For your viewing pleasure, I present a 1998 Chrysler Concorde LXi with 34,500 miles. No, that mileage number is not a typo. I'll give you three guesses as to the demographics of the owner....
Since it was purchased in 1998 it has been washed mainly in one of the automated carwashes with the neat-o rotating brushes....when it was washed. That didn't happen too often....
Keep in mind that what you're seeing there is AFTER I washed the car....twice. Notice the lack of any apparent gloss on the finish and the numerous stains which are actually etchings from bird droppings. Apparently the birds in the area the owner lived in liked very acidic berries, and they viewed the big white car like Pollock viewed a blank canvas.
...and of course, some parts of the car never got cleaned at all by the car wash gorillas:
I didn't get before pictures of the engine, as it was just too depressing.
Of course, the owner just had to have leather seats:
Now if you've guessed the demographics of the vehicle's owner by this point, ask yourself what sort of companion the owner is likely to have.....
If you answered "yippy little dog who is allowed to roam free in the car", you win the gold star for tonight! So if you've ever wondered what happens to leather interior that is A: wiped down on rare occasion with WINDEX by the gorillas at the car wash (leather conditioner? What's that? We're car wash professionals! Not rocket scientists!) and B: exposed to a yippy little dog that drools/snots/pees on the leather, the pictures should give some indication. Frankly they don't show the true picture of how bad the leather looked.
The carpet? Prolifically stained, of course.
I bet you're thinking that a fellow could charge a pretty penny for cleaning up all that mess. Yes, well...the car belongs to family. Family who tried to break a jagged chunk of concrete with their face, resulting in lacerations down to the skull, fractures around the eyesocket, and a couple of broken vertebrae in th neck.
...so aside from not being a professional detailer, it's not the kind of job I would take money for.
So what did I do?
Well, from the start I wasn't looking for a 100% perfectly corrected, swirl-free finish. I was just hoping to make the car look...well...like something that wouldn't cause even Fred Sanford to barf at the sight. I just wanted to make the car look as good as it could look because mention was made of selling the vehicle to help pay for my relative's care.
I whipped out the clay and detail spray and went to work. As you can imagine, that step took quite a bit of time as I struggled to get all that crud off of the vehicle. It was during the claying process that I rediscovered why I hate auto repair shops. The vehicle had been hit a couple of years ago while my relative was sitting still at a stoplight. The damage required a new hood, driver's door, and fiberglass nose. Apparently some stupid monkey in the shop went nuts with the spray gun, resulting in paint droplets ALL OVER the roof and trunk of the car.
I won't repeat the language I used when I discovered this little tidbit of information, but suffice it to say it was salty enough to have the neighbors peeping through the curtains at me.
Claying, of course, did nothing to resolve this problem (although it did return a lot of gloss to the finish just from removing all the crud accumulated on it). I couldn't even scrape off the droplets with a (carefully used) razor blade. I thought perhaps polishing would at least reduce the visibility of the spots, so I attacked the finish with the PC using Adam's orange waffle pads and some Meguiar's #83. (Why? Because I was out of SHR) I was 5 minutes into the hood polish when my pad went flying off the PC. I'm guessing this isn't normal for these pads after 2 uses:
I'll have to call the customer service line at some point to have them send me some replacements.
Forced to punt, I used some Meguiar's soft-buff pads I had in reserve with the #83 to attack the swirlmarks...and it did a decent job, although it was a LOT more difficult to work with than SHR. Still, the finish kind of sucked. I broke out the FMP and the white pad and made a second pass over everything. The FMP did the trick.
It's tempting when you're in hour seven of a detail with only half the bloody car polished to skip a second step. Don't. Stick it out and use the FMP. It's worth it, as you can see:
The spots of paint are still there, although they are less noticeable than before. Note that the pictures are just the results of the polish. I've been so busy just cleaning and correcting I haven't had time to put any wax on the vehicle. I'll put a couple of coats of MSW on the vehicle for protection. Still, the shine is pretty nice for a white car with finish that was in such bad shape.
Question
carrya1911
For your viewing pleasure, I present a 1998 Chrysler Concorde LXi with 34,500 miles. No, that mileage number is not a typo. I'll give you three guesses as to the demographics of the owner....
Since it was purchased in 1998 it has been washed mainly in one of the automated carwashes with the neat-o rotating brushes....when it was washed. That didn't happen too often....
Keep in mind that what you're seeing there is AFTER I washed the car....twice. Notice the lack of any apparent gloss on the finish and the numerous stains which are actually etchings from bird droppings. Apparently the birds in the area the owner lived in liked very acidic berries, and they viewed the big white car like Pollock viewed a blank canvas.
...and of course, some parts of the car never got cleaned at all by the car wash gorillas:
I didn't get before pictures of the engine, as it was just too depressing.
Of course, the owner just had to have leather seats:
Now if you've guessed the demographics of the vehicle's owner by this point, ask yourself what sort of companion the owner is likely to have.....
If you answered "yippy little dog who is allowed to roam free in the car", you win the gold star for tonight! So if you've ever wondered what happens to leather interior that is A: wiped down on rare occasion with WINDEX by the gorillas at the car wash (leather conditioner? What's that? We're car wash professionals! Not rocket scientists!) and B: exposed to a yippy little dog that drools/snots/pees on the leather, the pictures should give some indication. Frankly they don't show the true picture of how bad the leather looked.
The carpet? Prolifically stained, of course.
I bet you're thinking that a fellow could charge a pretty penny for cleaning up all that mess. Yes, well...the car belongs to family. Family who tried to break a jagged chunk of concrete with their face, resulting in lacerations down to the skull, fractures around the eyesocket, and a couple of broken vertebrae in th neck.
...so aside from not being a professional detailer, it's not the kind of job I would take money for.
So what did I do?
Well, from the start I wasn't looking for a 100% perfectly corrected, swirl-free finish. I was just hoping to make the car look...well...like something that wouldn't cause even Fred Sanford to barf at the sight. I just wanted to make the car look as good as it could look because mention was made of selling the vehicle to help pay for my relative's care.
I whipped out the clay and detail spray and went to work. As you can imagine, that step took quite a bit of time as I struggled to get all that crud off of the vehicle. It was during the claying process that I rediscovered why I hate auto repair shops. The vehicle had been hit a couple of years ago while my relative was sitting still at a stoplight. The damage required a new hood, driver's door, and fiberglass nose. Apparently some stupid monkey in the shop went nuts with the spray gun, resulting in paint droplets ALL OVER the roof and trunk of the car.
I won't repeat the language I used when I discovered this little tidbit of information, but suffice it to say it was salty enough to have the neighbors peeping through the curtains at me.
Claying, of course, did nothing to resolve this problem (although it did return a lot of gloss to the finish just from removing all the crud accumulated on it). I couldn't even scrape off the droplets with a (carefully used) razor blade. I thought perhaps polishing would at least reduce the visibility of the spots, so I attacked the finish with the PC using Adam's orange waffle pads and some Meguiar's #83. (Why? Because I was out of SHR) I was 5 minutes into the hood polish when my pad went flying off the PC. I'm guessing this isn't normal for these pads after 2 uses:
I'll have to call the customer service line at some point to have them send me some replacements.
Forced to punt, I used some Meguiar's soft-buff pads I had in reserve with the #83 to attack the swirlmarks...and it did a decent job, although it was a LOT more difficult to work with than SHR. Still, the finish kind of sucked. I broke out the FMP and the white pad and made a second pass over everything. The FMP did the trick.
It's tempting when you're in hour seven of a detail with only half the bloody car polished to skip a second step. Don't. Stick it out and use the FMP. It's worth it, as you can see:
The spots of paint are still there, although they are less noticeable than before. Note that the pictures are just the results of the polish. I've been so busy just cleaning and correcting I haven't had time to put any wax on the vehicle. I'll put a couple of coats of MSW on the vehicle for protection. Still, the shine is pretty nice for a white car with finish that was in such bad shape.
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