- Hey guys, welcome to my 2004 CLK 55 AMG.
I bought this car about three months ago,
and believe it or not, I haven't touched it since.
The previous owner,
he didn't touch it in quite a while either.
So it looks pretty dirty.
There's a lot of things that we need to do to it.
And in this series, we're going to be going over everything
from start to finish.
So if you guys want to come up close,
we'll do a quick walkthrough and see what needs to be done
which is basically everything.
Let's take a look real quick.
This is a 2004, like I said, CLK 55 AMG.
Now it is the AMG version of this car
which means that it has a special,
it's a special, I guess, race model.
It's a little more tuned to go fast.
It has a large engine, same chassis as a CLK
but it does have a 5.5 liter V8.
It was hand-built in Germany, in Affalterbach, Germany.
And somehow they squeeze that giant engine
in this little tiny car, so it's actually pretty fast.
It has pretty classic style and I like the way it looks.
It just has a lot of dirt on it.
So let's take a look real quick.
As you can see, it rained here not too long ago
so there's some water spots, stuff like that.
If we get a little closer,
the body has been through some hard times.
It has about 125,000 miles is when I bought it.
And there's some loose pieces that will
need to be fixed as well as just general dirt and grime
all around the car.
If you take a look at these wheels,
they at one point were Chrome,
and they're not that Chrome anymore,
but we're going to get them back to Chrome in no time.
They're special edition Lorinser wheels.
I was not a huge fan of these wheels to start off,
but I'm thinking maybe once they clean up
I might like them a little more.
But when I bought the car, I was hoping that they were
like the OEMs were still with the car, they weren't.
So eventually I'd like to get new wheels,
but once we clean these up
we'll kind of assess them and see what they look like.
I don't know what the condition is underneath,
maybe I'll warm up to them once they get a little cleaner.
Keeping walking around the car
you'll see a lot more dirt especially in the back.
That's because when you drive around
obviously a lot of that dirt and grime gets kicked up
especially from these extra wide tires.
This car is rear wheel drive
and those Lorinser wheels are a little bit wider
than stock and larger as well, they're 19 inches.
There's a lot of nice little touches
and AMG flourishes around the car.
So in addition to putting larger engines in the cars,
AMG, the subdivision of Mercedes also
accents the car with special AMG parts.
So you'll see these special dual exhaust right here.
So it's kinda cool 'cause they're branded,
they say AMG on them.
So it's really awesome attention to detail that
you don't really see a lot of other places.
With AMG, they really go the extra mile.
If you were to look at the CLK 500 which is
I guess a step below this car,
it's not the special AMG version,
you'll see it only has a single exhaust.
And then if you go even a step below that
which is the CLK 320 which has the V6,
I believe it has an even smaller single exhaust.
Wow, someone wants to challenge the new V8.
So if we come back to this wheel, you'll see the same thing,
a lot of super dirty.
You'll see the barrels are even dirtier.
I don't know if the previous owner ever washed these at all.
One feature that I, probably the only feature I like
about these wheels is that they have these cool little bolts
around the entire perimeter of the wheel which I think,
I dunno, it's another attention to detail thing,
they even have a little text on the bolts
which looks really cool.
Hopefully those will clean up as well.
And there's actually like, I don't know if the owner,
previous owner drove through paint or something
but there's all these little white specks everywhere.
I'm not sure what that is
but you can see it's on the paint as well.
So you have it on the wheels and the paint
and the felt liner as well,
very strange, but I'm sure that we'll clean up
with the right combo products.
So going to the top of the car,
you see lots of water spots, dust, grime, stuff like that.
The previous owner did apologize when I bought the car
that the car wasn't clean when I bought it,
I didn't really care 'cause I knew that we were
going to be doing the series anyway,
but he did make it known that he hadn't cleaned it
in quite a while, totally fine with me though.
This color, I forgot to check the color.
We'll put it right here, the official Mercedes color,
but it's kind of a unique color in that
it's brownish silver.
So it does hide dirt really well.
So even though this paint is filthy,
it doesn't look that dirty
and it doesn't look that bad either, kind of cool.
It will be helpful later but we definitely want to
not only give it a wash, but also clay, a polish,
all that stuff to get it back to looking as amazing
as it once did when it left the factory.
Coming back to the front of the car, more of the same,
I'm surprised these headlights still look really good.
I would think they would faded by now
but for some reason they still look great.
So they're not going to need very much work there.
You'll see some little black specks around here,
not sure what those are.
Oh, it's all over here too.
But those should come off with a thorough wash,
what we're about to do.
So as you guys can tell,
there's nothing drastic about this car
that's like super terrible.
It's not a salvage title.
It doesn't deserve to go to the junk yard,
it's a very deserving car of a full detail and polish.
There's just a lot of little stuff, a lot of built up stuff.
I think once we do a big,
kind of like a big full A-Z detail,
then we just maintain it from then on out
and it should be a really great car.
Just to kind of go over my favorite things about the car
before we get started just so you guys can have some logic
as to why I bought this car.
I'm coming from a 2013 Scion FR-S
which is a great car, but it's a very specific car,
it's a very great car at certain things.
So it's a great Canyon Carver,
it's a great car for the track,
It handles like no other cars,
probably one of the best handling cars that exist today.
Except the problem with that car is that I live
in Los Angeles and most of my day is spent
in stop and go traffic, in boulevards, on streets,
stuff like that.
It is a stick shift so I just find myself
doing this all day, first gear, neutral,
first gear, neutral.
That car is severely underpowered,
it has a two liter flat for
with 200 horsepower and even less torque,
I think it's around like 150 or 160 foot pounds of torque.
So that thing is not fast.
I don't know how else to say it, it's not fast.
So for just everyday driving,
I wanted something that had a little more torque,
a little more power, a little more fun
in the straight lines, more comfortable,
more luxurious, has more creature comforts,
and this car fit the bill perfectly.
I didn't want to break the bank,
also I wanted something that was affordable.
I wanted something German.
I've never had a German car before,
but ever since I was a kid, German cars have always
been my favorite, German and Italian cars.
Italian cars are a little bit harder to come by
at this price point though, at least good ones.
So I settled on this car, which is a great option
'cause there's many things that I love about it.
So if I were to count down my top three things
about this car that I love, obviously the engine.
Basically the engine is the heart of any AMG car.
The M113 engine, it's not the M113K,
that's the supercharged one which you find in this car's
older brothers, this one just has the regular naturally
aspirated M113.
That engine is a true work of art.
It has about 362 horsepower
and I believe around 400 foot pounds of torque.
So it's quite fast even for being a 2004 model,
it's loads faster than the FRS.
It's a lot of fun to drive, areal joy to drive,
is great around these straight roads
around here in Los Angeles.
So that's probably the first thing that I love.
The second thing I love is this pluralist design.
So as you guys can see, it does not have
a B pillar right here.
So typical cars, they'll have A pillar right here,
they'll have a B pillar here, and the C pillar right here.
This car does not have a B pillar at all.
So it's a real seamless design.
It's almost like a hard top convertible in this sense.
So I can just take my hand and go all the way
through like this.
And if you stand back a little bit,
it really gives the car a unique appearance
unlike any other.
I don't think you really see this
in any other cars besides these Mercedes CLK, CL-Class,
and then also the newer E-Class Mercedes.
At the top of my head, I can't think of another car
that has that feature.
A lot of older cars like Muscle cars from the 60s,
they were like that, but for some reason they phased
that out and now it's pretty hard to find.
So guys, I know that was kind of a long intro
but now it's time to get started.
So like most details, we're going to start on the wheels
because that's the dirtiest part.
And definitely for this car,
that stays true because these wheels are absolutely filthy.
I look forward to cleaning them and seeing
how nice they turn up.
So we'll start with the wheels
and then we'll foam the body and then we'll go from there.
Hey guys, so I just finished the wheel and it looks great.
Just a regular cleaning really brought back
a lot of the shine.
And I think that some heavy metal polish is really
going to do wonders to really bring up the shine
even more on these wheels.
I like them better already,
who knows, maybe we'll keep them.
While I'm down here, I just wanted to give you guys
a little pro tip about brushes.
So the two brushes I used today are this flag tip brush
and then this stiff brush right here.
What a flag tip means is, I'm going to have
to get really close, but I'll show you guys,
the edges of the bristles are actually intentionally frayed.
And so you want to use that on more sensitive surfaces
because what that does is it makes the end not as stiff
softer and it also spreads out the force.
So it's even more gentle for those shiny surfaces
that are more prone to scratching.
And then if you look here,
this is just a regular bristle brush.
The ends are not frayed, so this is a stiffer brush.
And that will be used for the tire and stuff like that,
surfaces that are not as sensitive
and that need a little bit more scrubbing.
So just a little a pro tip for you guys.
Next time you guys clean your wheels, remember that.
All right guys, so now that my wheels are nice and clean,
we're going to move on to my favorite part of the wash
which is the foaming part.
Now this car hasn't been foamed or washed
in a very long time.
So we're going to take utmost precaution
when we proceed to this step.
What that means is we're going to be rinsing it real fast
to get all the major dirt and debris
off the car to minimize the chance of swirls and scratches.
And then we're going to be foaming at once just as almost
like a pre foam, rinsing it off, forming it again,
and then going to scrubbing the car.
So let's get to it.
All right guys, as you can see here,
I'm adding some Honey Dew Snow Foam and some Clean Slate
and then my Big Mouth Foam Cannon.
Now Honey Dew is going to do a great job
at shooting some thick, rich suds all over my car.
And in addition to that, I'm going to be using
just a little bit of Clean Slate.
Clean Slate is a great additive that I can add to my soap
that's going to strip off any old waxes, any old glazes
or sealants on my car.
Being that this is a new car,
I'm not sure what's left on the pane
so I'm using this as a great option and a great method
of stripping off all that old stuff off
so I know that I'm really starting all over again.
Now you guys are going to see me foam the car once
and then rinse it off.
And that's really just knocking off the biggest pieces
of dirt, grime debris and all that stuff.
And then I'm going to foam it a second time.
And only once I am done foaming the second time,
I'm actually going to go in with my wash mint
and really scrub the surface.
All right guys, so you might ask
why am I foaming my car like this,
what's the purpose of foaming your car?
Well, what is going to do is it's actually going to
encapsulate all those little particles of dirt debris
and pollution inside the bubbles of the foam
and make the surface super slippery,
which means that I could rub my wash mint over the surface
without having to worry about
scratching or swirling my paint.
All right guys, so using the two bucket method,
I'm going to foam up my Chanel WashMist
and then scrub the service of my car.
As you guys can see I'm using straight lines
which is going to be the safest and best way to clean my car
without installing any swirls and scratches.
As you guys notice, I'm going to be cleaning my car
from top-down, and that's to work most efficiently
and not waste any soap and just make the job a lot easier.
If I don't do that, I'm going to be
cleaning the bottom of my car first
and then clean the top part of my car
which is going to make all the clean surface on the bottom
get dirty again.
All right guys, so I'm going to be using the Woolly Mammoth
drying towel to dry my car.
Now the great thing about this towel is it's huge.
It's huge, it's extra soft,
and it holds up to a gallon of water
which means that I'm going to be able to dry my car
in as little time as possible.
As you guys can see, I start at the top
and then work my way down the car to dry it
in as little bit amount of time as possible.
All right guys, so that concludes the wash
of the CLK 55 AMG, it was tons of fun.
And as you guys can see, it did a huge transformation.
All it was was a wheel clean and a wash
and it already looks so much better.
But what I really love now is that
now we kind of have a baseline kind of a clean slate
where we could go in and look at everything
that needs to be done.
Before, all the defects, all the swirls,
all the scratches were hidden by
dirt, grime, dust, stuff like that.
Now we can really go in there and see
what we're working with.
Like I suspected, there is nothing super crazy that
is going to need to be done, it's a lot of little stuff.
Right off the bat, I see a lot of scratches right here
in the door handle, that's when people with long nails
going in and jabbing their hands in like this
and then scratching the inner part of the door handle
right there.
So that will clean up with just some compound and polish.
The wheels also cleaned up very nice.
However, I do see lots of small imperfections.
It looks like a little oxidation,
some spotting stuff like that.
So definitely some heavy metal polish and a ballbuster
or some sort of pad would work wonders there.
You can't wait till all of that
how that looks once we're all done.
I'm so excited to get started on the next thing.
I want to do it right now but it's going to get dark soon
and I can't, but I'm super excited
to go to the next levels of this
and we're going to be doing cleaning, polishing,
the wheels, the paint, again, all the details,
and then moving on to the interior which I'm also super
excited about because that's where I spend
the most amount of time.
And don't forget the engine,
and we're going to be doing the engine as well,
detailing that five and a half liter AMG V8,
hand-built in Germany, super excited about that.