Ok! 17 hours spent with this 2001 BMW E46 320i Alpineweiss III which belongs to a friend of mine.


Wash and cleaning:
So the color of this BMW is Alpineweiss III. A very nice and beautiful color. Since it's white, everything shows in a close inspection. Therefore the cleaning process was quite easy to do. However, in this case it was very exhausting as well. There was grime and sap up to the most recent point of cleaning process!

At first I did a solvent spray wash including rinsing of course. Then a regular wash, which included the tar removing. This was followed by iron removing and claying.

Clearcoat and scratches:
The clearcoat was pretty hard, which is common for beemers. But I liked it this time, because the last car that I did (Honda Accord TypeS), had a very soft clearcoat which was a PITA to polish.
The surface of this BMW was VERY scratchy. Well, there was 290000km/180200miles on the clock, so I can understand it somehow. I was able to correct it around 85%. But because the starting point was so bad, the change was quite evident!

The worst areas were the bonnet and the trunk lid, which was repainted actually. It was interesting that the trunk lid had a 1 stage paint on it, no clearcoat at all.

Pads, compounds and polishing:
I had two full days to use, and I pretty much spent them. Sweaty hours lol!

I started with the Flex PE 14-2 + Lake Country yellow cutting pad + Menzerna PO203S, which worked pretty nicely. However, I had to do two runs on most places. With this I achieved a state, where I was still able to locate some deep swirl scratches in a halogen light. These deep swirl scrathes were difficult to see in a sunlight and a LED flashlight though. With a LED I could see some very, very light and tiny swirls. These light swirls were horrible in the sunlight, and I decided to get rid of them, and let the deep scratches alone, because they surely were deep.

So, the second phase was completed with the Flex XC 3401 VRG + LC orange light cutting pad + Menzerna PO106FA combination. Although this was a finishing phase, a light cutting pad was needed to cure those tiny and light swirls because of the hard clearcoat.

Waxing and details:
Nothing special to say. Products used can be seen in the list below.

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The process:

1) Prewash
- A solvent spray
- Bilt-Hamber Autofoam

2) Wash and cleaning
- Turtle Wax Big Orange
- Two bucket method + sheepskin mitt
- AutoGlym Instant Tar Remover
- CarPro IronX

3) Claying
- Zaino Z-18 Claybar
- Turtle Wax Big Orange as lubricant

4) Paint correction
- Menzerna P203S + Lake Country CCS yellow cutting pad + Flex PE14-2
- Menzerna PO106FA + Lake Country CCS orange light cutting pad + FLEX XC 3401 VRG

5) LSP
- Finish Kare 1000P

6) Others
Tyres:
- Meguiar's Gold Class Endurance Tyre Gel

Windows:
- Maston GT Window clean

Black plastics:
- AutoGlym Bumper Care

Exhaust tips:
- Turtle Wax Silver Chrome

Lots of pics, I apologize .

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Before and a wash

The scratches were difficult to photograph at this point, so I give you the dirty car .












Started with a solvent spray.


No pictures of the wash itself. IronX doing its job here.


And here.

 

It became clean after all.




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Scratches and paint correction

Measuring the paint thickness. Healthy numbers everywhere.


Left side before.


A 50/50 shot after one pass with a PO203S + LC CCS yellow


Left side after (Two passes with PO203S + LC CCS yellow) before the second phase.


Then some scratches on the right side.


The right hand side mirror before.


After. For some reason I wasn't able to make the mirrors any "sharper".


The horror of the bonnet.

 

The right headlight before.


After.


The difference isn't so clear in the pics above, so here's enlargements.
Before.


After.


Trunk lid before.


50/50 one.


50/50 two.


50/50 three.


Left tail light (from side) before.


After.

 

One of the door handles. I tried to photograph the scratches on the bottom of the cup, but didn't manage to take very good pics. Well...
Before.


After.


Another viewing angle, before.


After.


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Everything done

In the darkness of the garage.

 

Then outside. Photographing a white car is DIFFICULT!










The following pictures are slightly edited (colors and sharpness).

 

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Thank you for watching !

- Antti -