We managed to get the car on the trailer even though the rear wheels are almost completely bound up. Once I got it down off the trailer, the first order of business was to assess what we have to work with and start to develop a way ahead. This car was parked under some pine …
Twenty one years after the start of my first MINI adventure, I decided to open a new chapter. My first MINI was a brand new 2004 R53 Cooper S which slowly evolved into a track car over about ten years. My second R53 was a slick-top 2006 model which I purchased in 2011 and set …
One of the most powerful cleaning tools in your garage should be a good steam cleaner. Not only is it great for cleaning interior surfaces like carpets, leather, vinyl, and fabrics it can also be useful for exterior cleaning. I use it on deep contamination of fragile paint; cleaning under the hood and cleaning in …
This Z8 seemed to clean up well with just a washing, but the paint felt like sand paper. Not sure if it was covered with tree sap or what, but it took clay bar, compound, and multiple passes with polish to remove. The 23 year old paint was thick but hard. I used Meguiar’s M105 …
If you have a car that you take to the track often, you know how hard it is to remove the rolled-up rubber marks you get on the exterior. They don’t often damage the paint, they just require some intense polishing to remove. And that’s the risk: If you aren’t careful with the polishing, you …
If you’ve ever attempted to remove petrified window film from an E46 coupe, you’ll know how hard it is to get the bottom 3 inches of glass with your scraper. You can try steam, heat, the trash bag method, or GooGone but chances are there will be this small bit you just can’t get without …
Sometimes there’s just nothing left to polish. This is especially true with cars from the 90’s. When the auto industry switched over to water-based clear coat paints, many of the earlier products started to fail before the new-car warranty even expired. The other area which caused problems was in door jams and trunks. The flexible …
In a previous blog post, I mentioned that my core service is a detail with ceramic coat, which I offer at three service levels: good, better, and best. Since I’m working mostly with cars that are drivers, it makes no sense to do a concourse-level detail. That said, some cars do need more attention than …
As a general rule, I try to do minimally invasive work, only removing enough paint to get the desired level of shine and clarity before coating. But occasionally there isn’t anything to work with as was the case with this fender flair. A good bit of paint was scraped off down to bare metal which …
ColourLock LeatherFresh is a good alternative to replacing old tired leather. We can repair small tears as long as they are not along seams as well as deep cracks and creases. It usually takes only a couple of days to refresh both front seats as well as the rear seats. In this case, we had …