Spa treatment for my Octavia at Code6: Paint correction & other updates

Pads and rotors changed, wheels and body painted, ceramic coated, and the car looked better than new.

BHPian anaghp recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

Part 1 - Before

It's been four years since I created an Octavia-sized black hole in my bank account. Unfortunately, it saw nothing but my porch for the first two years due to Covid. But at the end of four years, it's now seen 55k km of tarmac. I had already planned on taking it to the spa at the four-year mark, and it seemed like the car Gods wanted me to have a good enough reason to do it.

Why did I want a four-year spa?

There were four scratches at the end of four years. Two on the rear bumper that was my own doing, one on the rear door and quarter panel when someone decided to check their Innova's build quality, and one on the front bumper left by some wellwisher when the car was parked somewhere.

Could I let this go? Of course. An average person wouldn't even think about getting these repainted as they were trivial. But here at team-bhp, I'd like to believe we are a little too peculiar about our cars. Or maybe it's just a handful of us. Who knows?

The plan

The folklore is that I'm a financially-blind moron who splurges when it comes to cars. It's true when you consider the fact that I pushed my already stretched budget of 15 lacs to a whopping 30 lacs to buy the Octavia. And that to buy a DQ200 German that gives a city average of <9 km to the litre. Was the 15 lacs worth the smile on my face still? You bet.

The 225/45/R17 ContiSportContact 5 tyres had done over 30k km and they had a good run. I was planning to get a set of PS4s when I reached Kochi after my Kochi - Madurai - Bangalore - Calicut - Kochi run.
To rewrite the folklore, I decided to halt the bodywork to the next credit card cycle and just change the tyres now. Who's the financially-blind moron now?

Unfortunately, this seemed blasphemous to the Car Gods.

What did the Car Gods do?

Behold. 80km left to Kochi, the Gods showed their wrath. I think it had to do with my decision to delay the body works clubbed with the cardinal sin of driving the Wolf Stage 2 remapped 1.8TSI too slow (at around 30kmph).

Somewhere in the Trissur town, the FL tyre fell in a pothole that blew the sidewall instantly and bent the outsides of the 17" OZ Racing alloys that I protected dearly from the slightest of curb rashes.

With this unexpected damage, I had no choice but to get the wheel fixed and painted. Two other wheels were also reported to have slight bends in my last wheel balancing 5k km ago. It was trivial to be fixed but was enough to get the car vibrate at high speeds.

Now that I have to repaint one wheel, I decided to go all in. Got 3 wheels fixed, and painted, and now that the car is at Code6, I decided to get the bodywork and a ceramic coating done.

Other work to be done:

I had installed PPF on the hood to avoid rock chips on the highway. I am glad that I did not do a full-body PPF because I've realised that PPF is overrated(no offence to the ones who got it done). Why do I say this?

1. Someone/something decided to fiddle with it and tore a finger-sized hole. I had to live with it until now.
2. There were tons of scratches on the PPF beyond its self-healing properties. These could not be gotten rid of by polishing.
3. Getting the paint corrected when damaged is way cheaper than getting the PPF. For example, the PPF cost me around 15k when I got it done in February 2021 from The Detailing Mafia, Kochi. I think paint correcting the rock chips on the hood and polishing it would cost me no more than 3k. And I wouldn't have had to live with a tear and an unpolishable set of scratches and swirl marks.

The car was too dirty to see the scratches, so unfortunately, I don't have the 'before' photos.

Part 2 - During

The body shop at Code6 is pretty good. They have a skilled and dedicated set of folks doing the work. I had gotten my car and my friend's Virtus de-chromed from there and repainted and ceramic coated a 7-year-old Polo to make it look better than new. They know their stuff. I wanted to call this out to rid your minds of any doubts regarding their workmanship and professionalism. Why does it matter? Because there was a surprise waiting for me.

As they heated the PPF and peeled it inch by inch, what I'm sure was done carefully, a huge piece of the paint just peeled off the body. It was heartbreaking to see. The fact that the hood was going to be paint-corrected anyway gave me some relief.

Part 3 - After

Pads and rotors changed, wheels and body painted, ceramic coated, and the car looked better than new. Except for the faded HSRP which was an eyesore (More about how I got it fixed here. I'm in awe of the car every time I look at it. Here are some pictures:

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