-Gloss Enhancement-
This was a detail for pre-sale, the car had sat for quite some time with no bites. The owner thought it was appropriate, now schedule permitting, to have it detailed in hopes it would speed up the sale. Budget and time was mega-tight on this prep(looking to get into their dream house), but with experience coupled with some serious ingenuity I was able to knock a good 10 years off the “skin” of the car.
The car has a list of JDM exterior goodies including tails, corners and wheels and a JDM interior(just short of a couple things). The list is here:
[size=1]:INTERIOR
:: V3/4 Interior (Front and rear gorgeous JDM STi seats, door cards, steering wheel)
:: Titanium STi shift knob
:: Impreza floormats
:: Stereo with MP3CD, USB, Aux-in, etc
:EXTERIOR
:: Genuine V5/6 front lip
:: Genuine JDM clear corners
:: Genuine JDM red/clear taillights (with originals in box as well)
:: Genuine V6 STi wing (looks awesome)
:SUSPENSION
:: Stance Coilovers (adjustable ride height, dampening)
:: STI Group N top mounts (front and rear)
:: Whiteline solid endlinks (front and rear)
:: Whiteline 22mm front swaybar
:: Whiteline 22-24mm rear swaybar
:: JNorth fender braces
:BRAKES
:: Subaru red front 4-pots and rear 2-pots with TWR slotted two-piece floating rotors in front
:: TWR Stainless braided, coated, and teflon lined lines
:: Motul DOT 5.1 brake fluid
:WHEELS AND TIRES
:: Super rare bronze/gunmetal JDM 5-spoke wheels (look awesome)
:: 205/55/16 Dunlop Direzzas
: DRIVETRAIN
:: ~35k mile EJ205. Plenty of power.
:: BRAND NEW '08 STi 6-speed transmission
:: BRAND NEW ACT HD Clutch / pressure plate / bearings
:: Resurfaced STi flywheel
:: Custom driveshaft to fit GC body with STi tranny
:: Rear LSD
:: Stainless clutch line
:: Whiteline steering bushings
:: STI Group N tranny mount
:: STI Group N motor mount
: PERFORMANCE
:: Accessport with Innovative dyno tune (including dyno sheet)
:: K&N Typhoon intake
:: ERZ Up/Downpipes
:: Stromung midpipe
:: Prodrive oval tip axleback (The exhaust is perfect sounding. Throaty, but not attention-grabbing for the police.)
Buffalo Car Care
Buffalo NY auto detailing
Williamsville and Clarence NY auto detailing
Orchard Park NY auto detailing
The aim of this detail was to immensely improve brightness and clarity of the brittle, thin paint, reduce and eliminate any of the exterior scratches and fixable blemishes, and more importantly to eliminate a lot of the 10 years of exposure the car had seen as evidenced by the built up crud on the interior and weathered, scratched, swirled up paint on the exterior.
As shown in the before shots, even though it was partly overcast, the car is just plain dull, interior loaded with tons of grime, the wheels caked in brake dust so much that both the owner and I thought they were gunmetal initially.
Nothing done underhood, only an interior deep clean and condition and an exterior revival. The owner was handling that himself.
Exterior Befores:
The color here is so dull, but looks just like any other boring silver. Hard enough to photograph but certainly didn’t want to waste time with 20 befores as these told the story.
Wheel barrels had some pretty heavy, already weathered brake dust from the performance pads on them. In person, these were almost gray in color.
The paint having never seen a proper detail as heavily contaminated. This was consistent over the lower portions of the car as well as the flat surfaces
Pre-wash I spent literally 5-8 minutes flushing all this dirt from under the trim from every possible angle. When I thought I was done, I would stop rinsing, and more would come out!
Some more bird bomb action. The smaller dime sized dot near the top of the trunk lid was a DEEP etching that required some serious, careful compounding on the old thin paint. You will also notice a seriously nasty horizontal scratch.
Interior Befores:
The interior was dry as paper and had a serious amount(literally probably 10+ years worth) of built up filth everywhere. Not to mention - dog hair.
During:
After doing the usual ‘detail’ prep stuff for the wash, the wheels were cleaned 2-3 times really focusing on bringing the JDM 5 spokes back to life. I had to use a safe wheel cleaner as they had a little bit of curbing on one of them.
Grime being pulled from the tires and wheels soaking in acid free cleaner.
The GC was washed carefully with a pH neutral soap then pulled inside for decontamination.
Clayed - surprisingly only a moderate amount of non-metallic contamination(at least from what my eyes could see). Almost no tar and really only the relatively heavy ferrous fallout junk to deal with chemically.
After getting her dried off its time to get taped up and prepped for inspection. I taped and re-taped as I went around. The air was a bit damp so I didn’t waste time doing the entire car to only have to redo the entire car.
Some inspection photos. As stated previously its pretty apparent this vehicle while in good shape, was pretty weathered and fortunately for the silver color, hid alot of the swirls and marring.
Everyone knows how hard silvers are to photograph, not to mention focus on something that a human eye has a hard enough time picking up. I did the best I could to highlight the state of the car - this was consistent around the whole vehicle, yet much worse up close.
So the work begins - only limited time on the paint by itself. I had to find some combos that finished out perfectly. Fortunately I have seen a ton of these cars so I am more that familiar with what I would probably end up using.
Another issue was some of this paint was incredibly thin and brittle. Definitely an issue from the years of being “driven like a Subaru”. Here is a polishing shot.
After a couple hits, looking good, gloss is tight. Tough to get the right exposure when working in short time.
Spot heavier compounding and polishing to eliminate the eyesores.
Went around to tighten up the smaller areas.
After on the spoiler = nice and crystal clear
One of the other things that would make the difference for a little bit of effort was tightening up the JDM tails and corner lamps. They were really pretty dull. On this particular car, everything makes the difference
After some tightness
I even purposely spent time on some seriously weathered trim pieces. While perfection wasn’t the goal, massive improvement was; and it was fortunately achieved.
So this was a 50/50 shot of the grill which as shown was pathetic and gray. Everything to the right for the most part had been polished leaving a dramatic difference.
The lip was really beat up, but polished as well to try to get it closer to black.
After all was finished, I went around and inspected and then continued to refine the paintwork.
The paint was then sealed with 2 coats of sealant, tires and trim etc… protected and other details carried out along with cleaning and sealing the glass.
The Results:
Interior came out tremendous. I spend a ton of time scrubbing the steering wheel and anywhere within driver’s reach which had a lot of body oil and dirt literally just caked, and focused really deep cleaning the inside instead of just a “wipedown” and dressing like a lot of hack detailers will do.
The JDM seats were so incredibly dusty but relatively clean aside from that. The the entire interior needed serious vacuuming. The carpets and mats were lightly shampooed and extracted.
This is one of the few shots that show the interior surfaces really rejuvenated once they were cleaned and conditioned:
A couple exteriors with a pretty poor camera:
These are a few after photos taken by the owner on delivery, with a much better camera than the one I was using on this detail. I didn’t have time otherwise upon delivery but fortunately he wanted to snap some.
My favorite shot.
Plates not blurred, permission to post them was given.
I certainly would have liked more time with this gorgeous example of tasteful modification and performance unfortunately schedules and budget did not permit. The owner and his wife were simply ecstatic, they certainly didn’t expect a turn around like this.
Enjoy.
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---------- Post added at 09:14 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:13 PM ----------
I forgot to mention: after sitting for weeks with no bites, the car sold 3 days after the detail.
What did you put on the tires?