I'm not one to back down from a challenge, that's for sure and this was a challenge of the mammoth variety. This 10 year Bentley booked in for a correction. The funny thing was, I had actually visited the Bentley years prior in our mobile days to do the occasional valet and the paint was absolutely well and truly destroyed. I would joke with Siobhan, 'Jeez, imagine having to correct this'. Well, that ended up happening and to be honest, I was pretty excited.
When it arrived, it had even more damage than when I encountered it 3 years prior, it was like someone had kicked it here and there, this was a job that was really going to put my skills to the test. Can we bring this knackered paint back to life?
There was to be no mucking about here, the defects ran deep so the entire body had to be rotary polished with a tough compound along with a wool head for maximum cutting ability. Also, there were many isolated areas that had to be wet sanded first. It sounds a little over the top, however, wet sanding is often the kindest approach to the deeper defects as you can effectively plane the surrounding clearcoat from the defect, rather than buffing the trough at the same time with the machine.
Our paint measuring tool isn't something we use every day, certainly not when just de swirling etc, however, it is absolutely invaluable when you are tackling big game defects like what we found on the Bentley. The kick mark on the tailgate I wasn't so sure if we would get a result. At first I was like, what is the point of even trying this, this will not come out, I almost felt a little embarassed that I was having a go at it in the first place hoping noone would come in and see me doing it, I even had my ex
cuse ready, 'eh yeah, I obviously know it won't come out but I just wanted to take the edge off it' LoL. Anyway, with a bunch of patience, slowly, I started to see progress....a little bit more.... oh just a little further.... Eventually we managed the result you can see here. Sadly, there was one scratch that was just too deep, it was right through. I had reduced the paint from 120 microns down to 64 microns. That is not something I do every day, however, this was unsightly, essentially a shot to nothing as otherwise the vehicle would require paint. (Typically on average corrections, we will tickle a micron away and maybe 5-10 in places to remove deeper scratches.)
Well, as you can see, i'm glad I did have a go at it...
After the defects were removed, we jewelled for a super glossy uniform finish then we laid down our Ceramic coating to lock in our work and give the car a fighting chance.
And here, she is in all her glory. There was no DA action on this beauty at all, it's perhaps my proudest detail to date...