Today’s Vehicle – Volkswagen Golf Gti Diesel

The Brief –

This car belongs to a very active member of the VW community, appearing as a magazine shoot car on occasion. It is subtly modified, and the owner wanted his paintwork to match the concourse condition of the rest of the vehicle.

The Wash Process –

The Golf was given an initial blanket of Super Snow Foam: Maxi Suds II through the Gilmour. While the super rich suds had a chance to get to work, we set about treating the rest of the vehicle with cleaning agents.
The alloys were treated with Chemical Guy’s Blue Rinse wheel cleaner.
The tyres / trim / inner arches were all treated with Meguiar’s APC, cut 4:1 and applied through a Meguiar’s foaming trigger applicator, to ensure that the All Purpose Cleaner got chance to dwell and work.
The wheels were cleaned using the combination of a mix of Meguiar’s Shampoo Plus, using a Meguiar’s spoke brush, and a Meguiar’s MF washmitt. The inner arches cleaned using a ‘detail’ brush from Halfords, while the tyres were scrubbed with a Meguiar’s tyre brush.
We then rinsed off the whole car, before giving the Gti a good safe handwash using Eurow wash mitts with a Meguiar’s Shampoo Plus solution using a 2 bucket method.
The car was then carefully final rinsed, where we allowed the water to sheet off, by using a low pressure stream of water through the open ended hose.

We then dried any remaining water from the Golf using Meguiar’s water magnets with a spritz of Megs Last Touch QD, then inspected the paintwork for a need to clay. This car was spotless, and a credit to its owner, so no need to clay.
Masked off everywhere with 3M 3434 tape, then took a full set of thickness readings using my new PTG. This Gti proving to be a good genuine example of this fast becoming rare version.

Under the harsh gas lights of the shop, and using the Brinkmann also, we found a swirl or two, that needed to be polished out.

The Polish Process -

Starting with a combination of a Lake County orange LC pad, and Menzerna PO85RD3.01 polish, we set to removing the swirls. The look on the owners face when we demasked the test zone needed to be seen to be believed. One set of passes with the LC orange and Menz IP cleared up the swirls to a LSP ready stage, even on solid red. We took the opportunity to follow up the IP though, with the Menzerna Final Finish PO85RD. I’m really like this stuff, and the immense gloss that it fetches. One quick set of passes with the Menzerna Final Finish PO85RD on a white SFX pad, the car now looking great. These new Menzerna polishes are so easy to use, and the finish quality we find that we are producing time after time with them really needs to be seen in person to be fully appreciated.

As always after final polish, we go round the car with Chemical Guys EZ cream glaze, leaving behind some protection, before we started to damask and dress trim etc.

We followed the EZ glaze up with a coat of Clearkoat Red Machine Glaze, on a black LC pad. This adding just a slight amount, to the already dripping wet effect of the freshly polished paint.

Cleaned the glass with Meguiar’s Glass Cleaner Concentrate.
Cleaned all the trim with Einszett Plastic Cleaner
Dressed all black trim with Chemical Guys’s New Car Dressing.
Dressed the tyres with Meguiar’s Hyper Dressing.
Waxed the wheels with Chemical Guys’s Rim Wax.

Onto LSP – I thought it time to revisit an old friend, Natty’s Blue. Tommy applied a quick decent coat, and I followed behind buffing off. We then went round every crevice using the Meguiar’s 3 in 1 brushes.

The job looked like this –