NorthWest Auto Salon

Blistering around a road course as fast as physically possible, late braking, passing on the last lap; what’s not to like about taking your car on the racetrack? That’s what performance cars were made for and we love to see people who use their modified cars to their potential. However, this kind of high stress, high temperature environment can put many parts of your vehicle to hell and back every time you head out on the track. The accumulation of brake dust, melted tire residue, and vehicle fluids, coupled with the extreme temperatures found in a track environment can destroy your vehicles finish if left on too long. Every every track excursion, the car must be given a thorough wash to ensure none of this will become permanently affixed to your paint. If not taken care of soon enough, it can actually burn into the paint and at that point require much more than a simple wash to remove.

That was exactly the case with this silver B5 Audi S4. Everything from the wheels to the bumpers to the doors were stained black. With its huge aftermarket Brembo brakes, I knew had happened to this car before I even had to ask. This car was used extensively on the race track but never washed afterwords! This car went though quite the transformation so check out the pictures below to see how we brought this track rat back to life! Because this vehicle was in such rough shape, it received our Connoisseur Detail, one of our most extensive exterior detail packages.

As you can see, this S4 was in really rough shape. As we do with all of our extremely dirty cars, we started this detail off with a snow foam to remove as much excess grime as possible before starting the actual wash.

snow foam doing its job!

Prepping out the rest of the vehicle

Breaking out the big guns to remove all that stubborn dirt on the sides of the vehicle

Can you believe the difference in the wheels already? They looked like they would never come clean!

After the vehicle had gone though one of the most extensive wash processes I have seen here, it was time to bring it inside for it to be clay bared and prepped for polish

Here masking tape is applied to make keep any trim bits from being stained in the polishing process

Once the car had been clay bared and taped up, it was time to inspect the paint and see what kind of correction was required. Silver cars hide imperfections better than just about any car so when you can see them, that means the vehicle really needs work.

On to the polishing process

And now for some final shots of how the vehicle looked when it left! Here is a close up of the level of correction we were able to achieve. As you can see there are still some starches that went through the paint. Unfortunately those can not be fixed with anything short of touch up paint or airbrush touch up. The wheels still had some residual brakedust accumulation which we were not able to remove fully without pulling the wheels off the car. We cleaned them as best as possible and topped them up with a wheel wax to help prevent this happening in the future as easily. Hope you enjoy the writeup!

Thanks for reading and if you liked this, become our fan on facebook!