- What's up guys, welcome to part two
of our detailing mini-series on this Mercedes Benz.
Now the other day you saw that we went through
the entire wash process starting with the wheels,
and we also timed it to show you guys
exactly how long it should take
to detail a modern mid-size vehicle.
Now, every vehicle is different,
which means that it could take longer,
it could be shorter depending on the size of the vehicle,
and also the level of dirt that you're workin' with.
A car that has a lot of filth on there,
a lot of stains, you have to be very careful with it,
so that can take you much longer.
Also, if you're working on a truck or a large van
that's gonna take you longer, than say,
a four door sedan would.
But now we're moving on
to the second part of our mini-series
where we're going to be showing you how to clay it
and polish it to revive this red finish.
And as you can see the paint has a lot of scratches
and swirls and all kinds of staining
because the owner doesn't necessarily take care of it.
So, we're gonna remove all that
by using our TORQ 15DA with an orange pad and V32,
which is going to gently knock down
a layer of clear coat to refine the finish,
and to refine it even further
we're gonna use a white pad with our V36
to give it that really deep lustrous shine.
So to get started up, already taped up half the hood here,
or close enough to half,
close enough for junior college at least.
And now we're gonna use a clay bar
to remove the impurities that are in the paint
which give it that rough feel
and also kind of a rough look.
And then that's going to prep it for our polishing step.
But to begin let's grab our medium clay bar
and then go to town on this hood.
So I've already kneaded up a small piece of the clay bar
into a very thin patty.
This covers about three fingers.
And then to start I have my clay luber
which I'm gonna spray on my hand
as well as the clay bar.
And then onto the surface.
And you wanna make sure that it's thoroughly lubricated
so that it's not grabbing or dragging on the surface.
Because that can create marring
it can damage the paint very easily.
But as long as it's gliding,
it means it's going to be thoroughly cleansing the paint
without adding new perfections.
That's okay to be generous with the clay luber
because as I mentioned you don't wanna harm the paint.
But as I'm working, it's gonna start off kinda rough,
or it's gonna drag a little bit.
But as you pull the junk
that's in the pores of the paint out
it'll get smooth, or it'll at least sound smoother,
and then the clay bar will just glide across the surface.
You can also use a clay block or a clay mitt.
Or even a clay disc if you have one,
but I prefer the clay bar
because this conforms to any shape
and it also gets into very tight areas.
This way you're thoroughly cleansing the paint.
This way you get the best results as you're polishing
and also the best end result.
Now you can see all the junk that's in the clay bar,
this is pulling it out of the pores of the paint.
All you have to do is simply roll it over
and knead it to a new side.
This way you're not grinding it back into the finish.
But you wanna be very careful you don't drop this
because I've said it before,
and I will say it again,
this is just like a piece of gum,
if you drop it you're gonna have to throw it away.
Which is why I only use a small piece at a time
because if you should drop it,
you're not throwing the entire clay bar away,
you're just throwing a very small piece.
So now the paint feels very smooth.
The clay bar glides gently across the surface,
and now we're just gonna take a clean micro fiber towel
and wipe off the access.
But just a couple things I wanna mention
before we move on at that.
There's a lot of misconceptions about clay bar.
Where a lot of people think that these actually
remove scratch and swirls,
when in reality all it does
is pull the impurities out of the pores of the paint.
The old clay bars used to have a mild abrasive in there
that kinda helped to remove some of the impurities,
but really all it did was add more scratches.
And also, people wanna know if you can use soapy water,
or just water by itself to actually lubricate the clay bar,
when in reality the clay luber itself
has the right kind of chemicals to help it glide
safely across the surface
but also it's adding nutrients to the clay bar
so it lasts as long as it can.
You know, most soaps can degrade the actual finish of this,
so these will start peeling
or tearing apart as you're working
which kinda kills 'em.
So, using a proper clay lubricant is the best way to go.
And this way you can get the best results
and also you're not going through tons of product.
Now I'll just grab a clean
green work horse microfiber towel.
You don't need to wash the surface again,
especially if you're gonna be polishing.
Just simply wipe away the spent product
and any of the remaining dirt.
The clay bar...
The clay luber actually helps to kinda
cleanse away most of the dirt.
This way you don't have to kinda wash it over again.
And now it's simply remove the grime that was in the pores.
Like I mentioned, this is prepping it for polishing,
or if you use a light enough clay bar
and you polish your car,
or basically maintain your vehicle
this is what you need to do before you put on new waxes.
This way again it's gonna bond directly to the bare paint.
It's not gonna be locking any of the filth.
And it's gonna help it last as long as it can.
So now we'll grab our TORQ 15DA,
we'll attach the orange hex-logic pad,
give it a little bit of the V32,
and then we'll get right onto the polishing steps.
So as I mentioned this is our TORQ 15DA,
which is the newest installment
to the TORQ brand,
and obviously the reason why it's called a 15
is because it has a 15 millimeter throw.
What makes this machine so great
is it has a more powerful motor
so it's not gonna bog down in the curves
or the contours of the vehicle.
This way you're getting consistent results
on the entire surface that you're working on.
Now I'm just attaching a five inch hex-logic pad,
which I believe is the perfect combination
of cutting power as well as covering enough surface area.
And now just using some V32, simply shake the bottle.
We're gonna apply five dime sized drops to our pad.
Which is about the size of one hex.
Then I'm also going to spray with some pad conditioner
which helps to moisten the pad,
which helps it last as long as possible.
But this is also giving it the proper work time
so that the chemical can thoroughly do it's job.
Somebody wants to ask me why I repeat myself a lot,
that's because one, I always hope there's new viewers
that are learning how to polish,
or whatever steps that we're working on for that day.
So, I repeat myself to one,
practice makes perfect
and also for anybody that's new,
this is just the proper way to do it.
Now workin' with a dual action
you wanna make sure that you put the machine on the surface
and then you turn it on.
This way you're not flinging compound
or polish all over the place.
And then also on the lowest speed setting
that's where we're going to give this even coat of polish.
And then on our highest speed setting,
that's where we're gonna do our actual cutting.
Now you wanna make sure that the machine
is completely flat.
This way it's going to do an even consistent result.
And you wanna make sure
that you're giving some very light amount of pressure
just basically the weight of your hand
is all you really need.
And you do wanna keep it from tipping too much
from one side to the other.
This is easy to do on hoods and flat panels,
but when you're working on a door
or something vertical,
typically you'll turn your head and then it'll
dive or it'll dip where it'll stall the pad.
And then you're not actually cutting,
you're not polishing,
you're just basically massaging the paint.
You're not really doing anything.
So we're gonna spread it out
and then on our highest speed setting
we'll actually do our paint correction.
And then I'll show you guys a before and after.
So I just completed the step using V32
with an orange hex-logic pad
and now we need to refine the finish
using a white hex-logic pad and V36.
Now in some cases with cars that have very hard paint,
such as most European cars,
you can actually finish with a V32
if you know what you're doing.
But we wanna refine it even further
to get some of those light scratch and swirls out,
and of the little marring effects that was left behind.
That's why we're using the V36.
So if we shake up the bottle,
and we're gonna apply the same amount to the pad.
And repeat the same process of spreading it out
and then using the highest speed
to actually remove the scratch and swirls.
As you guys can see, it's a huge transformation
from the scratch and swirled side
to the now freshly polished side.
Now typically after you polish
you wanna put some kinda protective coating on there,
whether it's ceramic or carbon.
Or you can skip that and go to an optional step of glaze,
which masks any minor swirls and scratches.
You wanna lock all that shine in there using a sealant
and or a wax to help really bring out the shine,
but more importantly it's gonna protect the finish,
because if you didn't know
white absorbs UV rays in a very poor way.
So, over time it's gonna start to turn pink
or it'll oxidize and then it's just eventually gonna fail.
But by putting on a sealant or protective coating
is going to help prolong the life of your paint.
So now I'm gonna take the tape off
to show you guys a before and after,
and already I can see there's just this
beautiful hands down transformation.
But now the headlight looks kinda junky,
so we're gonna set up our TORQ 15
with a green hex-logic pad
and then using some headlight restorer
we'll bring that headlight back to life
just so overall the car looks better.
And also that's gonna give it some more clarity
which is also going to be safer, obviously.
So let's take that tape off.
Now as you can see it's very dull matte sheen on this side,
and just a pretty pure glossy side on that end.
Obviously it's not gonna be 100% paint correction
because the car was scratched pretty heavily
and most of those are pretty deep.
Some of it's even actually underneath the paint,
so I wonder if it has been repainted in it's life,
but overall this is a lot better than it was.
You can let go now.
And eventually,
this car can probably use a heavier compound
maybe even some wet sanding.
But overall, I think it looks fantastic.
So, like I said, we're gonna take the tape off here,
then we need to mask around the area,
so that we're not re-polishing any steps.
And then we're gonna get this headlight lookin' it's best.
So now we're moving onto the headlight step,
just like I mentioned,
using a one step headlight restorer.
Basically this is a polish that's designed specifically
for your optical plastics,
to remove any kind of faded UV protectants,
and also the dead plastic.
Now again I'm going to be showing you how to use it
with our TORQ 15DA
because a lot of people can either do this by hand
or with a rotary.
But if you have a 15 DA you might as well use it.
So basically all you're gonna do is
same thing with any kind of polishes,
you wanna shake it up.
And then apply it to the pad.
You're gonna let the machine do all of the work.
And since we're workin' on a very small area,
we're only gonna be using about three dots.
But we'll still use some headlight...
About three dots
but we're still gonna use some pad conditioner.
To again help moisten the pad.
So this reduces any kind of friction
that would normally kill a pad
and it's also giving the proper work time for your polish.
We're gonna blotch it out.
Luckily, we're workin' on a headlight that
doesn't have a whole lot of oxidation on it.
And it also doesn't have the alignment nub
so we don't have to fight around that.
And they're fairly large,
so the five inch pad's going to be okay.
Now, we'll do the same thing,
we're gonna spread it out,
and then on the highest speed
we're just gonna work it in
till basically it's gone translucent or clear.
And then we'll wipe it off and check our work.
You can see that the TORQ 15 with headlight restorer
did an amazing job of restoring perfect clarity
to these headlights.
This is a lot more cost efficient
than replacing these headlights
because it is a Mercedes
and everything's just gonna be expensive.
So, headlight restorer essentially removes the dead plastic
and the oxidized layer that was on top
to give you perfect clarity again.
Once you remove that
you wanna put some kind of protective coating back on it.
Which is why we're gonna put jet seal
on the headlights as well as the rest of the vehicle
after we're done polishing it.
So I need to jump on that
and in the meantime
you guys can head over to our website ChemicalGuys.com,
check out these products for yourself.
If you like this video or this car
be sure to give it a thumbs up,
and as always we'll see guys next time,
right here in the detail garage.