The Vehicle – Vauxhall Vectra B GSi

The Brief –

This is a vehicle that we have detailed before. The owner contacted us after someone had inflicted swirls into the paintwork by wiping the car over at a show with an old t-shirt, as a favor. The owner wanting his high gloss shine back to his paintwork.

The wash procedure –

The Vectra was soaked with a blanket of Snow Foam: Maxi Suds II mix through the Gilmour. This safely clears any loose debris from the paintwork of the vehicle.
The vehicle was then rinsed using low pressure but high volume.
We cleaned the expensive alloys with a non acid wheel cleaner -Chemical Guys Blue Rinse Wheel Cleaner
Rinsed the whole car a second time using high volume low pressure.
Washed the vehicle by hand using Eurow mitts with Meguiar’s Shampoo Plus and a two bucket method.
Rinsed a final time, allow the water to sheet from the vehicle by using a light stream of water from the open end of the hose.

We then dried using Meguiar’s Water Magnets with a spritz of Meguiar’s Last Touch to aid the drying. The Meguiar’s Last Touch causes any remaining water to flow from the vehicles paintwork, leaving very little moisture behind for the Water Magnet to remove. The Last Touch also adds a bit of lubrication for the water magnet, to allow it to dry the vehicle safely.

Due to this vehicle being machine polished, it was fully masked using 3M 3434 tape to protect any delicate areas of trim.

The polishing procedure-

The first step of this polish job was by Menzerna Intensive Polish PO85RD3.01 on a white Sonus SFX pad.
We worked the polish as follows –
Use 2 x ½” lines of product on the SFX2 polishing pad.
1 pass to spread at speed 1 by the PC, This is just to lay out the polish evenly.
3 or 4 passes on speed 4.5 with the PC, applying good pressure to work the polish.
2 last passes on speed 6 by the PC, with full pressure to finish off.
We found that not only did this combination have the desired result of removing all of the light swirling, but it also left behind a decent gloss level.

To refine the gloss levels even further though, we followed on by using the new Menzerna Final Finish PO85RD (a cut of 1.5 and a gloss of 5) on a blue Sonus SFX finishing pad. We used the same technique to work this polish as we had for the IP. The level of gloss that this polish creates made the car look 'just waxed'

Wiped down the residue of the Menzerna Final Finish PO85RD with Poorboys DMT Microfibre towels, then we applied a coat of Chemical Guy’s EZ cream glaze. This not only deepens the gloss of the paint, but also leaves behind a nice bright acrylic finish. We apply the Chemical Guys EZ Cream Glaze by PC, using a blue SFX finishing pad. We apply a 6” line of product to the pad, then spread with pressure on speed 5 till the residue has all but disappeared.

We then de masked and cleaned the glass with Meguiar’s Glass Cleaner Concentrate, then buffed off the dry EZ Cream Glaze easily using fresh Poorboy’s DMT micorfibres.

A quick coat of Poorboy’s Natty’s Blue wax, and this Vectra B was good to go.

The afters-