Oakes

This 2008 Chevrolet Tahoe, looked tired and aged, which was unacceptable being a 2008 vehicle with only 20k miles on it! We could see the damage from the other end of the building when we showed up, the black paint had a heavy gray hue to it. Over the course of 25 hours among three of us working, we revived this paint and gave it the gloss and correction it should have regardless of age and mileage! Being such a large vehicle, we had our work cut out for us, and it's not often that we do SUVs simply because of the time and effort required to do such extensive correction work. As listed in the process the paint varied across the vehicle, and some panels were more damaged than others, a result of consistent trips to the automated car wash. Just goes to show, hand washing your vehicle is far more beneficial in the long run. This was easily one of the most defected vehicles I have worked on in the last 6 years, I've tackled some difficult projects before that consumed many days, but this Tahoe takes the cake on damage, lucky for us paint was pretty soft and easy to fix. With that said, the pictures are worth an unlimited amount of words, there are a LOT of pictures in this thread, but we really wanted to document and show the differences in the various lighting and such. Even in the shade this car made me cringe!


Products used

Meguiar’s M105 + wool pad
Meguiar’s M105 + yellow pad
Menzerna SIP + yellow pad
Menzerna 203PF + orange pad
Menzerna 106FA + black pad
Blackfire Wet diamond + blue pad
P21S Paint Cleanser + P21S yellow applicator
Meguiar’s Last Touch (clay lube)
Riccardo yellow clay
Sonus Green superfine clay
CG maxi suds
Poorboys Bold ‘n Bright tire dressing
Poorboys Natural look


Procedure:
Car was rinsed and washed with CG maxi suds, there was no protection on car what so ever. After wax, it was dried and clayed, it was pretty bad specially on lower section of doors and rear hatch. Car was washed again and dried. Pulled car inside, and took paint readings, range was from 95-105 to 298-334 on same panels. Test panel was done on hood and Menzerna 203 and orange pad took everything out with one stage. Other panels needed more work and different combinations of pads and polishes were used. After all polishing stages (3 stages), P21S paint cleanser was used and then BlackFire sealant was applied, left on car for about an hour and wiped off. Wheels were cleaned , tires dressed, plastic trim dressed. Tail lights and headlights were polished. Glass cleaned.

Time spend on detail: 25 hours

Onto pictures

Before






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Clay condition after about each panel
bottom of doors (this was about same after each door)
25

Top panels






test panel 50/50


30


Correction pictures 50/50








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car was pretty big so all means of getting job done were used



50/50 video of rear quarter panel after first polishing stage
55

BlackFire sealant applied





reflection pictures


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Final pictures and video
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The end results speak for themselves! Thanks for reading!

-Oakes

crazyasiantl

iTrader: (7)

sad to see a basically brand new car look like that, but ... i am shipping my car to you lol

ThreePointTwoTeeEl

iTrader: (1)

How does a 2008 get like that? The only thing I can think of is getting some $1 Car washes with sand paper. The Car at the end looks Great! The front end of that car looks nice and debadged in the back; really clean actually especially after the detail from Oakes!

BDoggPrelude

Absolutely amazing work. I can't believe the before and after pictures. Our TL is covered with swirl marks and could use some professional TLC. How much does a job like this run? I'm not too sure on forum policies on posting prices so feel free to PM me if needed.

CLtotheTL32

iTrader: (3)

That's the worst looking black paint I have ever seen! How the hell could you let your paint go to shit like that?

Great work once again though. You saved that thing.