I bought a 2005 Xfire that needed some TLC in the paint department but the price was right and I needed a project this winter. Well I have a random/orbital and worked for two days. It looked better but I was not happy with the results. Still to many spider veins, etc. Well I called a guy who was the former service manager at the Mercedes dealer and asked for some help with a professional detailer. He gave the name of two guys who had been detailers at the dealership and had went out on their own. Well I drove to North Scottsdale and meet then in a parking lot and told them what I wanted. They told me it would be $100 to detail the exterior. Boy did I learn a lot. All they used was Meguiar products and they worked with some stuff that I would not even touch my car with. Needless to say it looks great. It is not perfect but from where they started it looks like a million bucks. It took them 1 hour.

The moral of this story do not be afraid to seek professional help. I gave them a $50 tip and thought I received the better of that deal for $150. It pays to hire a professional. Now I hope to be able to maintain it. If not I know who to call to fix it.

 

Our resident expert and all around good guy is Mikeinorange.
Check out some of his posts. I'm sure he will be along to respond to you soon.

Enjoy your shiny car!

 

$100 and 1 hour is not a combination that will make your Crossfire, or any car, look perfect.

A few months back Justin (Z28toXFire on this forum) brought his car by and we spent 3 hours on it, me with a rotary buffer and wool pads, him following behind me with a D/A polisher and a finishing polish, then we waxed it. That's 6 man hours if I had done it myself, and I would charge $450 to $600 depending on what the client was looking for - and in all honesty, I would have spent more time than that just on the paint. You can see the write up HERE

You're lucky to find someone for $100 that could actually make a positive change to the finish - I've seen too many guys who charge low like that and actually do more harm than good. No permanent damage, mind you, but they tend to leave a bunch of rotary holograms behind. The really good guys I know who do this for a living, and admittedly work on very high end cars, charge $600 to $1500 for a full paint correction.

Better still, learn to do it yourself. For an investment of a few hundred dollars you'll have all the tools and products you need to keep your car looking mint for many, many years. 75% of the initial investment will be the D/A polisher itself, which will last you for many years. Everything else ends up being cheaper than going to a car wash once a week and paying those guys to mess up your paint.

 

Mike, I guess I should have emphasized the point that I went to as reliable a source as I knew. It was the service manager that I had dealt with for more then 12 years and after two days of my work it really wasn't in that bad a shape but I was unable due to lack of equipment (rotary) and/or skill set to take it to a level I was satisfied with.

Mike I hear what you are saying. I was damn lucky to find this quality at the price I paid or perhaps it just took some experience and the right equipment to get it to that next level. Perhaps those guys did exactly what I asked them to do. At least now I can now put it in the sun and not be ashamed of the finish. Perfect no but ....

BUT my point to others in writing this was to hire an expert when you run out of experience, expertise and product knowledge. Restoring paint or fixing serious car wash damage does require a level of expertise and experience. I realize that does not mean opening up the yellow pages and blindly picking someone. When you live in a one horse town like I do, you do not have many options. I drove over 5 hours round trip to find a reasonable source to work on the paint.

 

One horse town? You are not writing about Flagstaff, I hope. It is one of the greatest real towns around.
PP

 

Flagstaff is a great place to live and play BUT if you own a car that is not your run of the mill car it can be trying at times. We have 4 Xfires that I know of in town and I own 2 of them.