Aston Martin DB9 – Tour De France Blue.
A 3 day Major Paint Correction Detail required to restore the paintwork back to (better than(!)) showroom standard.
Having suffered from corrosion around the handle on both doors (common problem), the Aston had been completely resprayed by a main dealer repair centre.
Usually (even a ‘standard’ car without additional respray work), Aston Martin’s suffer from DA sanding marks being left in the paint from factory. In the last month, I have now seen three examples of this on different cars.
1) – Tour De France Blue V8 Vantage:
2) – Meteorite Grey DB9:
And the third example is the car in question, the Tour De France Blue DB9.
Inspection.
Excess polish residues spotted from previous attempts:
As per, wheels, arches and tyres sorted first.
AMDetails’ wheel cleaner, Megs Super Degreaser and various mitts/brushes used to clean the front-facing and inner rim.
Tyres degreased and scrubbed:
Calipers tidied with various brushes:
Front facing:
and then deep into the inner rim:
After tar removal, Iron-X was used to eat into the caked pitting and contaminants:
10 seconds after initial application:
A few minutes later and after agitation:
Process repeated 2/3 times per wheel.
Moving on to the wash stages – rinse, foam, rinse, two bucket wash, rinse and indoors for claying.
In terms of contaminants, a fair bit was pulled from the paint. Remember though, the paint is relatively fresh so not ‘too much’ build-up.
After being blown dry with the Black Baron (removal of trapped water from badges, crevices, panel gaps etc) a few pieces of trim were removed to make polishing easier, and, delicate areas taped up.
Inspection time!
General defects and machine buffertrails:
And now the worst of the sanding marks: (remember, an Aston Martin dealer had finished and presented this car back to the customer in this condition)
Every corner, every crevice curve and edge was ‘dulled’ by the haze left from sanding marks. Going to be a tricky one this!
Paint thickness readings? Well, the whole car was averaging ~230um. Some areas pushing 500, some, high 100’s.
Roof:
Bonnet:
And the rear quarters:
Starting high, the roof was my test subject for pad and polish combinations.
Settling on Scholl Concepts S17+ polish with (occasionally) the Scholl white/black spider sandwich pad, and, Lake Country Orange and Green 140mm Constant Pressure Pads.
50/50:
Before/After:
Already, I can see this colour is going to look pretty amazing once complete.
On the O/S, the A-C pillars were corrected with spot pads (Lake Country orange/green again)
Before/After:
Sanding marks on the edge; requiring multiple hits here to fully remove. Before/After:
Down on the rear quarter. A mix of 140mm and 100mm pads needed here; tricky curves and angles.
Before/After:
Caution here, a slight bubble on the O/S/R arch!
Before/After:
Protective film given a couple of hits with the DA polisher to try and improve things here.
Before/After:
All refined down (Menzerna polishes) and looking sharp!
Remember I said the doors were repainted because of the corrosion around the handles? Look closely, and, you’ll spot the repair work. (Quite noticeable in this case…)
Although aesthetically pleasing, the door handles’ delicate design can lead to scratches in the surrounding areas. Before/After:
Upper edge of the doors covered in sanding marks.
After:
Lots more spotted in the middle:
After the first hit, not all of the ‘pigtails’ (sanding marks) were removed.
The worst areas requiring 2+ hits to chase out completely.
Lower door, before/after:
And for a real tricky spot, a 3M Green Compounding Pad was loaded onto a smaller, 50mm, Dodo Juice backing plate – allowing the pad to flex more and comfortably ‘sit in’ the curves of the body.
See here, the normal spot pad and backing plate setup just wouldn’t touch them:
Boom. After:
O/S, almost complete!
More fiddly curves to tackle on the wing…
The majority of the correction was broken down into small spot pad work.
Before:
(Look at the haze running all the way down the middle of the channel)
The same area with the brinkmann LED torch:
In progress:
After:
and with the brinkman LED:
Before:
During:
Boom:
Lastly, the lower section:
The amount of colour trapped beneath the haze was unreal – end of day 1 and I could see this was set to be a mega turnaround.
Wing mirror housing:
Moving onto the bonnet.
…more curves = more sanding marks
After:
In spinning the car round, I caught a teaser of what to expect when the jobs complete:
Continuing down the N/S:
Mirrors:
The lowest part of the door, riddled in unfinished sanding marks – before/after:
Refined down and packed up for the end of day 2.
The bootlid had been hit hard. Not necessarily by sanding marks, just, marring, swirls and random blemishes.
Rear reg plate was given a quick lick:
With the remaining machine work complete (sills, bumpers and the rest of the bonnet), the car was outside ready for a rinse to remove dusting before moving on to the IPA wipedown, protection and final dressings etc..
Water sheeted over the panels to aid drying stage:
Once back in and bone dry, exterior britework treated with Jeffs Werkstat Prime:
Engine bay finalised; rubbers and plastics dressed and metal work polished:
With the paintwork perfectly clean after multiple IPA wipedowns, BlackFire’s Wet Diamond All Finish Paint Protection (WDAFPP) was applied by DA.
Exterior plastics restored using G-Techniq C4:
Before:
After: (massive durability on this product – given the vehicles usage, I’d say they’ll stay ‘as new’ now for the lifetime of the car)
Glass, with 3M’s cleaner:
Ever tried to clean the inside of the rear window? Awkward!
A little worrying, sanding marks spotted either side of the bonnet on the windscreen:
With the wheels, tyres, exhausts and paintwork complete, time to stand back and admire before collection:
[FONT="]
[/FONT]
A stunning colour. A stunning car. And if I say so myself, a stunning transformation!
Aston Martin – Power. Beauty. Soul.
Thanks for reading,
Jim. (PS, video footage was captured throughout this detail – stuck for time at the minute but when I get chance, I hope to add a HD YouTube clip to the report)
A 3 day Major Paint Correction Detail required to restore the paintwork back to (better than(!)) showroom standard.
Having suffered from corrosion around the handle on both doors (common problem), the Aston had been completely resprayed by a main dealer repair centre.
Usually (even a ‘standard’ car without additional respray work), Aston Martin’s suffer from DA sanding marks being left in the paint from factory. In the last month, I have now seen three examples of this on different cars.
1) – Tour De France Blue V8 Vantage:
2) – Meteorite Grey DB9:
And the third example is the car in question, the Tour De France Blue DB9.
Inspection.
Excess polish residues spotted from previous attempts:
As per, wheels, arches and tyres sorted first.
AMDetails’ wheel cleaner, Megs Super Degreaser and various mitts/brushes used to clean the front-facing and inner rim.
Tyres degreased and scrubbed:
Calipers tidied with various brushes:
Front facing:
and then deep into the inner rim:
After tar removal, Iron-X was used to eat into the caked pitting and contaminants:
10 seconds after initial application:
A few minutes later and after agitation:
Process repeated 2/3 times per wheel.
Moving on to the wash stages – rinse, foam, rinse, two bucket wash, rinse and indoors for claying.
In terms of contaminants, a fair bit was pulled from the paint. Remember though, the paint is relatively fresh so not ‘too much’ build-up.
After being blown dry with the Black Baron (removal of trapped water from badges, crevices, panel gaps etc) a few pieces of trim were removed to make polishing easier, and, delicate areas taped up.
Inspection time!
General defects and machine buffertrails:
And now the worst of the sanding marks: (remember, an Aston Martin dealer had finished and presented this car back to the customer in this condition)
Every corner, every crevice curve and edge was ‘dulled’ by the haze left from sanding marks. Going to be a tricky one this!
Paint thickness readings? Well, the whole car was averaging ~230um. Some areas pushing 500, some, high 100’s.
Roof:
Bonnet:
And the rear quarters:
Starting high, the roof was my test subject for pad and polish combinations.
Settling on Scholl Concepts S17+ polish with (occasionally) the Scholl white/black spider sandwich pad, and, Lake Country Orange and Green 140mm Constant Pressure Pads.
50/50:
Before/After:
Already, I can see this colour is going to look pretty amazing once complete.
On the O/S, the A-C pillars were corrected with spot pads (Lake Country orange/green again)
Before/After:
Sanding marks on the edge; requiring multiple hits here to fully remove. Before/After:
Down on the rear quarter. A mix of 140mm and 100mm pads needed here; tricky curves and angles.
Before/After:
Caution here, a slight bubble on the O/S/R arch!
Before/After:
Protective film given a couple of hits with the DA polisher to try and improve things here.
Before/After:
All refined down (Menzerna polishes) and looking sharp!
Remember I said the doors were repainted because of the corrosion around the handles? Look closely, and, you’ll spot the repair work. (Quite noticeable in this case…)
Although aesthetically pleasing, the door handles’ delicate design can lead to scratches in the surrounding areas. Before/After:
Upper edge of the doors covered in sanding marks.
After:
Lots more spotted in the middle:
After the first hit, not all of the ‘pigtails’ (sanding marks) were removed.
The worst areas requiring 2+ hits to chase out completely.
Lower door, before/after:
And for a real tricky spot, a 3M Green Compounding Pad was loaded onto a smaller, 50mm, Dodo Juice backing plate – allowing the pad to flex more and comfortably ‘sit in’ the curves of the body.
See here, the normal spot pad and backing plate setup just wouldn’t touch them:
Boom. After:
O/S, almost complete!
More fiddly curves to tackle on the wing…
The majority of the correction was broken down into small spot pad work.
Before:
(Look at the haze running all the way down the middle of the channel)
The same area with the brinkmann LED torch:
In progress:
After:
and with the brinkman LED:
Before:
During:
Boom:
Lastly, the lower section:
The amount of colour trapped beneath the haze was unreal – end of day 1 and I could see this was set to be a mega turnaround.
Wing mirror housing:
Moving onto the bonnet.
…more curves = more sanding marks
After:
In spinning the car round, I caught a teaser of what to expect when the jobs complete:
Continuing down the N/S:
Mirrors:
The lowest part of the door, riddled in unfinished sanding marks – before/after:
Refined down and packed up for the end of day 2.
The bootlid had been hit hard. Not necessarily by sanding marks, just, marring, swirls and random blemishes.
Rear reg plate was given a quick lick:
With the remaining machine work complete (sills, bumpers and the rest of the bonnet), the car was outside ready for a rinse to remove dusting before moving on to the IPA wipedown, protection and final dressings etc..
Water sheeted over the panels to aid drying stage:
Once back in and bone dry, exterior britework treated with Jeffs Werkstat Prime:
Engine bay finalised; rubbers and plastics dressed and metal work polished:
With the paintwork perfectly clean after multiple IPA wipedowns, BlackFire’s Wet Diamond All Finish Paint Protection (WDAFPP) was applied by DA.
Exterior plastics restored using G-Techniq C4:
Before:
After: (massive durability on this product – given the vehicles usage, I’d say they’ll stay ‘as new’ now for the lifetime of the car)
Glass, with 3M’s cleaner:
Ever tried to clean the inside of the rear window? Awkward!
A little worrying, sanding marks spotted either side of the bonnet on the windscreen:
With the wheels, tyres, exhausts and paintwork complete, time to stand back and admire before collection:
[FONT="]
[/FONT]
A stunning colour. A stunning car. And if I say so myself, a stunning transformation!
Aston Martin – Power. Beauty. Soul.
Thanks for reading,
Jim. (PS, video footage was captured throughout this detail – stuck for time at the minute but when I get chance, I hope to add a HD YouTube clip to the report)
