Car Detailing Thread
- Admin
- #77
Just remember to strip Carnuba off first. Sealant goes well over AIO and other sealants. Does not bond to Carnuba all that well. A simple wash and Klasse AIO treatment and you should be good to go. Then wait a couple of hours and then apply UPP and you are set for months. Great looking product and really easy to work with.
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- #78
Big fan of this product. Can be used as a tire dressing and interior protectant. Nice silk finish instead of extreme shine, but still looks outstanding. Very little to no sling and reasonably priced.
coers
@andrewcoers
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I have a black VW and I have been trying to find a good wax. Currently I have Mehuiars Gold Classic Carnuaba Plus Paste Wax, Turtle ICE Liquid wax, Turtle Wax Color Magic Black, and Nu Finnish. None of those really have worked well for me. Always hard to clean up it seems. So what does everyone recommend for a Black Car?
Mark_UK
Legal Alien
Any Other Car Detailing Fanatics?
The wax will have very little effect on the look of the car on its own. The prep before you put on the wax is what will give you the wow factor. My steps would be to clay the car first. Then give it a good polish if it's needed. Then go for a glaze. This is what will give the great wet look finish. I always used Chemical Guys EZ Creme glaze on my black car. Had the paint almost dripping. Then add the wax on top. Wax is there to protect the finish. You'll see subtle differences between various waxes, but wax alone won't give you the finish you seem to be looking for.
My products for my black car were EZ Creme followed by Victoria Concours wax. There are pics of the results earlier in the thread.
The wax will have very little effect on the look of the car on its own. The prep before you put on the wax is what will give you the wow factor. My steps would be to clay the car first. Then give it a good polish if it's needed. Then go for a glaze. This is what will give the great wet look finish. I always used Chemical Guys EZ Creme glaze on my black car. Had the paint almost dripping. Then add the wax on top. Wax is there to protect the finish. You'll see subtle differences between various waxes, but wax alone won't give you the finish you seem to be looking for.
My products for my black car were EZ Creme followed by Victoria Concours wax. There are pics of the results earlier in the thread.
- Admin
- #81
Most of the time the sealant can add to a look, but the depth comes from what happens prior. If you dont want to clay bar/polish (which is he best method), go for an AIO with some filling properties to start. Klasse All In One fits here and does a tremendous job. After finishing wait for it to cure and then top it with a sealant. Something like Menzerna, Four Star UPP, etc.
coers
@andrewcoers
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- #83
You need to get some paint correction done. You can hide it with a glaze or filler, but swirl marks and items such as that need to be corrected. Machine is really the only way to get a compound/polish to work well in this instance.
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- #84
One more coat going on top today. Should be set for a few months after that.
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- #86
A couple of hours for both. I look at vehicles rather simply. They are usually the most expensive thing we own outside of our house. I care for them like I care for my house. Its not for everybody, but its a pride of beginning to end for me, kind of like a jigsaw puzzle.
emart2173
#journey2017
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Cars are looking good JB.
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- #89
Its just a weird thing for me I guess. Same thing with clothing too. Really anything that I spend good hard earned money on. In decades past, things were not disposable like they are today.
Evok
Don't worry, Be happy!
I dont think its weird at all, im right there with ya. Im really anal about my cars and they have to be spotless inside and out. I slack a wee bit during the nasty winters its hard to keep up but spring / summer she's mint haha. Before I went to school for CAD / Tech Illustrating I went for Automotive refinishing and kinda learned to love detailing and making cars look sexy as hell lol
- Admin
- #91
The weather is like 74 and the sun is out. Bringing out the Lincoln to wash and wax.
Optimum No Rinse wash and then going with Menzurna sealant on the top. If its still nice tomorrow, may top that with a carnuaba as well.
Optimum No Rinse wash and then going with Menzurna sealant on the top. If its still nice tomorrow, may top that with a carnuaba as well.
Somehow i've missed this thread for two years.... I've always been one to detail my cars, but have gotten lazy the last year or so.... Something i need to get back into. Current car is about 5 years old, and i've managed to keep it this long without dings and such, so i should really take care of it. A lot of names i've never heard of previous (always been a Meguiars guy), so i've got some research ahead of me which is always fun.
For the last 18 years I've been in the the business of selling products mainly to automotive body shops and one of the many things I do is train professional body/paint technicians how to denib(cut out dirt in the paint), compound, and polish a car. This process is done on nearly every car that goes through a body shop and I call on hundreds of shops in my territory that are on average cranking out 50-200 cars a month. I also have customers that do strictly restoration work where and average job will take months and cost $30-100K. One of my customers sent 6 cars to the Concours at Pebble Beach this year. This same customer did all the work on a Rolls a couple years ago that sold at Pebble Beach for $2,000,000.
Five truths I have learned after spending 18 years calling on and training body and detail shops:
1. The paint correction products used at the body shop are better and faster than the products sold at retail(they contain more abrasive mineral to cut/polish faster and fewer fillers that only hide swirls/blemishes) but you have to be very good with a rotary buffer to use them and they are normally only available at automotive paint stores but Amazon now has many of them.
2. Good, fast compounds are much easier to find than good polishes. Very fine polishes that work quickly on a rotary buffer to remove light swirls left behind by the compound and polishes are next to impossible to find.
3. 95% of detail and body shops can't and/or don't remove all the fine swirls, they hide them with a glaze, wax, or the fillers present in the polishes because that is very easy to do. The problem is they will visible again in weeks or months when the fillers evaporate.
4. The shops that can polish all the swirls out of black or dark colors without hiding them are 99% likely to be using 3M PN 06068 Ultrafine Machine Polish as the last polishing step before glaze/wax or sealant.
5. A good adhesive remover or cleaning solvent will immediately remove fillers and expose the swirls that a professional detailer can't see or insists aren't there.
If the paint isn't too oxidized or damaged, you can get to almost the same quality of finish as a professional body shop with retail products but they certainly will take longer and usually require more steps. If anyone is comfortable with a rotary buffer and a DA sander, I'd be happy to answer any questions as I've seen and used just about every tool, fine grit abrasive, compound, and polish known to mankind. I have a whole shelving unit of car detailing products in my garage and I'm demoing at least several of them nearly every single week. For you skilled car detailers, there are some very cool new products out there that can save time and give you a better finish(5000 grit wet abrasive), but only if you have the expertise with the proper tools.
For your average DIY'er or car fanatic, it can very confusing with all the different products available for paint correction and paint protection. IMO you need to use a system from one company when doing your paint correction(compounding, polishing) You can't go wrong with a big name brand like Meguiars. They have a great website with easy to understand directions on how to use their products. Their new MT300 polisher and products work great for someone who is not handy with a rotary buffer. BTW, they are owned by 3M who over the last 100 years has pretty much invented every product a body shop uses.
There are lots of good paint sealants and waxes/glazes out there - most of them have very similar formulations and the difference in performance between the top dozen or so brands is miniscule. I guess what I'm saying is you can buy plenty of lousy polishes/compounds but it's difficult to buy a bad wax/sealant/glaze. The preparation under the wax/sealant is the hard part and 90% of the finished look. There are no wax/paint sealant/glaze police out there so the terms are sometimes used loosely but a sealant is usually polymer based and are more durable. Generally glazes are less durable but are safe for fresh paint. Body shops use glazes to protect the paint until a sealant or wax can be applied which is after the paint is fully cured, usually 30 or 60 days depending on the paint brand used and weather conditions. Waxes usually contain a mixture of synthetic and natural products in them, and normally are carnauba based. A polymer wax/sealant will last for about 25-35 car washes while carnauba based waxes will last about 10-15. Carnauba waxes generally shine up better but are more work to apply. BTW, don't ever buy one of the paint sealant packages from a dealership when buying a new car. None of those products will last any longer than a good polymer sealant that you can buy at a Walmart or Target for $25 or less. My company has tested them all in our advanced weathering chamber(we can test from -80 F to +200 F and simulate any kind of UV/salt/ice/snow/rain conditions) and none of them hold up better than the many sealants you can buy over the counter from a major retailer.
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Very well said. Not sure if you would consider this shop one of the 5% but they are fairly local to me and do pretty damn good work. They are one of two shops I trust to use when I'm lazy to do it myself. For those that think shops that simply wash and wax are detailing their car....take a look at this thread. IMO this is really what a full detail is.
http://www.e90post.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1083210
motoo344
Bearded Bandit
I think you make some good points here and it seems like you deal with mostly volume operations. These people are in the business of making money not perfecting cars. A good detailer is in a different league than one of these places.
DD is good stuff, they know what they are doing and you pay for it. He is a pretty big operation now I believe but a lot of us are just 1 and 2 man outfits.
Nothing wrong with the 1-2 man outfits. One of the detail shops I also go to is a 1-2 man outfit. That post is just an example of what a real full detail job entails.
motoo344
Bearded Bandit
O I hear you, Phil carved out a good place for his business with the store and a lot of advertising on websites. Its tough, you sell services for 300-500 that are very labor intensive and you see guys like him charging 1000+ for things. You gotta start somewhere though. I remember when making 200 on a car seemed impossible but you gotta start somewhere.
GolferMahn
New member
Been detailing cars for a while in my spare time, but really lost the love of it over the last few years since the paint on my car (terrible paint job by repair shop) has turned sour. Bought a new truck a couple weeks ago, and just got in from giving it a good washing, and clay/wax the horozontal surfaces. Once I get a place with a garage, I'll get back into the detailing a bit more, break out my DA and pads and give 'er a go.
This was one project I did last summer, paint was awful and felt like sandpaper, also had to get rid of the pinstripe. After several days, and a whole barrage of materials, she was looking great.
Before, may be hard to see how bad it is, but this is after a good wash even.
After:
This was one project I did last summer, paint was awful and felt like sandpaper, also had to get rid of the pinstripe. After several days, and a whole barrage of materials, she was looking great.
Before, may be hard to see how bad it is, but this is after a good wash even.
After:
i was going to them before they moved to the bigger shop and really started blowing up. In a way, You do get what you pay for with them though. Finding a 1-2 man outfit that will do it for 3-500 and still pay as much attention to detail as DD does is kind of like finding a diamond in the rough. These days with two kids, work and house maintenance...id rather spend the time and money out on the course or at Petes Golf lol. And stick to a wash, clay, and sealant regimen. It's probably been over two years since I did any paint correction on my bimmer. Part of that is due to a fanatical washing routine to minimize any swirls lol. Even the guys at the dealership automatically put a No Wash sign when I come in hah.