Today I did some detailing...

Curran wrote: »

Good man - no issues so!! Carry on! :P

JetSeal109? If so, that'll have you sorted for a few months!

No V7. http://www.cleancar.ie/chemical-guys-hybrid-v7-spray-sealant.html
Not sure if it's up to ur standards?

Curran wrote: »

OK, so thats more of a quick detailer with a bit of sealant in it.
It will have enough protection to get you from week to week - weekly wash, dry, and top up the protection with that....anything longer than a week, or two max in current weather, your Blacklight will start to suffer, but that has a bit of protection too!

Cheers....Might pick up some of the JetSeal109 and give it a go. Thanks.

Nice job. I reckon a bonnet respray would make a big difference to the car as its such a prominent panel.

Why don't you touch up the spots on the bonnet and sand them back?

Take a look at chipex and paints4u. They do colour matched kits with paint, lacquer, sanding block etc. seem to get good reviews. I've a couple of chips on my bonnet and have been considering it.

The fellow who does the drive clean videos has a video on chips.

Not that I've tried it myself. I keep "meaning to"

Hope your getting paid for that! Wouldn't have been hard for him to take the rubbish out in fairness!!

Today I learned that there is only a certain number of trigger sprays you can hang on the side of a box before it will tip all your detailing kit all over the garage floor.

That number is 12.

So with the help of an old curtain rail I made this:



And spent a few hours cleaning up. Had to go and buy some new MF cloths too. My plans to clay the Volvo will have to wait for another day. FML.

MetzgerMeister wrote: »

A blue rope or the line from a clothes line is good for that too!

Specifically blue rope you say

Yes, must be blue! You'll always see a blue rope if you lose it in the garden :pac:

Ok so the car I have is new, got it couple weeks back. You may say I'm mad but wanted to get some type of better protection on it other than what you get.

I've no before photos but it wasn't particularly that dirty. Got some great advice from here and thanks to Vectra also. But a special thanks to Curran for great advice, I wanted to get good stuff to wash car. Went to Halford and they had their 3 for 2 special on. Got a few things but having read on here afterwards and only a couple of euro in the difference I brought stuff back and got some great stuff from Detailingshed (Curran). Have to say the drying towel is fantastic (worth the money), can't believe how much water it can hold and car was dry in no time.

Wash car with microfiber madness incredimitt and with two bucket method and rinsed, clayed, washed ,rinsed again and dried ,couple tiny tar specks,put some Collinite 845 on.The micro fibre towel also from detailing shed was great, you can cut it into 3 as it's big. Sealed wheel with Chemical guys wheel guard. I'm totally new to all this so go easy on me....

Many thanks to all again for help and great advice.

Last one

stimpson wrote: »

That's some shiny paintwork right there..

Will keep that in mind next time I'm uploading stuff, kids were looking at me with ten head spending 3 hours cleaning it...:D

vectra wrote: »

That Golf is looking sharp.
Glad you got there in the end.
I think you must agree with me on the Collinite 945
Easy on
Easy off
Excellent results.

Well wear with the car.

The Collinite went on like a dream, that was the easy part. But buying the proper stuff like Chemical guys shampoo, microfiber towels, drying towels all made it much more easier and a pleasure to do a job most of us dread. The drying towel I got from Detailing shed was the dogs, wife wanted to get her hands on it for house work plus the microfiber towels. Will have to hide them:D

Yesterday, I finally got around to using the CarPro CeriGlass I got in November. Both front and rear 'screens were quite badly scuffed from the wipers so it was going to be interesting to see how I'd get on.

Out with the DA and a felt pad. I started gently, with the DA on 2-3 and not too much pressure. Not much cutting either. Some experimentation and I ended up with the machine at 6 and a good deal of pressure. I found the pad drying out very quickly, so I got a trigger bottle and filled it with water to spray on the pad every 2 passes.

I did the windscreen first. It had a good deal of general fine scratches from the wipers sweeping across, plus some much deeper ones at the points where the wipers changed direction. These were easily seen from inside, but still difficult to see outside: I stuck some bits of masking tape on the inside to map out the tracks of the deep ones so I could give them some extra attention later. I started by doing it in 6 sections and took out a certain amount of the fine scratches, though not so much of the deeper ones. I probably spent 2 hours on this. Next, I taped off the rough path of the really deep ones and went nuts on those for about half an hour. The final run on the windscreen was to take off all the tape and give it a final working over in two halves, I think I spent about another half to three-quarters of an hour on this.

Next onto the rear windscreen. Also quite badly scratched, and some lessons learned from doing the front It was easier to do the rear since I could lean into it while standing up (estate car) and I'd done enough in the space of an hour to have all but the deepest scratches removed. I finished with a quick rub across the side windows - they're not badly scratched, but I had other plans once I was done (more on this in a bit).

Quick wash and dry to get rid of all the polish residue from the car.

You might be wondering by now why I bothered going to this much trouble on the glass? I also bought some Gtechniq G1 in November, and didn't want to apply it to a badly scuffed windscreen, hence the polishing. Final step before applying G1 was to wipe down the glass with an isopropanol/water mix. I got the G1 onto all the external glass. I finished my day's work by cleaning the inside of the windows with a mixture of isopropanol and water.

Things I learned from the experience:
Polishing glass is much harder work than polishing paint. You can afford to be very aggressive on glass with a DA polisher. Hand application of CeriGlass is unlikely to remove scratches but I think it'd be enough to get a good clean surface for applying surface treatments to.

It hasn't rained since I applied the G1 so I haven't had a good impression of beading yet, but the dew on it this morning had beaded (tiny little ones) and it pretty much fell off the screen with one sweep of the wipers. There's nothing so satisfying as seeing little balls of water running up the 'screen when you're driving along Brief experience of nighttime driving is that there's a lot less glare now with the scratches gone, though it's also shown up the fact that I need new glasses (they're quite badly scratched too). One of the other driving scenarios that had shown up problems with the scratches was low sunlight, so it'll be interesting to see what happens there.

I tried taking pics of the scratches on the 'screen, but the glass is too reflective to show them at all.

Chimaera wrote: »

Polishing glass is much harder work than polishing paint. You can afford to be very aggressive on glass with a DA polisher.

Definitely a different ball game to polishing paintwork. However, one thing to be aware of when polishing glass, is not to generate far too much heat, it can result in warping the glass, resulting in distortion when you are driving.
Probably not too much of a concern with a DA, but definitely with a rotary.

Taylor365 wrote: »

Where does everyone pick up this tar stuff?

.

Usually from the roads :P

His car isn't black lads, it's a blue Subaru