This is sage advice a couple hundred bucks and it'll be right. Call you local body shop supply and ask who the best detail guy around is.

I bought lake country package which included porter cable 7424 Xp buffer and five pads and then I bought Maguiar clay kit,polish compound and ultra wax past all Maguiar .
I finally got the tile to do my 1976 carrera 3.0 and the results were great.it did take me five hours,but it's defenetly worth it.here is a picture.http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1408324468.jpg
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1408324499.jpg
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1408324526.jpg
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1408324571.jpg

That is a very cool Carrera 3.0, a car I have always wanted and the only non turbo 911 id have a spoiler on.

Can I ask which pads you used to apply the polish and wax?

I bought the lake country ones.i used the purple for compound polish and the black pad for waxing

Honestly, I'd take it to a shop if your not experienced with wet sanding and buffing. A scuff and buff I think is the best way to bring a dull paint back to life. The problem is, if you don't know what you're doing, you can screw it up and burn through.

You'd have to really mess up to burn through with the D/A polishers as they don't produce the heat or speed that the buffers do. If you consider moving up to a heavier cutting compound, look at the product you're buying because most will require higher rpm to do the job.

Karter18 writes:
>> If you drop the clay bar - THROW IT AWAY.

Good advice, applies to everything used here - towels, pads etc. Keep it as clean as possible. Also if it hasn't been mentioned, the grit guard things make for a really clean washing bucket.

The local parking garage here has a car detailing place in it. I parked there and the guy was trying to get me to take their services. So he's talking to me while waxing a car, finishes a section, then, before grabbing a towel, he jams the applicator pad into a crack in the brick and concrete wall to hold it while he buffs off the wax!!!! I was floored and the solicitation was over of course.

Chuck.H
'89 TurboLookTarga, 380k miles

Gentlemen - how thick is that Collinite wax? I ordered some and it is thinner than some of my other waxes so I just wanted to run a compliance check by you experts. Looking forward to trying it.

Cheers

Kboustani, I'm loving that car. Haha, nice and shinny. What wheels and tires are they?

I got bored/wanted the exercise so I clay bared the Corolla and gave it a Meguiers Carnuba wax. Wow. A couple of people mentioned to me they couldn't believe how my Corolla almost glowed when they spotted it as they drove past.

There's no clear coat either on the non metallic paints so doesn't machine buffing cut into the paint ?

I just clay bar'd the entire car and all I can say is YES. It removed all sorts of things from the paint from bug marks to large stained areas that looked unwashed even after they were washed. Why are these not more popular!?

I also bought a DA buffer, Maguires 205 polish and very un-aggressive white pads. I'm going to practice on my dad's white Ranger first then take to the Porsche.

When one buffs, does one typically try to get ALL the paint, or just steer clear from sharp corners were there would presumably be a much greater danger of burning thru? All the demos on youtube show nice flat areas, handily avoiding this problem.

The DA buffers are designed so that they stop rotating when placed against an edge. You can see this by putting a mark on the pad and it will stop on an edge. That being said, I am still a chicken and stay away from edges and even inside corners. Just do those areas by hand.

If you want to talk about aggressive detailing, I just sanded the entire car. The paint was really bad and clay wouldn't cut it. So I block sanded the whole car with 1000, then 1500, then 2000. Then buff with a DA. I'm using Meguiar's Ultimate Compound. It's not super aggressive so not likely to burn through. And it's been super easy. You can follow that up with their Ultimate Polish before waxing, but it's almost unnecessary.

As long as you follow all the cautions and good advice here, and use common sense, you're unlikely to cause a disaster. One other point- I was a newb on this too. Check the videos for the right techniques. Things like how much compound to use, do you put it on the buffer pad or the car, how large an area to do at one time, what pads to use, etc. All that stuff is covered by the sites mentioned earlier like Chemical Guys and Auto Geek.

r-mm,

Yes, do it yourself. You will love the outcome. No one on this forum should be scared to ruin their paint job.

I know you just bought a DA, but I have a useful tip for you. I think everyone should do it by hand once before they use a machine. When doing it by hand it’s much more obvious how much product to use. Very little. Just enough to create a film haze and maintain some friction. Slather on too much and you lose the abrasive qualities amidst the goo. You have much more precision control rubbing by hand. You don't overspread product into the crevices and over black trim. When you feel the haze and resistance in your hands you understand you’re actually trying to accomplish. Just a mild scrubbing. Scrub a little bit, sense that it's drying out, allow to fully dry, then wipe off. I don't think you don't get this tactile feel and "response" from a machine. Everything becomes very obvious once you're doing it.

Next time, if I use a DA I will have a much better sense of what I am trying to accomplish with the tool. The 911 is small, and will probably take you 1 hour to polish. Pretty trivial for a once a year polish. Waxing is fast on a clean car. Wax on, wax off. No scrubbing. 15-20 mins total.

I reiterate the advice to stay very clean. One crumb of a dead leaf caught in your towel can scratch your panel. You should get a 10 or 20 pack of MF towels, and constantly be folding them over to always have a clean surface.

I applied the product with this. Get a 2 pack. One for polish, one for wax.
It's way better than trying to apply product with a towel, which is too large and absorbent.
Microfiber Wax Applicator Pads, Blue: Auto Detailing & Car Care : Walmart.com
Meguiar's Foam Applicator Pads: Auto Detailing & Car Care : Walmart.com

Please try to take decent before/after shots and post them.

Not to bash detailers but their job is to make the car look the best it can upon delivery. Used to be in Auto Collision Industry and can tell you a lot of car are over buffed and look awesome until about a couple months go by. Then the product that was creating the shine wears and you are left with paint that has been cut and buffed to a mil count so low that the paint fails altogether. Can't tell you how many cars were redone just because of this.

Guys swear they can fix this fix that and it just can't always be done safely. You are working on an older car that probably has had a bit of polish done to it so the paint can be thin to begin with.

I would never use anything behind the lightest polish you can find. From there 3M Imperial hand glaze and a good synthetic wax if used regularly.

By the way all of that can be done by hand as it is such a small car. I would used a clutched type polisher that stops with too much friction to prevent burn if you absolutely have to use one.

When a car is painted that will be wet sanded and polished extra coats are applied to compensate for this. Cutting paint with an aggressive compound can actually do more damage then wet sanding. Wet sand paper now comes in insane grits that are lower in abrasion then some compounds.

Wash, Clay, Polish, 3M Glaze, wax and then detailer. Your done in 2 days and good for a couple years except for the wax and detailer.

Thanks for the continued advice - especially like seeing advice that keeps it simple (as I am obviously new to this and not trying to win any car shows).

What do you use to apply polish (such as the Meguires 205 I have) by hand? Presumably not the same hook and loop pads I bought?

Sugarwood you posted some applicator pads - my question there is that when I'm looking at the hook and loop pads to use with the DA they came in a variety of grit or levels of cut. What you posted seemed to be just an applicator with no cutting/polishing action. Is that correct? Even for a mild polish don't you want some level of cutting from the pad itself or does the polish do all that?

Mobius, If you take one more step your job of bringing the gloss back will be 10 times easier. Go to your local Automotive paint supply store and buy yourself some "3M trizac" discs. They are a 3000grit foam sanding disc designed to be used on a DA. Get a spray bottle filled with water, squirt a little on the car and lightly da the area. Don't be afraid of going through the paint on flat surfaces, 3000 grit is extremely fine. Stay off the edges as a precaution. When finished dry the area you just DA'd,t will have a dull shine to it. at this point you can literally rub your finger back and fourth and bring the gloss back, that's how close the finish is to being completely scratch free. I think they also make 5000 grit but I've never used it, seems to fine to me.

Thanks for the tip Tim/oh. I'm going to check that out.

while on this topic- on my 78 the paint on the upper front fender behind the headlight is worn thin. I guess I hit it too hard when compounding.
Any fixes for this? It is a spot about like a quarter.

Can I touch it up and sand smooth with high # wet sandpaper?

I was taking out some marks in the paint, and made it a bit worse. Lucky it was only in that area, the rest of the paint came out nice.

Get on autogeek or meguiars forum asap.
1. Buy pc7424xp from chemical guys with lots of pads
2. M105
3.m205
4. Meguiars sealant mirror glaze
5.megiars yellow wax
6. Give a spray wax after every wash with meguiars synthetic express spray wax




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