C120 for about 9 years and has been faultless, apart from this very bit. The first time this happened was about 6 months outside the warranty period, but the awesome Nilfisk replaced the gun without hesitation. This time I didn't want to go down that route as it had been much longer and wanted to press on with the car. 

 

To me, it was obvious that the prongs that hold the hose in place had been prized apart too far over the years (my poor technique I guess) and simply needed bending back. This didn't take long at all, although getting the little spring that popped out the long black tube inside the gun and putting all back together without it all pinging free was a right PITA. 

 

Once sorted, I could set about snow foaming with my Autobrite lance and foam, decon and see what the paintwork was like. 

A few before pics .... 

 

 

 

 

At this point I realised that the foam was not dwelling as it used to 😞 I know what I need to so to sort this but I will have to wait until I'm back in work so I can get my hands on the right tools to take it all apart to clean / replace the little filter. 

 

 

After power hosing off the foam, I cleaned the car using Autoglym car shampoo. The grill and fog surrounds were sprayed with APC and agitated with a pastry brush. 

 

 

Next up was to remove the wheels for a clean and seal, along with the arches

 

 

... the arches were also snow foamed, agitated with a stiff hand brush and jet washed. I then sprayed some Autoglym vinyl & rubber spray. Never used this before, but was part of a set my MIL picked up on the cheap from a charity shop. Milky & very wet this stuff!

 

The wheels were removed and cleaned twice with differing dilution ratios of Bilberry, then sealed with Poorboys Wheel Sealer.

 

 

 

 

Whilst waiting for each of the three layers of wheel sealer to flash, I started decontaminating the paintwork. Firstly, with Tar-X and then Dragons Breath, rinsed off with the Nilfisk. I cracked out the medium Bilt Hamber clay and set to it.... this was the last picture I took of the clay, which was the dirtiest I had seen up til now. Then I clayed the very bottom of the rear bumper and was clear that I had missed some tar spots. Oh well!

 

 

I pulled off waaaay more contaminants from the wife's Fiesta a week or so before this, so not that bad considering the age of the S3 and lack of up-keep.

I then cracked out the Autoglym metal polish... IMO not as good as the Auto Sol I usually use and still haven't tried the old Meguairs NXT polish I have at the very back of my detailing cupboard, but can't complain really

 

 

With the car now decontaminated and clean, I could assess the paintwork. This was done out the front of my house so I could use direct sunlight to show up as much as I could as the only light source I have is my iPhone 😞 Once I had noted all the bits and pieces I needed to pay attention to I move the car round the back of my house, out of the direct sunlight. 

 

This was the condition prior to decontamination;

 

 

Several scratches that I considered at this point to be removable by machine, but heavily swirled paintwork 

 

 

 

Several scratches on the passenger wing

 

passenger door;

 

 

 

passenger rear 1/4;

 

 

Drivers rear 1/4; 

 

Not sure if the quick Youtube video I want to embed will work 

https://youtu.be/BENejfAvt4Y

 

Once I had moved the car round the back, it was brekkie time .... homemade double sausage and egg muffin :argie:

 

 

I don't usually wash cars in direct sunlight, but as I wanted to correct the paintwork to the best of my ability I chose to initially work out the front, but was always the plan to move round the back & in the shade when it was time for the machine to be broken out. Unfortunately, the hot, direct sunlight messed up the roof a bit .... I could almost hear the neighbours cogs turning trying to work out how I have spent two days cleaning a car for it to look like this:lol:

 

 

At this point I picked up my Das-6 Pro + and had a go and trying to improve some of the scratches I found, none of which I could feel with my finger nail. 

I first tried to correct with an orange Lake Country pad and megs 205, but this barely touched the swirls let alone the scratch :censored: I did expect the paint to be hard, but I could only see around a 20/30% improvement in swirls so completed another 6 passes (another 3 on speed 5 with moderate pressure, followed by another 3 or so on 3.5 with minimal pressure) Whilst this was almost good enough for the swirls, it took around 12 passes or so to get to this point :doublesho and did barely nothing to the scratch.

 

I found myself hunting for my rotary to try and speed things up, but couldn't find any of my backing plates

 

The next best thing I could do was to try another pad and polish combo, so out came Meguiars 105 with the orange Lake Country pad. This worked well & much quicker on the swirls than the megs 205 (obviously!), but I only had one decent spot and 5.5" pad, so had to order more of both. Being furloughed (and on an apprenticeship wage to boot) meant I couldn't justify spending £36 on essential pads, plus another £30 or so on backing plates for the rotary, so I was determined to improve the paintwork with the DA.

 

Whilst waiting for these to turn up, I got bored so decided to clean the inside of the car, which was an absolute mess!! This car is driven as a hot hatch it meant to be, but the owner tends to forget coffee cups don't stay in the holder when you boot it off the mark or round corners!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

very sticky coffee residue

 

All the bits inside were put in a black bag and put to one side, I wiped all trim and leather part of the seats with a weak-ish APC mixture then coated with Poorboys Natural Look Dressing. I then hoovered the car out with my Hetty. 

I then made up a stronger mix of APC and sprayed in the cup holder and the "AUX" button, leaving to dwell for a good few minutes before grabbing an old cotton t-shirt to soak up the mess.

 

Whilst this was soaking I went round with my Hetty, but always mindful of soft plastic, I always put a cheap cloth over the end

 

 

The matt was cleaned using Autoglym Interior Shampoo

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The two door & tailgate jams were cleaned with APC, rinsed with water and coated with Autoglym SRP & HD Wax. I also gave the door rubbers a spruce up with some Gummi Pflege.

 

With the interior now clean and new sot and 5.5" orange Lake Country pads to hand I could set about improving the condition of the paintwork. 

Naturally, I started with the various scratches, which IIRC was around 10 in total. The passenger front wing had several, as did the passenger door 

 

 

My technique was to rub down with 1500 grit, then 2k, 2.5k and finally finishing with 3K. 

I tackled the first scratch on the passenger front wing. First rub I used the 1500, but was intrigued to see if the damage was still there. I grabbed the orange Lake Country spot pad with megs 105, which left me with this;

 

 

I then spent ages trying to improve this. Several hits with the orange spot pad and 105, which didn't sort it. So grabbed a yellow (heavy cut) Hexlogic 5.5" pad with Megs 105. Again, didn't really see a marked improvement, but then remembered I had not used the 2k, 2.5k and finished with 3k wet&dry... what a douche!! 

 

Once I had worked the scratch with the other pieces of wet&dry I found the right combo that had the results I was looking for.... a cheap, Ebay special 3" heavy cut spot pad with Megs 105. 

Of course, this would still need refining and fishing off properly. For this, I used an orange Lake Country spot pad with Blackfire SRC. Although I have used the Megs 105 & 205 combo for years as it works for me, I wanted to try out the Blackfire. 

 

After several passes with the orange pad and Blackfire SRC, (once I had taken the sanding back to 3k!!) I was left with this (click on image to see a video)...

 

 

Although this one scratch took me an absolute age to refine & finish properly, I was very happy with the outcome. The other scratches didn't take me anywhere near as long, thankfully!

 

Once I had seen to the scratches, I could concentrate on the rest of the car.... as I liked the results from the cheapo 3" spot and Hexlogix pads, I mopped the whole car with these and Megs 105. These were fairly quick passes with pretty light pressure and a damp pad with occasional spritz of water on to the panel to reduce the dust you get from the 105. This was also lot quicker than the many passes of the orange Lake Country pads. I then went around the car again refining with Blackfire on a Lake Country white pad. 

 

 

 

Pre-refinment (Click on next image to see a video)
Untitled by Jamie Sims, on Flickr

 

Even the brake lights had a couple of hits ofMegs 205 on Lake country orange spot pad

 

 

Top of the grill surrounds that's partially covered by the bonnet

 

 

Periodically, I would move the car into direct sunlight to check my work

 

 

One of the best things about working on this car is the lack of detailing tape that is needed..... not that I had any, but due to the home DIY I knew I had low-tac masking tape that I could utilise! 

.... and the condition of the paint after correction and refinement;

 

 

Once all the machine work was done I set upon the door handle recesses but didn't really want to start messing around taking them off, so had several attempts to hand polish these as best as I could with a MF disc

 

 

... you will notice the polish residue in the nooks and crannies, but a bit of work later (including the rest of the car, of course)

 

Before adding the LSP, I went around the exterior plastics. I used Autoglym Vinyl & Rubber stuff on the front grill & got surrounds & grills

.... and the door mirror plastic & B-pillars with Gtechniq C4

.... the glass was polished with Autoglym Glass Polish on a MF disc, by hand.

I then washed the car with the old Zymol car shampoo to get rid of the polish dust and cleaned the fuel filler area... several hits with strong APC. Once this was done, I sprayed the engine bay with APC and agitated with different brushes, then hosed off, finishing off with 303 Aerospace ... no after pics for this as I was running out of time at this point :censored:

After the final clean down, it was ready to be finished off.... Lime Prime was the first weapon of choice, on a white Lake Country spot and 6'" pad. Once this was done, I applied two layers of Autoglym HD Wax (Note that this is not the UHD stuff!) 

I've now had several goes at applying wax by DA & red Lake Country pad in the years gone by, but can't seem to get the hang of it! It's either so thick that it's a bugger to get off or so thin that I couldn't tell if there was even a layer on there! 

So, after the first layer via DA, I did the bead test

There seems to be some protection there, but still wasn't feeling happy with how it was going on, so the second coat went on by hand.... I have the original & well looked after sponge you got with the HD Wax..... once I remembered I actually have to keep this wet it went on and came off so quickly and easily I doubt I'll try applying wax by DA again.
 
Once the two coats were on, it was time for Meguairs Last Touch, which gave much better beading 

 

 

Car complete following a spritz of the Autoglym rubber stuff on a MF cloth for the tyres and it's time to stand back and admire the hard work I've put in :buffer:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Click on next pic for video)

Completed detail of 2009 Black Audi S3 by

Jamie Sims, on Flickr

 

As you can see, I haven't removed all of the RDS' and I managed to remove 8 of the 10 or so scratches, but so very happy with the result of this .... as was my mate :argie:

 

Hope you've enjoyed the read 👋

1 hour ago, jars said:

Hope you've enjoyed the read 👋

 

Very much so - nice work there Jars 👍

 

Gaz

 

3 hours ago, IamGaz said:

 

Very much so - nice work there Jars 👍

 

Gaz

 

Thank you, Gaz

Fantastic job there. Hope your mate keeps it in tip top condition after all your efforts. 

48 minutes ago, threadbear said:

Fantastic job there. Hope your mate keeps it in tip top condition after all your efforts. 

I bl00dy hope so too!! I’ve sent him a shopping list for bits he needs to keep it looking fresh. I hope he does as seeing it return to the state it was in everyday will be difficult to see 🥺

Hope he either refurbishes the alloys or gets some new ones to match your hard work, top job hope he paid you well.

8 minutes ago, shyVRS245 said:

Hope he either refurbishes the alloys or gets some new ones to match your hard work, top job hope he paid you well.

Thankfully, it’s just the one wheel that is mashed. I need to do a rear brake change for him, then a cambelt, then he may replace that wheel.... then he may get it mapped. It wasn’t long ago he was on about replacing it with a C63 AMG, but looked at running costs and quickly decided he wasn’t that bored with the S3🤣

 

I didn’t really charge him anything to be honest. He’s a good mate, so a few beers whilst I was working was all I asked for 👍

My pet hate is kerbed alloys when I clean our cars.

1 minute ago, shyVRS245 said:

My pet hate is kerbed alloys when I clean our cars.

Me too. Let’s the car down when looked at from that side. Shame. They’re a matt finish alloy, so no way I was gonna offer to refurb them from him. 

That’s one hell of an epic job @jars !
 

thanks for the comprehensive write up, enjoyed the journey with you.

 

Lets hope your mate keeps on top of it now (avoiding the hand car washes!)

Just now, FatWolfie said:

That’s one hell of an epic job @jars !
 

thanks for the comprehensive write up, enjoyed the journey with you.

 

Lets hope your mate keeps on top of it now (avoiding the hand car washes!)

Cheers Wolfie.
I’ve already warned him that I will put all the scratches back if he goes to a £5 car wash 🤣