Thread: Carbon Black BMW M3 Exterior Detail by Unique Car Care!

This car has just over 80,000 miles on the odometer and was in pretty good shape for the mileage. Although the owner takes good care of the car, it has accumulated its fair share of defects over the years and needed some extensive polishing to bring the paint back to life.


Upon arrival, this is what the car looked like before any prep work:







I washed the exterior and degreased the paint to remove any previous waxes, sealants, quick detailers, etc. to make sure the surface was as clean as possible before performing any polishing.

In the picture below, you can see the beading on the side of the hood that hasn’t been stripped yet. When the paint is no longer beading water, it is a pretty good indication that everything has been removed.





After washing, degreasing and cleaning all the wheels & tires, I gave the exterior a claybar treatment to remove any bonded contaminants on the surface. This is what the claybar looked like after just two panels:





Here is what the paint looked like after it was fully prepped and ready for polishing:





























As you can see, it had its fair share of scratches, swirl marks, etching and stone chips. Originally, the owner and I had discussed just doing a 2-stage polishing, but after seeing the pictures via e-mail, he decided to step up to a 3-stage polishing treatment to make the car look as good as possible without getting into wetsanding.


Menzerna Super Intensive Polish paired with a Surbuf pad via PC worked great at knocking down the heavy defects. I did have to go back and polish some areas with the rotary where the defects were deep. In the picture below, you can see the difference between the bottom section of the panel which has been polished, compared to the top section without any polishing.







Here’s another picture showing the difference between the quarter panel that has been polished, compared to the door that hasn’t been polished yet.




.

The compounding stage created a lot of dust!!!!!





After the compounding stage, I gave the exterior an extensive wash to remove any compound spatter from all of the cracks and crevices before moving on to the next polishing step. Once the exterior was clean after the wash, I polished the complete exterior with Menzerna Power Finish using a tangerine Hydro-tech foam pad via rotary. This worked well and really brought the paint back to life.

For the final polishing step, I used Menzerna 85rd with a black Uber foam pad to ensure a perfect, swirl-free finish. Lastly, all tires and wheel wells were dressed, windows were cleaned, exhaust tips were polished and the exterior recieved a hand application of Menzerna Power Lock sealant.

Although there were still some remaining defects (deeper scratches and stone chips), the car really turned out well. Here are the final results!

























Thanks for looking!

Great Detail!

Great Job

the car is blue!

woah awesome job!!

Nice work!

Beautiful. Great work. Carbon Black has always been one of my favorite colors.

Looks incredible, Rick!

Looks good! I've been needing to get my CB detailed like that.