Just after the New Year, the sun up here in Aberdeenshire shone for a few days, and I wasn’t about to pass up the opportunity… to get a mate's Elise sorted for the remainder of the winter. We had been snowed off in the run up to Christmas, and despite the sun it was no warmer... in fact the temperature was a problem, but more on that later.
The Elise is an amazingly curvy car – my mate had taken me out for a quick run in it in the autumn, but it’s not until you get your hands on it so to speak that the curvy nature really hits home. Not one panel flat enough for a decent reflection, and lots of small gaps, fins and scoops in need of polishing by hand. Oh well, here goes…
When I turned up the car was dirty enough to mask the condition of the paint, so first thing to do was get rid of the muck via a normal wash. Here’s the before pics…
All the loose stuff was hosed off, then all exterior surfaces were washed with Poorboys Slick & Suds shampoo using a lambswool wash mitt and the two bucket method. I swapped to a microfibre mitt to tackle the wheels, which were suffering from very bad brake dust corrosion. Then I rinsed it all off and finally dried everything using a waffle weave microfibre.
Next up we inspected the paint. Somewhat surprisingly, it was actually in great condition. A number of minor scratches, but no swirls, and a lot of stone chips on the front end, but there’s very little you can do about them anyway (they are nearly always to deep to polish out). However, what was clear was that the paint was suffering from a lot of bonded contamination by tar spots, particularly along the sides and on the rear bumper. So, I left the machine polisher in the car and grabbed my clay instead. Firstly I softened the clay bar by sitting it in warm water for a few minutes. Then I clayed all of the painted surfaces, working from the top down, using Clearkote Quikshine as the lubricant and a waffle weave towel to dry the panels as I went. With the Elise being so low, this meant a lot of hard work on my knees – good job I’d taken an old rug along. After claying, I then applied Klasse All In One to all of the painted surfaces and the wheels using a microfibre pad – not so much in this case for the protective qualities, but more the deep chemical cleaning ability, as there were still some tar marks on some of the panels and a lot of stubbornly bonded brake dust on the wheels. Although the weather stayed good the temperature dropped considerably at this time, resulting in dew formation on the panels. Fortunately Klasse All In One likes to be applied using a damp pad, and the dew didn’t affect application at all.
Whilst I was cleaning the paint and wheels, Gareth took the vacuum cleaner to the interior. Later in the day I cleaned and waxed the sills and dressed some of the hard interior surfaces with Poorboy’s Natural Look Dressing. The rest of the interior is covered in Alcantara, and so only needs light brushing from time to time.
Next up, final step product of choice for a wet finish on silver cars – Optimum Car Wax. The pics were taken after just one coat (I usually like at least 3-4 coats), but the paint popped just the same. I then dressed the tyres with Poorboy’s Bold N Bright, and all trims with 303 Aerospace Protectant.
With the job done and the light fading, here’s a few final pics...
Polished Bliss vs Elise No.1
Linear Mode
