Rover ZS – Vandalised

Dave made the 1 ¾ drive across the Pennines today to get his Rover ZS repaired after an unfortunate case of workplace ‘hj-jinks’ gone wrong. Working on a dusty building site, someone had written graffiti on his dust covered car with gloved hands. The graffiti etched in brick dust into his black paintwork. We washed thoroughly with a Snow Foam rinse, using the Suds Buster, to make sure that we got all of the remaining brick dust off of the car before touching it.

After rinsing, I very carefully hand washed the car with a strong Meguiar’s Shampoo Plus wash, using Eurow mitts and two buckets. After rinsing thoroughly, I treated his wheels to a good careful spray of Meguiar’s Wheel Brightener. Everyone who knows me knows that I hate this stuff, but the baked on brake dust wouldn’t shift with just APC. Making sure that the wheels were cold before starting, and using the minimum amount of Wheel Brightener and loads of scrubbing, the wheels were soon bake to their original colour. The wheels double rinsed, then up to the polish shop for inspection.

Paint measured with an Elcometer 456 paint thickness gauge. The paint varied in thickness across panels from 150 to 100 microns of paint (There are 1000 microns in a millimetre) The bonnet having the greatest variation, with the front third being the thinnest area. A note was made to be careful here whilst polishing. Under the lights in the shop, the vandalism looked terrible. Some people just don’t think before acting.

Due to living its life on a building site, there were some of the worst swirls I’ve seen instilled in Dave’s paintwork. These were worst on the roof and bonnet, an obvious sign of bad wash technique.

After claying off some large drips of some form of exterior building paint using Meguiar’s Overspray Clay – Aggressive, I proceeded to tape off an area to establish a combo of product and pad to remove the graffiti.

This turned out to be –
Poorboys SSR3 by Sonus yellow SFX pad and PC.
Poorboys SSR3 by Sonus yellow SFX pad and PC
Poorboys SSR2.5 by Sonus yellow SFX pad and PC
Poorboys SSR1 by Sonus white SFX pad and PC

Before –

After-

There were one or two marks that were just too deep to safely fully remove. The elcometer justifying its cost today. The roof proved to be a lot more difficult than the bonnet. In the centre of the roof on these Rovers is one of the softest panels I have ever witnessed. The panel deflected (popped in and out) under the weight of an unsupported PC. The weight of the PC alone buckling the roof. There was no way that I could break down the abrasive in the SSR3 with a 6” pad on this roof, so swapped over to the 4” spot pad kit. Using a 4” Yellow SFX spot pad, and Menzerna Power Gloss, I very slowly cut out each individual mark from the roof, working a 6” x 6” section at a time. I had to use time instead of pressure or speed to get the Menz PG to break down, but it did in the end. Slow and painful (I had to support the PC at all times) but this method worked. Followed up by SSR2.5 by 4” Yellow SFX, followed by Poorboys SSR2 by 4” White SFX pad. I finished a section on the bonnet and removed some marks on the wings with the Metabo rotary, using SSR3 on a cutting pad, and SSR2.5 on a polishing pad. The whole car was then polished with Meguiar’s #9 Swirl Remover. The whole car was then waxed with 1z Wax Polish Soft. I really rate this stuff, and can see me using this a lot more now Clean and Shiny are stocking it. Buffed off, and cleaned the glass with Meguiar’s Glass Cleaner Concentrate. I didn’t dress the arches or tyres because – I was working alone, it was snowing outside, I was bushed. From this –

To this-

Not a bad days work.