Mercury marauder driver#

Now on to the testosterone-laced photos…the engine compartment! I cleaned this up with ONR, and then dressed the area with a combination of Chemical Guys Fade 2 Black and 303 Aerospace Protectant. The Poli-seal/Opti-seal/OCW combination looks tremendous on silver and really gives a wet, glossy finish. I finished up the painted surfaces with Optimum Opti-Seal, and then wiped that down with Optimum Car Wax (OCW). A little Optimum No Rinse (ONR) and a MF towel cleans it up nicely. Polishing dust gets everywhere and here is a place it likes to hide (along with dirt and grime). These smaller pads are perfect for the areas that are hard to reach or manage with the larger 6.5″ pads. Here I’m using a 4″ orange LC spot buff pad on the Makita rotary on the bumpers. After I finished the car, I went back over it with Optimum Poli-Seal on a Porter Cable 7424. I used a wide variety of polishes, pads, and tools on this car depending on the needs, including Menzerna SIP and Menzerna 106FA on the rotary. I then clayed with Clay Magic using Optimum No Rinse as lube. Now that the wheels were done, I foamed the car with Chemical Guys Wash & Clear at paint prep ratio to remove any wax on the surface. For his next track day he’s going to tape everything up with blue painter’s tape so the removal process will be much easier. I still have a date with some solvent to clean up the floors. The tar-like rubber came off in small chunks, and because it was so sticky, it ended up everywhere…my face, arms, legs, clothes (ruined!), on my shoes, on every cleaner bottle, the hose, my tripod, and then tracked into the garage and subsequently into the house (my wife was pumped about that!). Here’s a pic while I was still in process… P21S TAW is being used here to clean up the frame and suspension components. I used a variety of cleaners and tools to remove it, and found that a plastic razor blade was the best for getting it off of the rear quarter panel. Now for the fun part! Like I said before, the rubber was everywhere. I have the new smaller E-Z Detail brush to get into the tighter areas: Now take your brush and bend it so you can access the backside of the spokes. As it is dwelling to break down the grime, I spray P21S Total Auto Wash on the wheel wells and tires. As always, I start off by spraying down the wheels (one side of the vehicle at a time) with P21S Wheel Gel. When the car arrived, right off the track!įirst up were the wheels. It had its share of swirls and RIDS since it had been 2 years since the car had been polished, but not bad at all. The owner does a fantastic job taking care of this car, so it was in pretty good condition. Rubber (more like tar) was on the body, all over the exhaust, in the wheel well, on the suspension components, etc. He sprayed down the back end of the car with a product designed to help the rubber come off easier, but I have to say that it failed! More on that in a bit… Those pre-staging smoky burnouts sure look cool, but they leave an awful mess. He had just taken the car to the drag strip the day before the detail.

The trunk lid was bigger than most hoods! This car is BIG, really big! There was by far more surface area on this car than any other I’ve worked on. At the wheels on pump gas he’s putting out 542hp and 522lb/ft of torque! You definitely need power like this to propel such a large vehicle (almost 4800lbs with fuel, driver, and several hundred pounds of sound deadener installed) to an 11.6 second quarter mile. It’s got a different block, crank, rods, pistons, cams, supercharger, suspension components, transmission mods, ported and polished head, etc, etc, etc. This is a highly modified car, and unless you have an equally modified (and lighter weight) vehicle, you do not want to line up against it.

Mercury marauder driver#

I’ve detailed his daily driver before, and did a quick cleanup on this one last fall before he put it away for the winter. This mean and nasty vehicle belongs to the person who built my website.