I detailed this 04 M3 this past weekend. The car arrived clean and left even cleaner. The car has a lot of swirls, some deeper scratches but mostly in good shape.

The owner's primary concern is the swirls. Because the car is driven daily, I'm aiming for 80% correction and leave as much clear coat as possible.

The car has a layer of synthetic wax (Prima Epic), and topped with carnauba (Prima Banana Gloss) for added warmth.

Tools and products used:

Lake Country orange, white, and black pads
Prima Swirl, Amigo, Epic, Hydro, and Banana Gloss
Makita 9227C and Porter Cable 7464
Lots of MF towels.
Lexol Leather Cleaner & Conditioner
Meguiar's Last Touch
Meguiar's Hyper Dressing
Meguiar's All Purpose Cleaner Plus
Meguiar's Hot Rims Mag & Aluminum Polish for the exhaust tips
Stoner's Invisible Glass
Black Wow for the badly faded plastic trims. This is my go to product for severely faded plastics.
Steel wool #0000 to clean the inside of the exhaust tips.
Good ol' water that California is running out of.

The interior was in a good shape. I cleaned the radio, cup holders, brushed the steering wheel to restore the tri-color stitches, brushed all the vents, vacuumed the interior and apply Lexol to all leather surfaces. The driver's seat looked a little shiny and Lexol brought back the matte color.

The engine bay was completely detailed and dressed with Hyper Dressing and Black Wow.

The gas door has some very sticky residue and it was cleaned almost completely.

It took me about 18 hours to complete this car. There's no sun almost the entire weekend so it's difficult to get the sparkly shine of the metallic paint.

On to the pics.

Before:
Am I done here? I haven't even started.






Swirls:




Doesn't show much, I just thought this is a pretty cool pic, the client's car on the center stage with mine sitting in the background.


Gas door:


Cleaned:


Afters. Pardon the dust on some of the pics. Most of the pics below are before dusting and wax.






50:50
















Look ma, no swirls!

 

Nice! I bet it didn't take as long, since you weren't going for full correction.

I believe you meant to say Porter Cable 7424, not Porter Cable 7464, correct?

 

looking good I like looking at threads like these makes me want to go out and buy more detailing supplies

 

Yeah, it's 7424. I fatfingered it the first time and pasted the wrong info.

 

Very nice!

 

Beautiful Detail!

I am surprised at the amount of orange peel on a BMW.

 

Thanks!

I've worked on quite a number of BMWs and all of them have pretty good orange peel. I think it's about the same as Honda/Acura paint.

 

Ha ha...but looks great man.

I just saw this color in person for the first time...

I had been keeping my eye for it so when I passed it I had to circle around the block.

 

Carbon Black is very similar to NBP. It looks black when dark, and bluish-purplish under the sun. The metallic flakes in the paint are just amazing.

 

You certainly made that 04 look a lot newer! Beautiful job! Ive done a load of Bimmers also, obviously the darker colors reveal the blems in more truth though....

 

Thanks Patrick!

The trunk lid and the bumpers were resprayed, that's why they show even more orange peel.

 

Wow, beautiful paint restored

 

great job! black definitely looks the best after a good detail. what is orange peel btw?

 

well done.