Thread: GelCoat Restoration: Pair of '98 Sea-Doo Jet Skis by AutoLavish

A member contacted us to work on his Jet Skis. While we had worked on boats before, we had never done a jet ski. We set a price ceiling and took it from there. It took double the time to complete than I had estimated. There's a learning curve with anything so... no problem.

The owner brought the skis on their trailer (or course), and set them in the shop. They have had a full life! See below:




















Should I clean them or take them to the nearest lake?




Under the seats:




Over the seats:







We started cleaning the seats with some APC 4:1

See it pulling off grime even without agitation:




After a lot of agitation, but still seemingly not enough:






Lets break out the automatic brushes








Once clean-er, we dosed them in 303 for hours to try to bring back the suppleness of the plastic. Just sprayed on heavily and left.




Other areas that needed heavy APC and elbow grease were, well, the rest... all of them:






After some APC and a pressure wash, the white lettering is coming back (notice the subtle 50/50):






Here are the handle bars, I applied APC to half of it:












Actually, he hit up the entire front half with APC:

Magic eraser in one hand, brush in other, APC and Degreaser everywhere:








50/50 of the cleaned areas, no dressing yet:










Now, 50/50 of areas now dressed with 303:







Polishing took some time to nail down. We ended up wet-sanding the gel coat to help remove the heavy oxidation, them compounding with two different wool pads on the rotary, and finishing down with M105 on the Griots and a surbuff pad followed by an orange pad. Yep, lots of polishing. Here is a 50/50 or our test section:










In the following picture the left side has been finished down on the PC. The right area still needs further refining:




Hows this for a 50/50?




Right ski polished, left one not:

Smoking those orange pads:








Some of the pads we used, thrashed!




Final wash... of Jacob's floor! It now has a permanent pink hue









The owner would re-apply his Fleet Wax soon after, so we applied some Collinite for the meantime:





Good stuff:

Thanks for looking!

man, if you had that business is So.Fla and the Fla. Keys you would KILL. Well done!!!

Ive done that before and it is a HELL of a lot of work to get back to that shine! good job!

Amazing work guys.

Nick

Dang Mark, awesome work.

You're always talking about detailing big expensive cars and that's fine, but really you should consider bringing back the glory to things that really need the love. Like my 1980's Lawnboy. Think about it

Originally Posted by J@WB

man, if you had that business is So.Fla and the Fla. Keys you would KILL. Well done!!!

Thanks. It sounds like you guys did some nice stuff to take good care of one of our clients as well as he spoke very highly of you guys...



So just know your reputation for outstanding service has surely been felt all the way up here in Metro Detroit

Originally Posted by waterboy222

Ive done that before and it is a HELL of a lot of work to get back to that shine! good job!

Much appreciated!

Originally Posted by white out

Amazing work guys.

Nick

Thanks as always Nick! Hope all is well.

Originally Posted by MrTopher2

Dang Mark, awesome work.

You're always talking about detailing big expensive cars and that's fine, but really you should consider bringing back the glory to things that really need the love. Like my 1980's Lawnboy. Think about it

LOL. Can't wait to work with you some more Chris. Pretty soon we'll be posting some crazy yellow car shot by some crazy photographer. Word is his popularity is about to blow up because of the work he's putting out...