Nissan Latio Metallic Black

This car is a year old but has low mileage (15,000 KM), so it was in a fairly new condition. I only had a day and a half to do this car but I wanted maximum paint correction, so I didn’t take much process pictures, sorry for the short write-up as was pressed for time.

So the first half of the day started by cleaning the interior. First task was cleaning the carpets, what I used to do was to scrub with Meguiar’s All Purpose Cleaner, rinse off and hang dry. After reading and watching the pros using an extractor(and wondering why don’t they just scrub and rinse), I tried to replicate the process using my wet and dry vacuum.

Scrubbed and wet vacced.

Here you can see the reason for extracting out the water. After scrubbing and rinsing, the water retains in the carpet, and this water is dirty, if left to dry, the dirty might still be in the carpets. Here you can see the dirty water, half of the carpet has been wet vacced and the other has just been scrubbed and rinsed.

And the water after cleaning two mats.

Clean, fresh and almost dry.

Then interior including the pedals is cleaned with Meguiar’s All Purpose Cleaner(10:1).

Bucket of rinse water after cleaning the interior and wiping down the door shuts.

The paint is quite swirled but most of it doesn’t look very deep.

The next day, wheel wells, wheels and tires cleaned with Osren Multi Cleaner. Car body washed with Meguiar’s Hyper Wash and tar removed with Osren Tar Remover.

The paint didn’t feel too rough.

After cleaning the paint, a test spot was done on the bonnet. First combination tried was Meguiar’s #82 Swirl Free Polish on a Lake Country Black Finishing Pad via rotary.

This removed about 60% of the scratches. I wanted maximum correction in the available time so I stepped up to Meguiar’s #83 Dual-Action Cleaner/Polish on a Meguiar’s W-8006 Polishing Pad via rotary and this removed about 80-90% of the scratches.

This combination was used on the whole car

I was facing ‘sticky paint’ issues, the polish was clumping up and the residue was very very difficult to remove, I had to wipe each panel with M6000 Wax and Grease Remover after polishing, despite that, the scratches were being polished out nicely. One thing to note was the panels that were sprayed with Osren Tar remover didn’t feel as ‘sticky’ and the polish worked a little bit better.

So I just battled it and buffed the whole car. After Meguiar’s #83 Dual-Action Cleaner/Polish, it is followed by Meguiar’s #82 Swirl-Free Polish on a Lake Country Black Finishing Pad via rotary and then again with Meguiar’s #82 Swirl-Free Polish on a Meguiar’s W-9006 Finshing Pad via random orbital.

After this, the whole car is pressure rinsed to remove polishing dust (a lot of it), and polish residues is cleaned off from edges. Meguiar’s #21 Synthetic Sealant is applied.

While waiting for it to pass the swipe test, exterior trim dressed with Autoglym Bumper Care and tyres dressed with Meguiar’s Hyperdressing (1:1).

As always, thanks for looking, feel free to comment and ask any questions. Wished I had more time to do it in more detail.

Also many many thanks to the owner for having to travel long distances to my place for the detail! Very much appreciated =)