Polished Bliss: 09 Frozen White Focus RS

**Polished Bliss** · 18 June 2009, 13:19

Done by Clark over last weekend, posted by me to share...

---

Well after months of waiting and constantly juggling my weekends about to fit it in, my dad’s new RS finally arrived and I was able to get it detailed over the weekend.

The dealers had been instructed not to prep the car so it was a bit grubby from sitting about in various compounds, etc. The dealership has to be given credit (Arnold Clark Aberdeen) as they were generally pretty good to deal with and they even had the car locked away in a private hand over bay upstairs for a week and a half while it was waiting to be registered - some of the higher end dealerships we've had dealings with could learn a thing or two!

So in order to get as much dirt off the paint as possible I foamed it with R222 Citrus Degreaser @ 60 degrees:

This was repeated and then left to dwell for 5 mins:

Then rinsed off @ 60 degrees and high pressure:

The wheels were given a quick going over with Gloss-It Signature Wheel Gel, however these were to be taken off during the detail anyways:

Arches and tyres were sprayed with Meguiars Super Degreaser and scrubbed:

Door shuts/petrol cap were sprayed and agitated with Meguiars APC (4:1)...

...then pressure washed with medium pressure:

All exterior trim/badges were cleaned with APC:

A blade was used to remove the writing from the windscreen:

Although not exactly minging, the engine bay still needed a bit of a clean:

Again, APC was used to soak the engine bay:

Then it was rinsed at medium pressure @ 60 degrees:

The car was then washed with the two bucket method and R222 and then moved inside for claying.

There was no messing about at this stage - straight to Gloss-It Aggressive Clay Bar (most aggressive clay I've come across yet) due to the fact the car was completely covered in metal filings:

This is from the back window alone:

I changed to Megs quick clay for a minute just to show the level of contamination - this was from the top of the spoiler:

3 hours later and the paintwork and glass were squeaky clean so I put the car back outside for another wash then back in and dried. This gave me the chance to try out one of our latest new products...

With 300 mile an hour hot air being produced it doesn’t take long to dry a car with one of these, especially when the paint is well protected - goodbye leaf blower!

Onto the paintwork itself - having inspected the car at the dealers last week I knew what I was facing and in all honesty I was a bit disappointed with the amount of defects present, especially as it hadn’t been prepped for handover. Being white it was always going to be difficult to show the defects on camera but here's a few I got:

There was also the odd sanding mark and plenty of buffer trails too, not something I've seen on a new Ford before:

I'm sure some people reading this will think its a bit OCD'ish but it's a brand spanking new car - it shouldn’t have any defects.

Onto the polishing stage - as usual, I started with a fairly light polish and pad combination and this actually worked really well, the paint was around the intermediate level in terms of hardness - no way near as hard as the Mk1 RS.

Meguiars 205 and a Menzerna Finishing Pad was used, spread at 900rpm's, moved up to 1200rpm's for 1 pass then ramped up to 1800rpm's with fairly heavy pressure and then backed down to 1500 then 1000rpm's with light pressure to refine:

Some of the deeper defects needed something a bit stronger so Menzerna 3.02 and a Menzerna Polishing Pad were used to remove these. While I was doing the paint, Dad turned up to seal the wheels and hubs/calipers (Blackfire Metal Sealant) and to fit a set of mud flaps to the front (you can probably see where my car cleaning bug came from...):

Back to the paint - spoiler before:

After Menzerna FPII and a Menz 80mm finishing pad (the black plastics were much softer than the white paint so didn’t need so much cut to correct them):

The rear diffuser needed a 2 stage machine though as it was quite badly scratched. Menz 3.02 and a Gloss-It Light Cut pad was used first:

I then refined the finish with Menz FPII and a Gloss-It Finishing Pad:

Round the front now and again I used a Gloss-It Finishing Pad but swapped back to Meguiars 205 for a bit more initial cut:

Another Gloss-It pad was used for the side skirts, but this time a green polishing pad in conjunction with Menz 3.02 to remove the deeper buffer trails left from the production line:

Trails gone:

With the polishing all completed I used the new drier to blast away the majority of the polishing dust and then removed the rest with a lambswool duster:

A Top Inspection wipe down followed in order to fully remove all the polishing oils so the sealant could properly bond. Sealant of choice was "Project Awesome" which was machined into the paint @ Speed 5 on the G220 with a Gloss-It Finishing Pad:

This was left for an hour to cure and then buffed off with a spritz of Ice cold Gloss-It Gloss Enhancing QD. I was still feeling energetic so I applied some Gloss It Concorso with a foam applicator by hand and left to cure while I did the other little details such as the tyres (Gloss-It Signature Tyre Dressing), Polished the tailpipes (Brilliant show metal polish), dressed the engine bay (303 Aerospace Protectant) and cleansed and protected the glass with the Werkstat System beta.

I then buffed off the Concorso and topped this with 2 coats of Werkstat Acrylic Trigger as this is what my dad will be using to keep protection topped up:

In between the curing of the 2 coats of Werkstat the interior was given a quick hoover and APC wipe down. The shuts were wiped down with Gloss-It QD:

With everything complete I just had to give the paintwork a final wipe down with Werkstat Acrylic Glos and then got the camera out for a few pics. We initially put the car outside but it was approaching 10pm and the mist was coming down so the car didn’t really look anything special...

I'll have to get some sun shots at some point to do the finish justice! Car back inside...

I still wasn’t that happy with the final pics so we took some more on the way home at ASDA where it looked a bit better.

Total work time: 28 hours (4 of which were dad removing the wheels)

The car is now back in the garage awaiting the application of some paint protection film and then it shall be getting driven...

Thanks for reading, apologies for all the pics!

Clark