Marc@AutoLavish
Club Sponsor
A member contacted us to work on his Jet Skis. While we had worked on boats before, we had never done a jet ski. We set a price ceiling and took it from there. It took double the time to complete than I had estimated. There's a learning curve with anything so... no problem.
The owner brought the skis on their trailer (or course), and set them in the shop. They have had a full life! See below:
Should I clean them or take them to the nearest lake?
Under the seats:
Over the seats:
We started cleaning the seats with some APC 4:1
See it pulling off grime even without agitation:
After a lot of agitation, but still seemingly not enough:
Lets break out the automatic brushes
Once clean-er, we dosed them in 303 for hours to try to bring back the suppleness of the plastic. Just sprayed on heavily and left.
Other areas that needed heavy APC and elbow grease were, well, the rest... all of them:
After some APC and a pressure wash, the white lettering is coming back (notice the subtle 50/50):
Here are the handle bars, I applied APC to half of it:
Actually, he hit up the entire front half with APC:
Magic eraser in one hand, brush in other, APC and Degreaser everywhere:
50/50 of the cleaned areas, no dressing yet:
Now, 50/50 of areas now dressed with 303:
Polishing took some time to nail down. We ended up wet-sanding the gel coat to help remove the heavy oxidation, them compounding with two different wool pads on the rotary, and finishing down with M105 on the Griots and a surbuff pad followed by an orange pad. Yep, lots of polishing. Here is a 50/50 or our test section:
In the following picture the left side has been finished down on the PC. The right area still needs further refining:
Hows this for a 50/50?
Right ski polished, left one not:
Smoking those orange pads:
Some of the pads we used, thrashed!
Final wash... of Jacob's floor! It now has a permanent pink hue
The owner would re-apply his Fleet Wax soon after, so we applied some Collinite for the meantime:
Good stuff:
Thanks for looking!
The owner brought the skis on their trailer (or course), and set them in the shop. They have had a full life! See below:
Should I clean them or take them to the nearest lake?
Under the seats:
Over the seats:
We started cleaning the seats with some APC 4:1
See it pulling off grime even without agitation:
After a lot of agitation, but still seemingly not enough:
Lets break out the automatic brushes
Once clean-er, we dosed them in 303 for hours to try to bring back the suppleness of the plastic. Just sprayed on heavily and left.
Other areas that needed heavy APC and elbow grease were, well, the rest... all of them:
After some APC and a pressure wash, the white lettering is coming back (notice the subtle 50/50):
Here are the handle bars, I applied APC to half of it:
Actually, he hit up the entire front half with APC:
Magic eraser in one hand, brush in other, APC and Degreaser everywhere:
50/50 of the cleaned areas, no dressing yet:
Now, 50/50 of areas now dressed with 303:
Polishing took some time to nail down. We ended up wet-sanding the gel coat to help remove the heavy oxidation, them compounding with two different wool pads on the rotary, and finishing down with M105 on the Griots and a surbuff pad followed by an orange pad. Yep, lots of polishing. Here is a 50/50 or our test section:
In the following picture the left side has been finished down on the PC. The right area still needs further refining:
Hows this for a 50/50?
Right ski polished, left one not:
Smoking those orange pads:
Some of the pads we used, thrashed!
Final wash... of Jacob's floor! It now has a permanent pink hue
The owner would re-apply his Fleet Wax soon after, so we applied some Collinite for the meantime:
Good stuff:
Thanks for looking!
