Audi RS6 spruce up

This Audi RS6 is one of my all time early/mid 20s “must have” motors, and the chance to work on the paint of one was an opportunity not to miss!  This one has led a bit of a tough life it seemed with pretty swirly paint work and evidence of lots of stonechips on the front end, and the leading edges of the flared arches.

First step was decontamination.  As it wasn’t raining first step was to spray the lower half of the car with Tardis to loosen the tar, then coat the whole car in Iron-out to remove any metal contaminants.  Then the car was washed down and clayed all over.  Claying lifted off quite a lot of crud from the roof and bonnet so had been subject to a fair amount of fallout.  Finally some paint depths were taken which showed the n/s front wing and maybe the n/s front door had been resprayed at some point.  It was at this point I noticed the headlights were a bit cloudy, so with the owner’s go ahead, I flatted back the lens, and polished them up.  Whilst not a perfect result, most of the cloudiness was removed so lens clarity / light output would be much better.

Second step was polishing.  As the rain showers began, the car was moved inside and using floodlights to assist with monitoring the paint.  I hit the car hard with a combination of a tough polish and my rotary polisher to do the donkey work, then the paint was refined further with my dual action polisher and using a mid-strength polish on a softer pad.  Whilst full paint correction was not possible in the timeframe, the vast majority of marks came out.

During the polishing I noted a fair parking wound on the rear n/s quarter.  This is pictured (poorly) below, along with the after shot which looks a little different, but you can use the irremovable scar as a guide.  I wet sanded the area with 1500 grit, 2000 grit, and 2500 grit wet and dry, before polishing back hard using compounding polish, and 2 stages of refinement to bring back the shine.  Whilst not all the marks were removed (many through the paint) it was a vast improvement of an ugly wound!

After polishing I set about other small things.  Polishing the glass, and sorting the twin exhaust tips which looked petty manky!  The wheels were also washed (earlier on) with non acidic wheel cleaner, so I took this chance to dress the tyres with Meguiars Endurance tyre spray.  I also used bumper & trim gel on the rubbery/plastic bits. of which there was thankfully very little.

Finally the car was coated in a single layer of Collinite 476S wax, before its final inspection and given back to its owner.  A rewarding bit of work!