Car prep for Audis In The Park

[Adrian E]

Since it's probably about the only show I'll get to this year and the last really major clean I gave the car was for the summer season of 2011 after I bought the car I figured it was time to devote some time and attention to get it looking as good as it can

It gets regularly snow foamed and hand washed and is garaged so it never looks dreadful, but there was a fair bit of crud imbedded in the paint.

This is generally the treatment it gets when I have the time to do a proper wash (this was back in March, hence the lack of foliage on the trees!):



I knew I'd be doing this spread over at least a week - I started on Saturday late afternoon with a snow foam, hand wash and dry off. Sunday morning I dug the car out and followed up with a full clean of the outside of the glass (will be repeated before the weekend), clay bar of the whole car (took 3 decent sized chunks!) and some tar spot remover to get rid of the really stuborn bits.

After clay bar it looked like this:



First coat of Autoglym Super Resin Polish then went on - I've been hoarding this stuff for years and I know there's better available when you do plenty of research but I'm not buying more till I've used this lot up!



Then decided I was bored of doing paintwork and dug the spare wheel out to give it a spruce up If for no other reason than I'll probably end up endlessly swapping it onto the car while I'm cleaning 2 at a time and don't want to get any muckier than necessary!

[Adrian E]

After the 2nd coat of Super Resin Polish there was a fair bit of residue in the form of 'crumbs' of polish so decided best to give it another wash off



So beginning to see some water beading again as layers of protection build up. At this point I usually run out of drive to do much more, but I wanted to stick at it this time! SRP doesn't really do a lot of polishing and will never remove scratches unless they're very fine indeed, but it does mask marks in the lacquer quite nicely until they fill up with grime again. That's where I'd got to by the end of Sunday.

I had 2 virtually unused bottles of Autoglym Extra Gloss Protection which if you read into the blurb is basically a synthetic sealant, so good to use after a polish to seal the paint again.

Daily life starts to get in the way at this point! Monday was a complete washout courtesy of the great British summer. Tuesday evening I managed to get the first layer of EGP applied:



Left that for half an hour and then buffed off and was running out of light to do any more.

This morning I decided I was running out of time and needed to speed up a bit, so thought I'd see how long my son could stand driving around in his Little Tikes Cosy Coupe round by our garage! I managed to apply the 2nd coat of EGP and left it for half an hour while we messed about with camping gear for the weekend. Managed to bribe him back round to the garage with offer of snacks and apple juice. While I worked extra hard buffing off the 2nd coat (think it needed longer tbh) he shut all the air vents in the car, put his bear in his car seat and did up the belts in the back, listened to his nursery rhymes off the SD card in the RNS-E and generally had me worried about what he was getting up to! Luckily not a lot....

I did think this was rather appropriate today:



After buffing off the 2nd coat of EGP it now looks like this:



By this stage there was again a fair bit of residue to chase round the car so decided I'd rinse it off and hand wash to even up the finish and check how it was looking.

The all-important beading water shots lol





I've still got to apply 1 or more coats of some Harly's Wax I bought back in 2008 and have never even opened. Not sure it'll improve the finish on a car as light as mine, but I bought it to try so I'm going to - even if it is 5 years on and on a different car to the one I bought it for!

That then leaves the wheels on the car to clean properly and an attempt to Muc-off and GT85 the wheel arch liners, clean the tailpipes and at the very least vacuum the inside - ideally a clean and feed of the leather is required but not sure I've got enough cow feed to do the whole car left!

It's taken me ages to write this!

See some of you Sunday

Adrian

[kal_ay]

Beautiful car and an awesome job well done

[The_Laird]

Nice job!

[notorious]

Umm... Very very nice. Great car.

Adrian, did you fix the door after the mirror fell off?

[Adrian E]

Originally Posted by notorious

Adrian, did you fix the door after the mirror fell off?

Not yet, unfortunately. The car could do with a few jobs sorting over the winter - trolley dent on the bonnet, stone chips on the bonnet and front bumper, scratch on the back bumper and the marks left from the mirror

I've just had a letter from Audi confirming the mirror housing and glass are supplied separately so I'm almost in a position to proceed with small claims court with garage, since they're not accepting they were at fault for fitting it badly

As a result I now need to find a bodyshop as I'm sure as hell not using that bunch again if that's their idea of customer service!

[notorious]

Hi Adrian, good luck with winning your case. I'll see you this Sunday at the event. I can recommend Specialised Paintwork (http://www.specialisedpaintwork.com). They are not cheap, but they do not cut corners with quality. Call reception and talk to Carl. They are based in Western Reading near M4 junction 12. I painted both bumpers, wing and driver door there. To cut costs I took 2 days vacation from work and did all the disassembly/assembly work at their premises so that they basically took parts from my hands and painted them.

[Adrian E]

Cheers

Had a recommendation a few miles from home from a neighbour who is very fussy about the paintwork on his car and I've never been able to spot where he's had work done on the car. Apparently the location is a total armpit but will probably get a couple of quotes to see how they compare.

This all assumes I go back to work in the next month or 2 and there's no sign of that happening yet due to an absence of vacancies.....