Many thanks to this thread and the positive feedback from the members, I dropped the car at 3M Car Care yesterday evening around 6 PM and drove out of the showroom a happy man! I am extremely impressed with the efforts put in by Umesh and his team.
The car had plenty of small nicks and scratches on the sides esp. the wheel arches, the door-handle cups, ORVMs and on the front bumper. Thanks to my car washing style, the entire car was covered in swirls. Shine a bright light and there were swirl marks everywhere! The interiors OTOH were comparatively in a better shape.
I had gone to Karad, 160 km off Pune for witnessing the FATs (Factory Acceptance Tests) but the tests were concluded sooner than we expected. So we had some spare time at our disposal. Tethered the phone to the laptop and Google'd for
3M Car Care Pune. And this thread showed up! The feedback was positive so called up Umesh on his personal number provided in the first post. It was 9:40 AM and it appears he was riding towards the showroom (some background noise and such) so he said he'd call me back. 10 mins later, he returned back the call and I explained the whole thing to him. He requested me to get my car to his place ASAP! We started from Karad around 2:50 PM and entered Pune city limits around 5 PM but spent an entire hour stuck in the traffic and with 2 GPS navigations turned ON, we figured out Viman Nagar and reached his place.
The gentleman in the brown khaki shirt is Mr. Umakant a.k.a Umesh.
There were a few cars getting the finishing touches. Some had come for the usual wash, some for interior cleaning, a Swift for some decal job etc. Umesh was kind enough to let our luggage (few backpacks) being stored at the office above. Before starting the work, he explained the entire process and what all options are available with the limited time that he could spare his men with. A quick inspection was carried out, the job card was prepared, inventory checked (perfume, idol, glovebox contents etc) and a copy handed out to us. We were just about to step out for some
chai when one of his guys stopped us and offered us tea from their pantry. Tasted awesome!
Umesh did however explain that the car's bonnet had deep paint cuts which cannot be touched up using the polishing + buffing method. This one for instance:
The primer paint beneath the black color was exposed and one could feel the paint cut physically. He insisted that the PPF (paint protective film) be applied on all the new cars the moment they are driven out of the showroom in order to avoid such instances. If you end up following trucks carrying sand and stones, the small and minute stones fall off the truck at a high speed and when they hit the bonnet or the bumper, the paint is nicked off.
The car went into the washing area around 7 PM:
Pressure washing carried out and the car was wiped.
Two of his men began sticking the masking tape on the window beadings and began the polishing work:
Once the polishing work was completed, the interiors were vacuumed:
The windshields and door windows were cleaned using 3M's glass cleaner. The tires and the rims were dressed as a part of the package:
And I had requested Umesh to apply some carbon fiber wrap. The other alternative was the PPF. Getting the film cut and applying them on the ORVM's curved plastic body was a bit hard but his team was experienced with several other shapes on bikes and other areas, this was done in about 15 minutes flat including cutting, sticking, finishing using heat-gun:
Here's the bonnet after the work:
The work was completed at
10:10 PM and I was extremely impressed with the efforts put in and the quality of work! Truly stood up to 3M's reputation IMO. I was more impressed with the fact that Umesh and his team did everything that they could in the available time, they extended their working hours for me (usual closing time is 8 PM) and the few guys that remained who had worked on my car were not in a hurry to finish off the job and leave for home. They took their time, completed the work and called for Umesh who did a quick inspection and finally, handed me the bill.
I paid the bill, profusely thanked everyone who remained at the showroom including the boy seated at the counter and drove out of the showroom with a smile with a reassurance to Umesh that, I'll let the man say that:
Here's the snap of the bill in case anyone's interested:
