On arrival I was very impressed by the condition of the car.  It had just returned from a service at the dealership, so had a light covering of dirt – but overall it looked in great condition.

I started off by snapping before pictures of the car snapping. Now usually at this stage I would be taking pictures of all of the dirt in the nooks and crannies that usually get missed, however the more I looked at the car the more clear it became that it was pretty immaculate and there wasn’t much to photograph.

The engine bay was pretty clean too with just a light covering of dirt.

The owner thought the carbon fiber looked fine. It didn’t look too bad but I was confident I could make a massive improvement on it as it looked quite dull.

As did the exhaust silencer.

The carbon fiber mirrors looked quite dull too.

As usual I started off with the wheels and arches. With the brake disks being carbon ceramic caution needs to be exercised when cleaning the wheels so that the chemicals don’t damage the brake discs. Fortunately carbon brakes also mean that the wheels aren’t covered in the usual brake dust that can take a while to remove properly. The wheels were fairly clean and were just given a quick clean with water and shampoo. I intend to double check these later on and ensure they were perfect using only steam.

The only thing letting the wheels down was some residue from an old alloy wheel weight.

Which was easily removed.

At this point luckily the sun came out. It wasn’t out for long but it allowed me to take a few pictures showing the main reason the car was booked in – to correct the swirl marks and scratches.

Here’s a shot of the roof showing the typical swirl marks and quite a few deep scratches including the two long ones here that ran straight across the whole roof.

And the quarter panel near the door showing quite a deep scratch too.

And some perfectly space smears on engine cover glass. I asked the owner about these as it look like some tool was used but he had no idea how they got like that. I can only assume it was a tool used by the dealership the day before. They were instruced not to wash the car but may have give the engine a quick clean whilst carrying out the service. Impressive really…

Swirl marks on the carbon fiber.

The car was then washed with a lambswool wash mitt using the usual safe procedure to ensure no more swirls are inflicted. There was no tar on the car at all so the car was then taken inside to be clay barred (which didn’t pick anything up) and then dried off ready to start the paintwork correction process.

Before commencing paintwork correction I went round the car tapping up any vulnerable trim and edges and also inspected paintwork. This was done both visually and with a paint thickness guage to check for potential problems. Overall the reading were fairly consistant with no signs that the whole car had been corrected before due to the various sanding marks (the paintwork is sanded at to remove orange peel) left all over by the factory.

A couple of areas of concern were noted. Firstly there was a very small area of paint had a strange texture to it just below the nearside headlight. Taking reads showed that the paint here was quite a bit lower than the areas at both side of it. I suspect that there was possibly a scratch here before and someone had tried to machine polish it out.

To the left of the area.

On the area.

To the right of it.

This area was avoided completely whilst machine polishing. There was also a low spot on the roof too which luckily wasn’t near the large scratches pointed out earlier so wasn’t too much of a concern.

And the normal reading on the rest of the roof.

The defects on this car didn’t show up too well using the halogen lighting and sun gun, however the earlier before pictures in direct sunlight should give you an idea of the overall condition of the paintwork of the car and how each of these panels would have look in the sunlight.

Before – sanding marks from the factory and general swirls visible around the light source here.

After – with the side vent taped up to prevent polish residue and dust getting in there which would be hard to remove.

Roof showing more sanding marks and a few deeper scratches.

After. If you look very closely here you see a very deep scratch that hasn’t been completely removed. By machine polishing the scratch I have rounded off the edges of it and made it quite difficult to see. There wasn’t any point in removing this completely because it was less obvious that the slight step in the paintwork from the stripes – which again were very difficult to see.

More sanding marks and swirls.

All gone.

More swirls and random deep scratches on bonnet.

Again these aren’t showing up too well on the camera but I’m sure you get the idea.

These shots the scrathes in pantwork slightly better. There were a few cirlce style marks on this panel which have been left from poor machine polishing in the past. I suspect this is from the factory as the reads on the panel were consistent with the rest of the car.

During.

After

The rear bumper was a mass of sanding marks. The worst panel for this on the car.

I had to take this picture at an angel to pick up these marks. The part on the left is the quarter panel and the part on the right with all the marks on it is the rear bumper.

After.

Top area corrected and lower area still to complete

Whilst polishing lower areas of the car I noticed that you can see the carbon fibre sills inside the car – which I thought was quite cool so I snapped a picture.

The lights had the typical swirl marks so were polished to

After

After all of the paintwork correction was complete I final polished the car before wiping it down with an alcohol solution to ensure the paintwork was perfectly clean and free from polishing oils. The paintwork was then double checked using the sun gun to ensure it was perfect and free from any holograms etc before sealing the paintwork with our exclusive £2000 carnauba wax.

I then started work on the engine bay. A few more shots here showing it looking clean but fairly dull and milkly. This is caused by the heat in the engine bay.

Before under the sun gun light also showing the swirl marks.

After polishing.

A massive improvement as you can see. This was sealed with Gtechniq C1 Crystal lacquer to help prevent further fading. The exhaust silencer was also polished and protected at this stage.

After the engine bay was completed I was on the home straight with just the interior and the final details such as polshing the windows, dressing the tyres.

Much like the exterior and engine bay of this car the interior was pretty awesome. Lovely bucket seats with carbon fibre and alcantara everywhere.

The carbon fibre in the interior suffered from some light swirling so this was given a machine polish.

After.

And the alcantara was cleaned with a dedicated cleaner.

After the interior was completed I checked every area on the car to ensure it was spotless and free from polishing dust.

And steam cleaned the wheels and callipers.

Before taking the car outside for some completed pictures.  Sadly the sun wasn’t out but I think the final pictures came out quite nice.

And back inside for a few more pictures. I didn’t get any interior shots whilst outside hence this rather poorly lit shot of the interior.

And the view you get if you look round from the driver seat.

A nice detail on the interior.

And a final parting / arty shot.

Thanks for reading.