Deatiling pictures of my 850Ci

I recently had my car professionaly detailed, I helped out a lot during this process as it's something I'm interested in doing. My car's paintwork needed a LOT of paint correction and it took a long time with clay bars and then hours with a polisher before getting rid of most of the errors. There's still some orange peel and some areas that I'm not entirely satisfied with but it's a big improvement. There are around 70 pictures so rather than add them all to this post I've created two albums in my profile, the "continued" album shows mainly finished shots.

Please excuse the appaling state of the interior in the before shots and bear in mind that this is my daily driver with two small kids
Here's the first album : http://www.8er.org/forum/album.php?albumid=252
and here's the second: http://www.8er.org/forum/album.php?albumid=253


Here's a couple of samples:

Zitat von arnie;79332

Jason, you know that some orange-peel effect is a feature of the factory-original paint system?

Sometimes when bonnets and front bumpers are resprayed for stone chips, the wings are also partly resprayed to "blend-in" the new paint and then the orange-peel effect can become worse due to adding another layer.

However, in my life, I found only one or two car paintshops that could respray a new panel to match the existing factory "orange-peel" on the rest of the car. Many resprayers, including BMW's bodyshops (from experience) will paint a panel and then polish it down, mirror smooth, to within a micron of its life, and then it's very obvious that it's been resprayed, when compared to the rest of the car. I think often its a way to address a mediocre paint-job that has ended up in too much orange-peel effect.

That's not to say that a mirror smooth paintjob is not a good thing. As, in fact, it's what you'd tradionally find on a Rolls or Ferrari with 10 coats of hand-finished paint. But, that for most cars, including ones comming of today's production lines, some orange-peel effect, particularly on side panels and around the curves of wheel arches is a normal result of the process.


Anyway, I like the pictures. It does look great!

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All very true, yes I understand that ornage peel can be present on cars stright out of the factory and I know from my own experience that getting rid of it is a long process. For now though I'm satisfied with the results I have, getting rid of the orange peel will be added to my list of stuff to do - right after fitting sports seats, supercharging, ceramic brakes etc etc
(just kidding)

Thanks for all the feedback guys, much appreciated.

It's a nice feeling driving a clean car, I'd got used to the mess and now that it's gone it's much better. To properly clean the interior we removed the front seats - this was actually really easy and made the whole job a lot simpler, the workshop manual advises to remove the headrests, we didn't do that, it's possible to get the seats out without doing so provided you're careful but I would advise to not do this job alone as the seats are really heavy, with two it's easy, on your own very difficult.

Most impressive result for me was the improvement to the headlamp lenses, they were pretty scratched but a good polish and they came up like new, the rear light assemblies also look as good as new after a proper polish.
I recommend making the effort to do something similar, the improvement all round makes it worthwhile, I get a kick out of looking at the car every time I go into the garage now

EDIT: Yes I know my wheel centres are shot, I have new ones ready to go on once my 18" wheels are back from being refurbished - they're the same pattern as the 17" currently on the car, it took me over a year to find them in 18", the rears in 18" have a much deeper dish and I think they look fantastic, I'll post pics once they're fitted.