A Civic I actually like...

[Puntoboy]

I first viewed this car back in Feb and Chris, the owner, and I agreed that, due to the fact there was no shelter to do the car under, that we'd wait a month or so for the weather to warm up. So the vehicle was booked in for this week. The weather kind of warmed up, but not by a lot!

Chris had chosen the Wonder Ultimate Package in order to get the car perfect, as it is to be spending a fair amount of time in the garage. I personally love the chance to work with customers choosing this package as the focus is not on a timescale, but getting everything possible cleaned, cleansed, and protected. There is no minimum or maximum alloted time on a Wonder Ultimate - it simply takes as long as it takes.

I was greeted Monday morning with 1c temperatures and a very high wind making day 1 a very grueling day indeed. It was mainly because of this that there are no process pictures, and I can only apologise for this. I was so focused on getting everything spot on that it didn't even cross my mind to get the camera out until today, the final day of the detail.

In terms of swirling, it was relatively minor, suffering from some quite deep RIDS, and micromarring which looked to have been courtesy of a previous rotary session.

Owing to the soft nature of Honda Paint, this ordinarily wouldn't have been a challenge to correct, but this Honda was different in many ways! We refer to an issue with some paints as 'sticky paint.' What this essentially means is that polish does not spread as easily as it should, and residue clings to the paintwork. The paint was incredibly soft.. by far the softest paint I have ever come across (far worse than VXR paint, which was previously the softest I'd come across,) and as a result, the combination of polish not working down properly and this softness caused a huge problem as removing caked residue scratched the paint, so required another set of polishing to remove, which in turn had to be removed, which scratched the paint! You can begin to understand how much of a problem this car was. Even BH mild clay used with over 2L of water as lube marred the paint. However.. I would not be beaten and eventually managed to use a combination of Menz 3.02 followed by Final Finish on a 3m finishing pad, followed by Serious Performance cleanser on a fresh 3m finishing pad. These three products combined corrected, and left the finish unmarked, which was a huge relief!

After an IPA wipe down to remove all the oils, and to make sure no fillers had entered the mix, the car was treated to a Zaino finishing routine. This is 3 coats of Z2 applied, with a few hours between applications, and then finished with Z8.

All plastics were done with 303 Aerospace and tyres with Swissvax Pneu. Glass done with Megs glass cleaner, and plastx used for lights. Previous to all this, the inner arches, suspension struts, dampers, an lining was cleaned with Megs APC, and metal done with Zaino, then plastic done with CG Barebones.

Another frustration was trying to photograph the thing! I have only a compact camera, which even with custom white balance struggled with the red of this car. I can only say that the pics do not in any way do this car justice. The final look was far far glossier and redder. The weather was also overcast which did not help.

ANyway, the pics!





















Thanks for looking.

Absolutely stunning. Love the carbon.

[Cat]

That is one mean looking car. Stunning!

[munkul]

absolutely stunning car.

TBH Id rather be driving it than spending a king's ransom on detailing, though.

[gaz0_0]

debo is going to have a good tug over this!

[Tom]

God, I was physically shocked by the look of the front of that thing! Looks awesome.

[WilkyWay]

As above, if I were being picky I would say I didn't like the front fogs that much but other than that bery bery nice!

[Debo]

Just goes to show what you know Chris, it's not even a Civic, it's a Mugen RR and that's the only one in the country . I saw it in Manchester just before Christmas. It recently got sold by Waxil the guy who owned it around here, for £32k back to a dealer, who had it up for £35k only about 6 weeks ago. Waxil is in the process of importing an '05 plate Honda NSX-R... the bloke has too much money, they are IRO £60k.

[Tom]

Just goes to show what you know Chris, it's not even a Civic, it's a Mugen RR and that's the only one in the country . I saw it in Manchester just before Christmas. It recently got sold by Waxil the guy who owned it around here, for £32k back to a dealer, who had it up for £35k only about 6 weeks ago. Waxil is in the process of importing an '05 plate Honda NSX-R... the bloke has too much money, they are IRO £60k.

Without the Mugen kit on it, what would it be sold as then?

[Debo]

It's not got a "Mugen kit" on it. It's a car that was entirely built by Mugen. There are 300 of them worldwide. It's based on the FD2 Civic Type-R, as sold by Honda, but this car isn't sold by Honda.. it's sold by Mugen. Looks nothing like an FD2 Civic

See:



You can buy said "Mugen kit" for this, see below:




The Mugen RR is an entirely different car.. as you can see.

[Puntoboy]

I never said I was a Honda nut. The bloke on DW referred to it as a Civic so I did too.

Always trying to be a smart arse.