Premium Exterior Auto Detailing in Plano, TX

2009 Audi R8. We're going to be doing full body paint protection film to preserve this legendary manual car. So, the six-speed manual R8, right? This has got to be one of the most iconic iterations of this vehicle. And Audi no longer makes a manual R8 of any kind. So, this first generation truly is a special car. And with barely 50,000 miles, the owner of this car wanted to preserve the vehicle with the absolute best form of paint protection.

But how do you apply paint protection film on a weathered older vehicle? Let me show you what we're going to do. The owner of this car is going to be driving the vehicle often, both daily driven and on rallies. And so he wanted something very physically durable to protect his R8. Paint protection film being physically durable is going to protect it from things like rock chips, scratches, scuffs, and even some swirl marks from damaging this paint and keeping the Audi very clean, even though it's going to be driven often.

And so the owner of the car wanted to have his cake and eat it, too. And so this is the package that's going to be right for him. So older vehicles require a lot more prep to make sure the paint is clean prior to us sealing it in. Right? So if you look at some of this, we have to start with a wash just like normal.

But if you look at this paint, the decontamination is intense. Iron decontamination is also extremely important, especially for white, but this is true for any vehicle of this age. Because this car is over 15 years old already, the iron decontamination especially is removing years of embedded iron deposits that have been stuck into the paint that don't come out with a wash.

We have to go through and clay with a clay bar. We can't even use a clay mitt. It's not aggressive enough. You have to use the clay bar to remove those embedded contaminants. Yeah, if you can hear that grit, then that's how you know this thing needs the clay bar. It's really contaminated, but given this car is a 2008.

Yeah, it definitely needs it. So, clay bar removes contaminants that don't normally come out with the wash. Okay, you see this little speck right here? This is after the chemical decontamination. This is after the wash. You can still see it's in there. So you take a clay bar and then bam, it literally pulls the contaminant out. You see that little dirt right there or right here?

That's what it pulls out of the paint. So that's why clay bar is really important. You skip this step, you're effectively sealing in all of this dirt and crap that's in the paint. So a lot of PPF shops are not detail shops. And so these type of things get skipped because quite frankly, they just don't have the eye to see this kind of stuff.

But funny enough, I started out as a detailer almost a decade ago. So, this is stuff that I got trained to see. And so, we bring that to the PPF world. So, as I'm doing the clay bar, especially on older vehicles like this, very, very important. Um, what I do is with my left hand, I actually feel the surface of the paint.

It needs to feel smooth because this area here where I haven't done it is actually really gritty. What's crazy is that this is so contaminated, you can actually see the grit before I remove it with the clay bar. You can see how much purple is coming out of the paint. All of that purple is dissolved iron deposits that are literally being exfoliated clean out of the paint.

And this is why it's very important to do a paint decontamination to preserve this R8. No, no, no. Hang out. With the R8 rear bumper taken off, let's take a look at how we're going to tackle this PPF. So you can see how much dirt was hiding in those seams. This is why we have to remove it on these old cars.

I mean, this just if we don't, this dirt right here is going to continually drop into this area causing contaminants. We can't have that on a white car. So, because we've taken it apart, we can actually get this all clean so we can lay the PPF. But the PPF itself, funny enough, comes in three parts. So, you got part one, which is here.

Part two gets these slats. And then part three is this bottom. Now, we are going to do kind of a hybrid kit where part one here, this middle part, we're going to extend it past this way so we can hand trim along this line. Make sure there's a clean seam. Part two, we'll keep it as it is so we can keep the alignment of these little slats.

Trust me, they don't want to come out and we're not going to risk breaking anything trying to do it. Part three, this bottom part, this is where it's really interesting. We're going to delete these sensors, but we're also going to bulk install this circular area, too. So, it's it still lines up, but we're going to be bulk installing this, kind of stretching it under here.

We're going to also be stretching it past the diffuser. So, we're going to do, like I said, a little hybrid kit so that it tucks all the way under this plastic diffuser, which we're going to remove. So, you guys, I want to show you something. As we were doing our prep, we realized that it's easier to clean this door seal area by popping it off.

Because as we were kind of trying to flush out this dirt, so much dirt was pouring out. And as we popped it off, this is why. I mean, look at the years of caked on dirt that is on this side skirt. So, this dirt right here, literally one speck of that dirt, if it falls out, because we're rinsing it, if it falls out over here, you'll see a contaminant in the PPF and on white, you really cannot get away with it.

So, because we've removed the door sill, we are able to clean all of this so that when we lay the PPF, we won't have any problems. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. N. So, we are going to lay PPF on this carbon fiber side blade. And I'm going to prep the surface with a little bit of CarPro Elixir to make these hard edges here nonstick.

As we stretch the film over this piece, I don't want the adhesive to pre-tack here, causing uh, you know, tear marks, adhesive marks, if you will, right? Unfortunately, the backside of this carbon is like raw carbon. It's not polished like this outer side. So, that means that we can't tuck this film, but I want to get it as close to the edge as possible.

And we're going to do that today using a bulk piece of film. So, these valleys right here, this is where I usually run into problems when you're stretching something over because you have to force the film out. But I think in this scenario, I mean, look, look how the film wants to just lay Heat. Heat. Double. is always down.

And that concludes full body clear bra on this beautiful09 R8 manual. You saw how much work went into disassembly, prep, cleaning, and then finally the application of PPF. Let me show you up close what our work looks like when we go bespoke. So, check this out. Small details like this little rear spoiler. So, since we took out this vent, you can see how damn tucked all that film is.

It looks so freaking good. You can't even tell that there's PPF protecting this. Take a look at these sexy brand new badges. Because we took the badge out, laid the PPF in one clean piece, then put the badge back on. You got no cutouts around this badge, and it just looks OEM as hell. It looks so sexy.

And we got the modern R8 badge, too, with the uh red square here. This generation didn't have this, but this makes it look super good. So, because we took out this carbon fiber blade, this is like the signature piece on the R8 styling, uh we tucked all the film deep under here, and so you don't have a line on this perimeter.

And even the PPF on the carbon fiber goes all the way up here, and you can't even tell. But check this out. Look how much of an improvement the PPF made on this carbon fiber. It looks so lustrous and deep. It looks like perfectly clear coated carbon fiber and that's what we can do with PPF. The owner opted to do windshield protection film as well.

We trimmed it by hand. This installation looks super good and this material is going to save this guy from replacing this windshield when he goes on spirited drives. It is thick enough to take real damage, but it's clear enough so that it doesn't distort the vision when he's looking out the front. So, that spoiler isn't the only place that we've tucked the film this way.

If you look at some of this B-roll, you can see the entire vehicle is installed tight. This is what we get with the bespoke. We're able to tuck everything. That tucked film looks absolutely fantastic and it's a lot more durable because it's less likely to lift over time. So, if you look at some of this B-roll up close, yeah, it is done super well and on a white vehicle, it just looks perfect.

So, that is our full body PPF package done bespoke. So, if you've got a super car or a special car that you need wrapped this way, you want to have a great installation aesthetically, but you want to have your cake and eat it too, this is the way you got to do it. Packages like this generally will take about a week and then some to complete because you saw how much labor goes in.

But if you want the best, you want bespoke. It's Jesse at Humble Crew Auto Spa and I'll see you next time.