A Big Saloon Car = Thicker Paint Coating?

This car was really big and long, the owner was upset over the marring left by the maid during the cleaning process. I took over the car and sent it for a complete detail wash plus claying. Surface marring wasn't really very bad in my opinion but there were water and acidic etchings around the car. The paintwork needs to be corrected and i knew it's going to take some time doing it alone.

Surface marring + water etching and marks.

A closer view of the same panel, marring was really quite superficial to the naked eyes.

As usual, paint coating thickness was verified before any correction work, the readings shown were familiar Mercedes ride's coating thickness that i had worked with, easily over 150 microns and some panels over 200 microns.

This ride was produced in 2008, seemed like the older batches of Mercedes had thicker paint coating as compared to the other 2010 Mercedes CLC which hardly had any panels exceeding 90 microns. A S-Class against a CLC, maybe the paint coating on the CLC was a lemon case... hmmm.

I spent the next 5 hours correcting the affected panels with average of 4 hits on each panels with various grade of polish. The corrected paint was cleaned up and prepared for protection coating. I slapped 2 protection coatings on each panel and the results were quite good.

The interior was thoroughly cleaned and conditioned, it's immaculate once again.

A total of about 7-8 hours was spent on this ride, i was totally exhausted by the tiring paint correction process. Now i witnessed the hard work paid off with a beautiful ride, standing out from the rest of the rides in the service station.

Hope you had enjoy the pictures. Thank you for viewing.

Paint Coating Level Drop?

I was skeptical on the readings shown on my PTG for a brand new 2010 Mercedes CLC 180, i went to double check on the manufacture period on the passenger side door shut where there's a small metal plate engraved with the details. It's correct, manufacture in 2010. I even change the batteries in my PTG as it was blinking (low power) and it will affect the accuracy of the device. I retook the paint coating level, again the readings shown were very consistant throughout the entire car.

The paint coating level was no more than 90 microns for all the panels. In the past, these rides used to be wearing paint coating easily more than 130 microns. I couldn't believe it as a continental ride's paint coating was so low nowadays. The normal Japanese/ Korean executive sedan seemed to have a higher paint coating level than their continental cousin.

The paint surface was marred with superfine hairline scratches and some RDS on the acidic etched marks left by the birds. It seemed like it was an easy job but it's not really that simple as compared to correction work on a Japanese or Korean ride.

6 hours were used to correct the minor imperfections on this Benz and finally, the ride was given wax and it really looked quite awesome despite it wasn't a dark colour one. I don't enjoyed correcting a Mercedes paintwork but if given a choice to choose between a Honda and a Mercedes, i'll take the Mercedes over the Honda.... lolz. :)

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