Driven Auto Detail: 2010 VW GTI (Opti-Guard)


Guest Driven Auto Detail

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Guest Driven Auto Detail

This customer PM'ed me in the spring about detailing his 2010 GTI inside & out but we just now got it knocked out. He was nice enough to make an hour or so trip to leave his car with me for a long weekend. Overall, the exterior was in great shape. Paint had very few swirls. They were too hard to capture with the camera so no befores of the paint. The black-painted B-pillars were a different story. The paint was uber soft so they were heavily swirled as you'll see below. On the bright side, they cleaned up easily. Interior was fairly dirty with dog hair and the usual grime. VW's carpet is terrible, like a lot of carpet these days, so vacuuming was the hardest part of the whole job. I forgot to get any before pics of the interior unfortunately.

 

After speaking with the customer about Opti-Guard, he decided that he would be well-served with the permanent protection it provides. Even though he has never used it before, I've convinced him to maintain it with ONR washes.

 

 

-EXTERIOR-

Wash: Optimum No Rinse Wash & Shine (ONR)

Clean wheels/tires: Optimum Power Clean

Clay: Clay Magic Fine Grade (Blue)

Polish: Optimum Hyper Spray Polish / Optimum Microfiber Cutting Pad / Griot's Garage DA Polisher / Speed 6

*B-pillars were followed-up with 3M UF on a white LC pad.

Protect paint, light lenses, trim, & wheels: Optimum Opti-Guard

Tires: Optimum Opti-Bond Tire Shine

Exhaust tips: Optimum Metal Polish / Optimum Opti-Guard

Seal glass/door jambs: Duragloss AquaWax

*Test spot with OG on the glass left a haze so I opted not to continue applying it to the rest of the glass.

 

-INTERIOR-

Clean plastic/vinyl: Meguiar's All-Purpose Cleaner (Green)

Clean carpets/fabric: Bio-Kleen Traffic Lane Cleaner (32:1)

Protect plastic/vinyl: Optimum Protectant Plus (Leather Protectant)

Protect carpets/upholstery: Aerospace 303 High Tech Fabric Guard

Protect gauges, head unit screen: Plexus

 

Comments, questions welcomed. Thanks for looking!

 

Passenger side b-pillar before

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After

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Driver's side b-pillar before

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After

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Guest Driven Auto Detail

Thanks Chris! I wish I could take credit for my logo, but truth be told my wife was the creator/designer. She's a graphic designer so I've taken advantage of it :)

 

If OPT ever needs design work, keep her in mind!

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Car and logo look very nice. Always nice to have an artist in the house! I have a new '12 blk GTI, and recently had it pro-detailed..ran into issues with water spots and etching and difficulties with cleaning all the honeycomb'd areas. How did you tackle these areas, did you run into any etching, and lastly, how would you define the clear coat paint of this car? Hard/soft, thick/thin etc. ✌

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Gogtigo -

 

Thanks for the kind words. I didn't have any real issues with the honeycomb areas. I use a small popsicle stick with a MF towel wrapped around it to get into areas like that. There was no evidence of water spot etching on this car. As far as the clear was concerned, there were only faint swirls in the paint where as the black b-pillars with hammered with swirls. This lead me to believe that paint was much harder than the b-pillar because the b-pillar paint was super soft & it corrected very easily. Overall, I thought the paint was great.

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Gogtigo -

 

Thanks for the kind words. I didn't have any real issues with the honeycomb areas. I use a small popsicle stick with a MF towel wrapped around it to get into areas like that. There was no evidence of water spot etching on this car. As far as the clear was concerned, there were only faint swirls in the paint where as the black b-pillars with hammered with swirls. This lead me to believe that paint was much harder than the b-pillar because the b-pillar paint was super soft & it corrected very easily. Overall, I thought the paint was great.

 

Thanks for the response. I'm just trying to get a grasp on a new car, it's paint and how best to attack it. Glad to hear the success you've had on the car✌

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