MV Agusta F4S 750cc Monoposto
Something a bit different for this job and another example of the diversity of my work, and how anything can benefit from it. I’m a motorcyclist myself so I fully appreciate the time and effort that goes into owning and maintaining a bike. More often than not, biker’s will look to do maintenance themselves, and through that knowledge of your own bike also comes the safety net of seeing when something might be worn, or defective. Keeping a bike in this condition is a time consuming affair too. With a small amount of paintwork compared to a car, it’s an area often largely overlooked but on a machine as special as this one, it’s owner thought it was a priority.
With typical Italian style and flair, form is every bit as important as function and the bike is covered in exquisite little features ad attention to detail. The owner of this example, Paul, saw it unveiled at the UK launch whilst visiting the Birmingham NEC with his father and knew he just had to have one. Fast forward a few years and he was able to purchase this pampered and cherished bike from another passionate enthusiast, making his dream come true.
Although in very good condition, Paul felt that it could be better with the red area’s of the bike in particular need of attention. After contacting me a little while ago for some advice, he tried to remove the scratches himself polishing by hand. Whilst I commend him for the excellent results he achieved, a careful machine polish would still provide significantly better results so he asked me to visit and carry out the work. Before my arrival Paul had thoroughly cleaned the bike and clayed the paintwork to remove any contaminants, leaving me to concentrate on the machine polishing. For safety, the bike was placed on a paddock stand while I worked on it, removing the risk of it falling over!
Using 4 inch spot pads fitted to the rotary polisher would allow me better accuracy and control whilst moving around the intricate shapes and compound curves of the fairings. The next surprise came from the hardness of the paint. In order to carry out effective defect correction, I used a cutting pad with a water based cutting compound that provides a good level of cut at slow speeds. Because of the nature of the plastic and carbon fibre panels, I didn’t want to resort to high speed polishing to achieve the desired affect, and risk the integrity of the composite panels. By taking a gentle approach, making several passes of each area at a slow speed I was able to achieve a great result with no risk of damage. With the cutting stage finished, a softer foam pad was fitted to the machine in order to refine the finish and really bring out the gloss.
Here are a couple of examples of the correction that was being achieved.
With the polishing finished some 4 hours had gone by! All the paintwork on the bike was treated in the same way, and the accessible carbon fibre. The next stage was to use a pre-wax cleaner to remove any remaining polish residue, the bike was then finished using Swissvax Best of Show wax which I knew would really enhance the shine.
Fading light meant the pictures don’t really so the bike justice so once Paul has had a chance to take some in the sunshine, they will be added to this write up. The bike really is a thing of utter beauty, I could have stood there looking at it all day.
As a fellow biker, I really enjoyed working on this very rare and special machine, so my thanks to Paul, the owner, for this opportunity. Amazingly, I only managed to loose the skin from two knuckles on this job too, a first for a bike detail!
Paul was kind enough to submit a testimonial regarding his experience of Shine On Auto Detailing, you can read it by clicking here.
Testimonials
“I would definitely recommend anyone to use Shine On regardless of marque, Paul is a genuinely nice bloke who has the rare attributes of actually loving his job and doing it to the best of his ability (bordering on OCD). I personally plan to use this service at least every 8months to keep the cars looking at their best.
And to top it all off…..even my wife commented on how and I quote ‘amazing’ it looked, that testimony alone is worth its weight in gold!
Andy (M3 and Battle Bus!)”
