mikenap
New member
For all of you TID and L2D guys, let me apologize for boring you AGAIN with this detail. I haven't been as busy this summer as I'd like, at least not with fun details, so I thought I'd bring back a couple of my personal favorites and post them here. I also want to apologize for the lack of good sun pics, since I did this back in January or February and sun was hard to come by.
Earlier this year I had the pleasure working on one of my all-time favorite cars, an Audi S4 in Brilliant Black. The owner has had the car since new, and while it is in great shape for its age, it needed a little attention here and there.
First off, I want to point out to anyone doing an Audi vert in the future, under no circumstances should you operate the top while on in incline or let go of the switch before the cycle is through. The top WILL get stuck, and you'll spend several hours hating life, hating Audi and hating Google before figuring out how to manually reset the top.
Anyway, on to the show.
Engine bay was in good shape.
Sprayed some Megs APC+ 4:1, flushed with ONR at QD dilution
Vacuumed the underhood heat guard
KAIO on the underhood paint
Opti-Bond 1:1 to dress plastics
Before
After
No good pics of the wheels, but they got Brown Royal 1:1 and an entire can of Tarminator. At some point, I'd like to remove them to get all the tar off the inside. Believe me, there was a LOT of it, and not all of it came off this time.
Spare tire had been used at some point, so I cleaned it off just like the other wheels. Much easier, plus it didn't have as much tar inside.
Exhaust cleaned with Brown Royal, polished with Megs UC and 0000 steel wool. Cleaning the inside of exhausts w/ wheel cleaner was an idea I got from Richy H. Thanks man!
On to the paint. Nothing special, just the average swirled black car.
Compounded with GGDA and Surbufs with M105. In some of the following pics what looks like light swirls is actually the haze from the Surbuf pads.
Finding out how to finish the car was a challenge. I tried the usual 205 combos, 85rd, etc. Michakaveli(Chris) gave me an interesting tip, so I tried something Todd H. had posted about a while ago, and I was beyond surprised to find it worked like a charm. Finishing was done w/ 105 on a crimson HT pad.
Final touches:
LSP was Wolfgang Deep Gloss Sealant 3.0
Collinite 845 on wheels and exhaust(never tried this, we'll see how it works)
Opti-Bond 1:1 on tires
I really hate that I didn't get any good sun pics. I returned a week later to finish the interior, but the car was garaged and I couldn't get any then either. I had to rely on the few times the sun peaked out, along with my 200 lumen 4Sevens LEDs, to check the finish. Still, the client was beyond happy and that's good enough for me. Thanks for looking!
Earlier this year I had the pleasure working on one of my all-time favorite cars, an Audi S4 in Brilliant Black. The owner has had the car since new, and while it is in great shape for its age, it needed a little attention here and there.
First off, I want to point out to anyone doing an Audi vert in the future, under no circumstances should you operate the top while on in incline or let go of the switch before the cycle is through. The top WILL get stuck, and you'll spend several hours hating life, hating Audi and hating Google before figuring out how to manually reset the top.
Anyway, on to the show.
Engine bay was in good shape.
Sprayed some Megs APC+ 4:1, flushed with ONR at QD dilution
Vacuumed the underhood heat guard
KAIO on the underhood paint
Opti-Bond 1:1 to dress plastics
Before
After
No good pics of the wheels, but they got Brown Royal 1:1 and an entire can of Tarminator. At some point, I'd like to remove them to get all the tar off the inside. Believe me, there was a LOT of it, and not all of it came off this time.
Spare tire had been used at some point, so I cleaned it off just like the other wheels. Much easier, plus it didn't have as much tar inside.
Exhaust cleaned with Brown Royal, polished with Megs UC and 0000 steel wool. Cleaning the inside of exhausts w/ wheel cleaner was an idea I got from Richy H. Thanks man!
On to the paint. Nothing special, just the average swirled black car.
Compounded with GGDA and Surbufs with M105. In some of the following pics what looks like light swirls is actually the haze from the Surbuf pads.
Finding out how to finish the car was a challenge. I tried the usual 205 combos, 85rd, etc. Michakaveli(Chris) gave me an interesting tip, so I tried something Todd H. had posted about a while ago, and I was beyond surprised to find it worked like a charm. Finishing was done w/ 105 on a crimson HT pad.
Final touches:
LSP was Wolfgang Deep Gloss Sealant 3.0
Collinite 845 on wheels and exhaust(never tried this, we'll see how it works)
Opti-Bond 1:1 on tires
I really hate that I didn't get any good sun pics. I returned a week later to finish the interior, but the car was garaged and I couldn't get any then either. I had to rely on the few times the sun peaked out, along with my 200 lumen 4Sevens LEDs, to check the finish. Still, the client was beyond happy and that's good enough for me. Thanks for looking!
