So with all that being said, here is the car

Doesn't look too bad in this light eh? Well brace yourself because here come the befores and afters

The car, even though it had been completely resprayed continued to be incredibly badly maintained. There were obvious signs of broom use over the entire car and I'd hazard a guess that a brick wrapped in sandpaper was also used at some stage.

Here's a good example of just how grey the car was with broom scratches

Deep and consistent swirls also were across the entire car. Unfortunately the respray had some solvent pop in some areas, but it really only shows up under the halides. The paint itself was actually quite nice to work with. A far cry from factory Nissan solid black this paint was closer to Porsche in its workability. Which makes sense because this was apparently repainted by a shop that specialises in Porsche refinishing.

Grey to black

Paint protection film covering the mirrors

A pillar, also covered in paint protection film

The back of the car was horrendous, but that's okay because it matched the rest of the car. The area around the boot lid was covered in very deep RIDs, some of which had to stay in unfortunately.

So, here is the paint protection film on the bonnet. After having a go at correcting it, I managed to get a lot of the scratching out but unfortunately it was way too far gone with acid etching to be salvaged.

You can see beneath the copious swirls the acid/water etching. This unfortunately gave the film a particularly opaque look which was never going to be able to be cleared up.

So the decision was made after discussing it on the phone with the owner that I would complete the rest of the car from the doors back, and he would arrange to pick up the half-finished car, have the film removed and then bring the car back to be finished off. Not an ideal situation but there was no way around it. That film had to go. Knowing that the film was going to come off I lifted a small section (which took 20mins on its own) to look at the paint underneath. It actually wasn't too bad, thankfully.

The car was picked up on Thursday evening, looking a little like Jekyll and Hyde. The owner had the film removed by a paint protection film specialist on the Friday (I don't have much experience in this field and feared that if I tried it I'd have a whole lot of adhesive mess to clean up. Not something I was wanting to risk on a client's car). The car was then brought back on the Saturday to finish up. Which is why I had to bail on Steve's Honda training day (sorry again Uncle Steve). Here are a couple of befores and afters of the bonnet and guards (which also had film removed)

The absolute right decision was made with regard to removing the film.

You may have noticed that the solid black isn't actually as solid as you'd think

There is actually an incredibly deep and subtle metallic that showed through once the clear got to the right level of clarity In direct sunlight you simply don't see it. It's that subtle.

Some final pics

The paint protection film was left on the front bar because it was actually still in good condition and corrected up well.

Outdoor shots. A bit cloudy when the pics were taken, but got some good reflection shots