Another Big Cat Got Scratched

This car is long, wide and the interior is very luxury. It is the latest Jaguar XJL and wearing a coat of glossy black paint work. The surface of the car is marred and the condition of the paint work requires paint correction work. Enough said, let's take a look at the pictures.


Here comes the heart ache of the polishing/ grooming session, part of this beautify car was brushed against another object/ wall and the incident had left these scratches at the front right door and the front right fender. The owner request the damage area to be polish out as it is really an eyesore.

After my initial assessment, i told the owner that the restoration work on the scratched area is a challenge as some of the scratch marks look deep and bad. No promise on the end result but we'll do our best to sort it out.
After more than 5 hours of machine and hand buffing work, i would say this cat is getting better in shape and ready to pounce.

Some more pictures took towards the end of the session.
Miraculously, we managed to restore this scratched portion.
About the restoration work on the badly scratched area, i could only say that perhaps that day is a lucky day for this XJL's owner.

My boy busy with his final routine check around the car, just look at the magnitude of this car's length.

XJL is "Ready 2 Pounce"... lolz.
Beautify car restored to immaculate condition again, thank you for viewing.

Sunny's Severe Paint Conditions

One of the more severe case that i picked up couple of weeks ago, the Sunny's paint work is heavily etched and marred. There is a layer of sandblast contamination on the paint surface as the working place is within the vicinity of the shipyard. The feeling that i felt when i ran my palm on the car was "Ooh boy, this is certainly very rough!" This is like touching the surface of a 600 - 1000 grit sandpaper.
The car was washed and prepared for polishing. With help from 3 other person, 85 - 90% of the "layer of rough sandblast contamination" was remove in less than 2 hours by hand. My arms were shack out by the sandblast removal process, i was compelled to take a break before polishing the paint work as wobbling arms will affect the polishing process.
Paint readings took prior the paint correction work, 50+ microns on average. It's not in the healthy range.

Pictures of the 80% completed work and there were many chip marks on the bonnet.
Ideally, car with these paint work conditions should be left with the shop for a good 3 - 5 days to complete the full restoration work and charges would be around a grand mark or so but it's quite impossible for this to happen in SG. Thanks for viewing.

Soft Paint Challenge - Respray?

This customer had enough of his car's OEM paint work and he took to opportunity to respray the entire car when he got into a minor accident. The respray job was done and surprisingly he spray back the same colour - black. 10 months after the respray job, his car is presented before me for grooming and polishing. Majority of the dark colour rides here face the same problem which is surface marring and the swirl mark can be easily seen with aid of strong lighting.

Surprisingly, the paint correction work was able to be completed in 3 hrs and the corrected paint work is protected with sealant coating. This 'new' paint work seem like a darker shade of black and it look very different with other similar OEMs. It is much glossier (comparable to the continental cousin) and the clarity is there as well (good respray job). When i did the finishing touch on the ride, the feeling is simply great. Execution was "smooth and creamy" as the paint is very workable and does not mar easily.

If you are frustrated with maintaining dark colour ride, you may want to consider changing to other lighter colours. On the contrary, this owner is happy with his black ride with the new paint work polished. Thanks for viewing.

Random Deep Scratches (RDS) From Foreign Paintspots

What happened to this car's paint work? This typical family saloon was parked in the open carpark just like the rest of the cars while there was a upgrading project going on in the area. The flats around the area were receiving new coats of paint to last them for another couple of years. (I shall not discuss on how the paint get to the car's paint work as i was not there.)

When the owners discover the horror done on their car, they tried to remove the dried paint by using damp cloth/ tissue papers to wipe/ rub the paint spots. The results of the paint spots removal were not ok as the intense focus spot rubbing actions had created deep scratches on the paint work which we termed as RDS. With the use of strong lighting, pockets of RDS were 'lite up' and they are over the entire paint work.
The car was brought in for consultation and after assessing the conditions of the paint work, we decided to remove the rest of the remaining paint spots and correct the damages done. Hope the RDS were not too deep, else we may need a proper paint job on the car. The roof line area after removing the paint spots (Above picture). Not in good condition either, IMO.
A good 6 hours were spent on the paint correction work around the car. Total down time was close to 9 hours to restore the condition of the car's paint work as much as possible.

Here are the rest of the pictures from this paint correction cum restoration job. This Scenic is definitely better off right now than it was 10 hours ago.

If you see that there's a painting work going on in your area, be caution of the paint spotting problem. Thank you for viewing.

Paint Coating By Microns

The paint coating on the surface of this car is damage and the top lacquer is somehow brittle and breaks away easily. This has created a 'Peeling effect' on the paint work as i saw a large area of dull paint work without the top lacquer coating, a respray job is inevitable here.

How much is the thickness of this coating (paint/ lacquer)? This is the side view of the piece of lacquer fragment (above) and the thickness is just about a sheet of paper.

The is the paint reading took on the normal paint work (above) which is about 80+ microns.

This is the reading took on the paint surface without the layer of the lacquer coating (above), the coating thickness is measure to be about 20+ microns.
This is the bare metal plate provided with the PTG (above), it is a pure metal form without any form of coating on it. This is used to cross check the calibration accuracy of the PTG. This is the reading took from the bare metal plate, the PTG shows 0 micron.
What is the thickness of this particular piece of lacquer fragment from the damaged paintwork?
The piece of lacquer fragment is placed over the bare metal plate and the reading is took using the PTG.
The piece of lacquer fragment is measured to be about 50+ microns. A thousand microns is one millimeter and every paint correction session will remove the paint coating by couple of microns. In cases of adverse paint conditions whereby severe paint correction work is performed, it will deplete the paint work coating drastically. Prevention method/ early intervention ways like regular mild polish/ waxing by hand helps to prolong the longevity of the paint work. Thank you for viewing.

Subaru Forester Shines Again

'Overlapping' water etched marks developed on the paint work (above). This issue is an ongoing challenge for all dark colour rides.

This black Subaru has been skipping the maintenance session for sometime and the water etched mark issues are bad. The etched marks developed on the paint work are 'overlapping' and that 'overlapping' layering effect has cause the paint work to lose much of it's clarity and there goes the shine as well.


Many hours were used up on correcting the severe paint defects by machine polishing. Finally the shine, clarity and gloss were brought back to this black car. In this session, the trade off was about 10 - 12 microns of the top coating which was quite a substantial amount IMO. The hard work invested was worth it whenever i saw the smile on the owner's face.
The corrected paint work was meticulously clean up and seal off with an appropriate LSP coating.
After the final protection cum inspection process, this Subaru is ready to be handed over to it's owner. The conditions of the paint work will only deteriorate from the moment it leaves here and regular basic maintenance will help to prolong the duration till the next actual polishing session. Dark colour rides will need more attention than light colour ones, choose the colour of your ride wisely. :)
Thank you for viewing.