KMG
Certified Finest Installer
I picked up a Jet Black 2001 325ci with 83k miles on it Friday. The car won't see a bunch of mods because I am going to be using at my DD and it will see a fair amount of miles on it. Mechanically the car is in excellent condition, however it was lacking in appearance.
Here are a few pictures just after picking the car up.
The first thing I did after getting the car home was prep the car for the much need paint correction process. It had the typical trashed paint that a lot of Jet Black BMW's have. Being my personal car and knowing it is going to be a DD I was not looking for perfect just wanted to remove the swirling and some of the random scratches and bring back some gloss.
Wheels and tires were cleaned thoroughly using Iron-X and Tuf-Shine tire cleaner.
They were then sealed using Hydr02
A strong foam pre-soak to started the surface decon process.
This was followed by a 2-bucket method wash, then followed by a chemical decon using Iron-X again. And the last step was to wash the car one final time with a Nanoskin Wash Mitt (clay bar replacement that is much quicker and easier).
The car was then pulled in the garage and I removed the ugly silver pin stripes and also removed the 325ci badges from the trunk.
I then started the compounding process using Menzerna FG400. You can see the swirls are totally gone, however there was a fair amount of marring caused during the compounding process which is why the area that was worked already looks kinda hazy.
After being fully compounded, then I then went around and used Reflect which is a fine polish that cleaned up all the marring and left the paint look deep and glossy. Here is a picture after car was wiped down with Eraser to remove the polishing oils to prep it for the CQuartz Finest application.
This picture shows the coating being cured using an IR Lamp.
And finally a few after pictures. You can see how much more gloss and depth the paint now has.
So my plans for the car are to replace all the lights with smoked lights. It will be getting angel eye's installed. All the chrome trim is going to be blacked out and I haven't fully decided on wheels yet, other then they will be gloss black and most likely 18's. I will also be putting a coilover set up probably this winter.
Thanks for looking and I will continue to update this tread as I do more.
Here are a few pictures just after picking the car up.
The first thing I did after getting the car home was prep the car for the much need paint correction process. It had the typical trashed paint that a lot of Jet Black BMW's have. Being my personal car and knowing it is going to be a DD I was not looking for perfect just wanted to remove the swirling and some of the random scratches and bring back some gloss.
Wheels and tires were cleaned thoroughly using Iron-X and Tuf-Shine tire cleaner.
They were then sealed using Hydr02
A strong foam pre-soak to started the surface decon process.
This was followed by a 2-bucket method wash, then followed by a chemical decon using Iron-X again. And the last step was to wash the car one final time with a Nanoskin Wash Mitt (clay bar replacement that is much quicker and easier).
The car was then pulled in the garage and I removed the ugly silver pin stripes and also removed the 325ci badges from the trunk.
I then started the compounding process using Menzerna FG400. You can see the swirls are totally gone, however there was a fair amount of marring caused during the compounding process which is why the area that was worked already looks kinda hazy.
After being fully compounded, then I then went around and used Reflect which is a fine polish that cleaned up all the marring and left the paint look deep and glossy. Here is a picture after car was wiped down with Eraser to remove the polishing oils to prep it for the CQuartz Finest application.
This picture shows the coating being cured using an IR Lamp.
And finally a few after pictures. You can see how much more gloss and depth the paint now has.
So my plans for the car are to replace all the lights with smoked lights. It will be getting angel eye's installed. All the chrome trim is going to be blacked out and I haven't fully decided on wheels yet, other then they will be gloss black and most likely 18's. I will also be putting a coilover set up probably this winter.
Thanks for looking and I will continue to update this tread as I do more.
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