Lamborghini Gallardo Spider with terrible paint contamination
I was called to assess this 16 month old Lamborghini Gallardo Spider and see what could be done to remove a rather nasty paint contamination issue. Parked underneath a building in West London, some recent development work above ground had involved new construction. What appears to have happened is that water has run through the new work area and picked up some sort of lime/calcium from the substrate it has passed through (i.e. concrete). It’s then found a gap in the substructure and trickled down through to the car park, where it then sat about dribbling onto this beautiful car. Sadly, it’s not clear how long it had been on the car isn’t used regularly.
Here is the car upon arrival, the trail of deposit on the ceiling from where the drips came from, and the damage on the car itself.
On the assessment visit 10 days previously I tried a couple of tricks to see what was viable. I was confident I could restore the car to as new, so it was booked in then.
With the help of some jump leads we awoke the car from it’s slumber and moved forward slightly to enable me access all the way around the car. It was covered in a layer of dusty debris and dead spiders. I had been told the car had in it’s short life (2500 miles) had received some paintwork at the front end, evidence of overspray was clearly evident along the doors too.
Unfortunately there is a bit of a lack of photo’s here, but I was very focused on trying to do the very best job possible in the time available, and the light conditions were not exactly condusive to point and shoot photography.
First up I gave the car a pre-soak with a citrus detergent to loosen dirt on the car and therefore not inflict any more marks during the wash process. After rinsing, it then had a good wash with a lambswool mitt. Rinsed again, then out with the clay, in this case I chose to use an aggressive clay thanks to the heavy contamination. It dealt with the overspray with ease and on the sides of the car the lighter calcium contamination came away with some perseverance too. However, the larger blobs on the flat surfaces weren’t budging with a physical attack, so a chemical approach was decided as the way forward. Using a dilute acidic solution, I gently worked at the marks and slowly but surely they started to at first thin out, then dissolve all together. However, just to the rear of the door, by the handle, the marks seemed to have really etched in. To deal with these I chose to wetsand the localised area. My digital paint depth gauge showed be there was plenty of clearcoat to safely do this, less than 5 microns were removed on average at this point. With the marks dealt with, I rinsed the whole car again and dried it off.
Turning to my rotary polisher, I used a small 4” cutting pad with a 3M cutting compound to remove the sanding marks. Lamborghini paint does tend to be rather hard, but the marks were removed nicely.
Below you can see the area where the marks were. I wasn’t able to capture a small area just above the door handle which seemed particular badly affected. The paint had rippled slightly, and it looked like it was in the deeper layers. So while the obvious marks were removed and you’d have to really look for the remaining damage in good light at the right angle, I contacted the owner’s assistant to come and have a look, and just confirm it was ok. He was happy as it saved what they thought would be major paintwork, so I continued.
Here is an example on the driver’s door of what was achieved with this approach, removing the ugly marring no doubt caused by the bodyshop.
With the whole car polished, I cleaned the paint and wheels with Swissvax Cleaner Fluid before applying Best of Show to the paint, and Autobahn wheel wax to the wheels. Pneu was used to dress the tyres. The sooty exhausts were polished to restore their shine and help resist against tarnishing.
Here are some finished shots, despite the difficult light conditions I think the overall improvement in the car is still clearly visible. Most important of all, the contamination has been removed and when the owner saw the car a few days later, he was delighted with the result.
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