Ever wondered what a $6000 auto detail looks like?

This is a 2014 Aston Martin DB9, it boasts around 510 horsepower and 457 ft lb of torque out of its very beefy 6.0 Liter V12 engine. Having always loved James Bond films, I was particularly excited to work on this vehicle. This is the first Aston Martin that has come through our shop. The interior made me giddy, I was intrigued with its center console, the left side mounted E-Brake handle next to the driver seat, and the way the needles on the gauges jumped to life when you pushed the key in to start the motor. Driving it from the front of my shop around the back gave me a huge rush of excitement as I was finally in the drivers seat of one of my dream cars, although I was only driving 5mph, the rumble of the v12 as you lightly pressed the gas was enough to make me giggle and send chills down my spine.

The car was brought in for inspection the day before our cars and coffee meet last Saturday. The paint was in pretty rough shape, you could barely see the pearl flake in the paint, the clear coat felt rough and heavily oxidized with contaminants, the car was just dull over all. The customer asked for my recommendation on what to do, I offered up our top premium package for what I believe is an absolutely premium car. Our top package is the Ceramic Pro diamond package which comes with 10 layers of ceramic coating, 8 layers of 9h, 2 layers of Light, Wheels coated in multiple layers, the interior of the vehicle coated, the engine bay coated, basically the entire car, and included in this service is a full decontamination, a full paint correction to ensure the paint is as flawless as possible, wheels off to be cleaned and coated, interior shampooed completely and the windows polished and coated as well. This is a very expensive service and I will go over why in the rest of this article!

When a car comes in like this, there is only one way to truly decontaminate the paint and that is with a good Iron X bath. White cars often come equipped with small little rust/iron deposits visible in the paint, all cars get these but they are generally only visible on white paint, and man do they take some effort to remove. It takes a lot of pressure and patience with a clay bar to remove these little speckles but Iron X can help ease the labor.

The fun part of using Iron X is it bleeds purple, and looks pretty cool, the not so fun part is that sulfur smell that comes from it, most of the time I want to gag when I spray this stuff. After washing the car and doing a light clay is when you spray the iron X on. I apply it, let it sit for about 10 minutes, go over it with a wet towel, rinse the car off and then back at with a clay bar again to remove what remains of the orange speckles all over the vehicle.

Once we are satisfied with the condition of the clear coat after wash and decontamination, it is important to make sure that the entire car is dry which means using a source of compressed air to blow out all the cracks, behind the head and tail lights, the window sills, any plastic or chrome trim along the car, that way you won't be surprised by drips while you are polishing, although having a little water on your polishing pad can be helpful, if its dirty water, it's going to make things worse.

Normally we just wipe down door jams of dirt and any compound dust or residue before giving a car back to a client, but on an occasion like this when a Diamond package is being applied to a vehicle, we go as far as to clay, polish and ceramic coat the door and trunk jams as well, these are common areas for dirt to gather and for scratches to be found. To get this car completely contaminant free took over 2 hours of claying alone, and required use of not only a traditional clay bar but also a heavy duty clay sponge from Nano.

Once the DB9 was fully ready on the exterior for polishing, it was time for the most time consuming part, the paint correction. This car was not as bad swirl wise as some other cars that have come in to see us but there were many deep RIDS (random individual defects and scratches) which often require extra compounding which on some occasions might not be the best thing for the clear coat, the more you work one spot, the thinner the clear gets and becomes less level with the paint on the rest of the panel.

We go through many phases with compounds and polishes here, right now were on a kick with Shine Supply using their Classic Cut and Classic Polish. I also like to use Meguiars 205 polish, I find it provides a very nice finish and is easy to remove from paint without being too oily as it is a water based product.

I start by taping off anything that can be potentially damaged by a buffer before attacking the paint. I like to start off by priming my pad (getting the whole pad covered in product, not too heavily but enough to get the microfibers covered), and then applying 5 dots on each corner of the pad and the center, this way the product will spread out better and the pad will stay coated in compound.

Using light to medium pressure on speed 4 on a griots boss 15 polisher, we polish a 2x2 square on each part of the panel until it is swirl free and with as few RIDS left as possible. The hardest panels are always the hood, the roof, the trunk, I have no idea why but the yard.

Sometimes there are obstacles to get around while correcting a car, although it may seem simple, some people do not think to do things like stuff a towel in the door so you can keep it partially open while you polish the lower area of the door without bashing the backing plate off the side skirt or any other curved panels. If you look closely at the picture to the right you can also see how scratched up these panels were.

After the paint is corrected with compound, you move to step 2 which is now using an orange foam cutting pad with one drop of classic cut and one drop of classic polish to help refine the finish a bit and remove any micro marring left behind from microfiber pads. The final step after that is polishing with a soft black pad with meguiars 205 to gloss the hell out of the paint and give you that miraculously shiny finish before the coating even goes on! The 3 steps of paint correction implemented into this detail was around 12 hours labor split between 2 people, so a whole whopping 24 hours of man hours just polishing the paint to get it looking as great as it does.

Next comes the wheels off detailing, normally we clean the faces and if a wheel spoke pattern allows it, I will scrub the daylights out of the inner barrel of the wheel, clean up the caliper and coat everything. In this case the Aston was raised up, wheels removed, soaked in iron X and wheel cleaner to remove dirt and oxidation, while they soaked the inner carpeting in the wheel wells was brushed clean of debris and dust then coated in Ceramic Pro Textile carpet coating. The calipers were soaked in cleaner, brushed off with a paint brush and sprayed down with water and then wiped down with a towel. The wheels were cleaned in a similar fashion. Before applying Ceramic Pro Wheel and Caliper to the wheels and calipers, they were prepped with Kleen Strip Prep All which strips all greases and oils off of clear coat so the coating will bind properly.