Detailing a $20 Million Car: Jay Leno's McLaren F1 - Jay Leno's Garage

Well another episode from Jay Lon's

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, something special this week, this is the 25th year I have owned this McLaren F1. It's hard to believe that it was a great car and we are going to subject it to a deep cleaning that we are going to detail. The painting shows you how to get it back. Pull the wheels a little. Just clean the entire car. It hasn't had a real clean in a long time and it has been a wonderful car. This is the tool kit that comes with a McLaren F1. when you buy it you get this giant torque.

I can't imagine how much it would cost if you tried to buy it now and all the special tools you need to do a non-complete service on the car, but we'll change the oil and But there are some light swirl marks on the paint and you know things just by driving it because this is A car that is driven, not a show queen, is driven at least once a month, so remove those swirl marks and clean the wheels. It's inside the wheel wells, just take a good look at it and see if we can make it look almost as good as the day I bought it.

This is Chris and Jeremy, they are the brains behind our General's car care products. Let's detail this car, tell us what we're going to do, guys, first, we'll put it on the jack, take the wheels off, uh, we'll dive in with something multipurpose. cleaner maybe a little bit of wheel cleaner definitely clean the rubber also on the tires there are some old coatings that need to be removed we want to start with a new slate there and then we're also going to jump into the paint yeah we're going to do a paint correction, fortunately the paint is in very good condition, so what we're going to do is start with our least aggressive pad and the least aggressive polish, we'll polish the entire car, which fortunately this car is in excellent condition and it's in the

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. and be careful it will look really nice when it's finished and this may sound a little bit intrusive but first you polish it and then you wash it yeah because you know when you polish paint you get dust from the polisher and the pads and then you get some in the crevices and it is better to polish and then wash the car, but the first thing you need to do before is clean the surface, you want to make sure there is no latency or no metal shavings or something on the surface, so we will clean the car before polishing it And what do you clean it with?

We will use our quick retailer. You don't want to use anything that has wax or sealant because when you're polishing the car. paint, you're going to fight that, so our quick detailer will help you clean the surface, yes, not radiant. Radiance for later will make it radiant, yes, yes, well radiant is a ceramic coating that seals the paint, yes sir, so with a quick detail. it's almost good, almost like alcohol or something, just yeah, it's like a, you know, a quick clean, uh, without, uh, you know, uh, protection, it provides excellent lubrication, so any little bits of dirt or dust does not go away. to scratch and we also removed the wheels, yes, we can finally use our tool kit with the big ratchet in there, yes, I use that torque every 10 years, something like that, something like that, this is an all day job, isn't it So?

Yeah, probably what you think, maybe 8 hours, maybe 10, depending on how the painting goes and this is our backpack lift here, we're just going to lift it off the ground so we can take the wheels off. Yes sir. people, how strong can this raise $20

million

, yeah, yeah, you know, as silly as it sounds, these days, that was the last time I checked the last offer I got was $20

million

for this. I know it sounds crazy, it's just a car, yeah, but to my friends, he said: Why did you buy that stupid thing? Now the pressure is on Jay.

We can wash a $20 million hypercar with Walmart products, so it will be a lot of fun. Yeah, you can probably come another 3 on Pige and Toad a bit. I'm just measuring the distance between these two elevators. The most important thing with these is that they are parallel to each other but also at the same distance from the car, so these pads are picked up in the correct location, but also as it starts to lift it lifts evenly this bpack lift allows us to lift this car off the floor so we can remove the wheel completely these are the two lines that operate the independent jack but they go back to the power unit here, so okay Safety First, you know, yeah, there we go, it's very light, much lighter than what I thought it was going to be, but this is part of the reason we're doing this right.

We want to get into the cylinder of these wheels and do a very thorough job. Um, but also, you know, get all the suspension right here on this inner fender and just do a good, deep cleaning to make sure that we're, you know, looking our best. One of the good things is to clean the paint before you start polishing it. Can you identify some marks on the paint that you want to find and remove and here is one of them that you should be able to polish out? It looks like it's on the surface, but it's definitely a visible mark.

Also in the mirror here it looks like it may clip something so polishing it will make it look a lot better so that's something to keep in mind. You know, these painter's tapes come in different levels of stickiness. I've been on jobs where that stripping can peel the paint off with it and we obviously want to avoid that. One thing we're going to do is stretch this tape and then it looks kind of funny, but I'm just going to remove some of the stick by touching it on my jeans and now it's still going to stick to the paint, but it's not going to be so sticky that it's going to set on that paint. and then we have to worry, we still want to be careful when we're releasing it, but this will help and it'll be a big help to make sure it doesn't get too much of a grip.

I guess it's too hard or too loud and with these vents that we're taping up, it's more of the polishing dust that falls into these vents that we're not doing. There really aren't a lot of high spots around here, so we're just covering these holes so we don't have to fight ourselves and open up this engine bay and remove all the polishing dust, so this is our finishing pad, it's the most gentle. pad that we offer and it's what you would use to remove light scratches, which is most of what's on this paint, so I'm going to follow up with our polishing step three and our finishing pad and buff the entire paint with one more pad small and I'll remove those deep scratches and that's it so this is a dual action polisher where it spins but then it also breaks the rotation so you don't have that swirl that Mark left behind so it's the safest way to polish paint because if it was a fixed rotation and it just rotated, didn't you know that you moved on a broken rotation and you come to an edge and this just rotates, this is how you burn the paint on an edge or uh, like all these edges and this corner here, it's much safer.

You could do it with the rotary, but you're just going to chase your tail with the swirl marks left in the paint, so this is the safest way. To go, so you want to clean, make sure you have a good amount of product there and a clean towel and wipe it in straight lines. You don't want it to be circular because you'll be putting scratches back in to start all of this. When you start with your softest pad, you want to remove the least amount of surface material and you can jump in, you know, even with a stiffer foam or even a microfiber cutting pad and our first pass compound, you can.

Know that it also works with your abrasives. This is a much larger abrasive on the inside, but also the concentration of abrasive is higher and that will help remove scratches faster, allowing you to spend less time, so you're always trying to find this balance. Don't put too much heat on the pad and paint, cut out the scratches quickly enough, but remove as little material as possible to maintain the integrity of the clear coat, the paint you know on the surface, that's fine, so We're out cleaning wheels, um. The biggest thing we need to address on these is going to be the rubber itself, we're going to dive in with a heavy duty rubber cleaner, but you know, we're also using some variations on the brushes, more specifically, a pretty stiff bristle brush, uh , we.

I'm going to work with that and then the pressure washer as well, so I'm going to jump in here and start and you'll see this kicks in pretty good and starts to take out all the Browning blooming all the old stuff. Going over the surface now that we're working on the rim, I'm going to use a softer bristle so as not to scratch the surface here, as you can see here, we've done a little bit of cleaning the first one and this one is intact and that's why we took the wheels off. of the car because we want to get into the barrels and you can see the dirt here on the inside you know this has a caked on layer of dirt that we want to remove, completely remove, we're using chemicals that are designed to do their job, but also some brushes to Help you know, just shake that gunk off and let the pressure washer wash it away looking great, guys yeah. it comes out really pretty uh it really is it really looks you know it sits and you forget how shiny it used to be yeah yeah you know we call them love marks you're trying to take care of them the best you can and just sometimes.

You know, you scratch it with a towel and everything, but we're going to do it with the polishing pads. There are some deeper scratches in certain areas of the car, so it requires a little extra work, but nothing too severe and it's coming back nicely. It's about 12,000 Mi, let me show you a front brake and rotor assembly. This is what cutting-edge technology was in the early '90s. You know, people tell me I'm wowing with carbon fiber. Well, they will be, but I hadn't. It was invented well, it was invented, it had not been perfected. You know, this was the first all-carbon fiber monoc car.

It took 2000 hours just to make this center section with the two seats. Now they do it in less than 90 minutes on a P1, but. It was 90 hours and these still rotors work fantastically well. I know some Mclan ERS have upgraded the carbon fiber, but they were great. Now I'm not going to use 241 mil on a regular basis so I don't really need it, it's simple but it's Complicated if that makes any sense, but this was the first car to communicate with the factory via a computer. The idea was that you bought this car and using your computer they could read what was happening with the car in England.

It seemed like something from another planet. Back in the day but it was a long time ago but the car still looks contemporary it still looks good well I'll let you get back to work guys ok sounds good congratulations how does it look thanks thanks James well Guys, it looks great. he did an excellent job I have been driving for 25 years it is original paint everything on this car is original obviously we have gone through different sets of tires we have michelin now they work excellent I know they are not the tires that came with it but I like them.

I think they are great. The paint has come back like it was busted. It is very well done. I mean, I'm proud that these are all of our car care products that we use on this, so I think it's nice. Great, you know we developed all of these products here in my garage specifically for my use because I wanted to get the best things possible and I hope to share them with you too. Let's show you that the interior also looks new and the leather. still, Supple looks good, it's a collector car, but it's not a collector car, it's never been on the road, it's driven at least once a month, it has about 12,000M on it, which isn't much, but for this type of car yes. uh and I'm hoping to put another 12,000 in the next two years as well uh as you can see even in the wheel wells the wheels everything was a wonderful job guys thank you very much let's show the engine bay and you know .

The best thing about this vehicle is that it still looks contemporary. I think if you presented this body design tomorrow, it would still be visible. It wouldn't look like an old car. As much as I love my Countach, it looks like it's from the '80s, yes. It looks like any period between 1994 and now. I think he was probably ahead of his time, which is why it took so long to catch up. You know, there are no weird wings or big fins or any kind of Go Fast-looking elements. a high speed road car and it's just wonderful, well listen up.

I hope you enjoy this little tutorial on how to clean your car a little. Here's something you could use that I discovered. A little advice I take. Simple Green. I do. the inside of the windshield with plain green and then I go back and use a regular window cleaner because you know I just clean a window cleaner. I still had to do it. Why does it look like it's cloudy? Know? Because those gases are things. it's so thick I mean I put my fingernail in I was able to go and I could see I was removing a little bit so the plain greens seem to eat it up and then we used our traditional glass cleaner and that seemed to work well so if that little bit The advice can help you, God bless you, thank you guys, andagain Jeremy and Chris did a wonderful job bringing this baby back to life and it looks like new.

Could not be happier. See you next week.