This month I spent a lot of time detailing the car! About time too, as over the years it has acquired a lot of swirl marks.
To start with, I rinsed the whole car to get rid of the loose dirt, and then cleaned the wheels with the Meguiars Hot Rims wheel cleaner. I then shampoo’d it with Snow Foam shampoo using a SuperSpray system, following by claying (using Meguiars Detailing Clay )the whole car for the ultra smooth finish to prepare for polishing.
I went over the whole car with Autoglym Super Resin Polish to polish out and fill the swirl marks. The bonnet and front wings are done twice because they had more swirl marks. This was really time consuming, this process took me nearly two hours! Autoglym Extra Gloss Protection, which is a sealant, is then applied to seal the surface against further swirl marks. The Extra Gloss Protection is really an excellent product – easy on, easy off, with good results! A further coat of Meguiars Gold Class wax provided some much needed extra shine and depth to the paint surface.
While waiting for the polish/sealant/wax to dry or cure, I polished and waxed the lips of the wheels with Belgom Alu. The Belgom Alu is a pretty good polisher but unfortunately the finish doesn’t last very long. I guess I should give my wheels a coat of proper sealant and wax next time.
The interior is also cleaned and vacuum, and the leather seats are cleaned with the Gliptone Gentle Leather Cleaner and conditioned with the Gliptone Leather Conditioner. The conditioner gives a stronger “leather smell”, some people hate it, but I love it!
After all that is done (took me 6 hours!!) I drove to the Southport beach and too these pics 🙂
Shiny eh!!!!!!!
Okay then onto the more intensive bit.
I finally fitted my body kit! Which is sprayed about a month ago by a local sprayer who does a very good rate.
The front bumper is a Lumma GT/R2 front bumper made in fibreglass. The quality is very high for a fibreglass bumper, but obviously not as good as the plastic ones like the Rieger bumpers. Fitting wasn’t too difficult but unfortunately my (two sets of) fog lights don’t fit! My first set has a 70mm diameter, which is a bit too big as the fog light holes are 60mm. The second set has a 50mm diameter, but to my surprise they are too long! I found out when I was fitting the bumper and I was puzzling why the bumper wouldn’t sit right… It was because the ECU was in the way since these 50mm diameter fog lights are like 150mm long 🙁 So the car has no fog lights at the moment, and I need to source a set of super-thin 60mm diameter LED fog lights for it… grr… Also the driver side arch mounting hole didn’t line up properly, so I had to use my drill.
The bumper does look very good though!
The skirts are Rieger Fluted skirts made in ABS plastic. The quality is very good and the fitment is not bad either. Fitting only took an hour without jacking the car up. If I had a ramp I am sure I could have done it in like 15 mins. Two holes are drilled at the front with stainless steel self-tapper screws securing it to the original skirts. A hole is drilled at the rear to re-use the existing mounting hole for the original skirts, as well as using a self-tapper screw instead of the original plastic pin for extra security. And then body-trim double-sided tape is applied to bond them to the original skirts. However, I still don’t think it is secured enough, I will get a bodyshop to make two brackets for fixing underneath the centre of the skirts using the original skirts to hold them for even more security.
You can probably tell the extra shine (again), as I applied a coat of Collinite #915 wax! This stuff is reasonably easy to apply, but what a pain to buff off! No surprise though, because this is meant to be the toughest wax in the world, so hopefully the shine should last a few months.
Unlike the Meguiars wax which only lasted two weeks…
There is nothing for the rear end at the moment, but I plan to get the Lumma GT/R2 rear valence. Only after I’ve got an exhaust though, because the rear is largely dependent on the tail-pipe I get.
Overall, a very tiring month…