ilogikal1

You're quite welcome.

As a self confessed cynic, can I just point out that this equates to "man trying to sell me something said what I wanted to hear". I'm not saying he/they won't honour it - or that you'll even ever need to find out - but just because someone says something, it doesn't make it true. As I say, hopefully you'll never need to test his word, but unless you've got it in writing then there's absolutely nothing stopping him from just denying making any such statement and leaving you out in the cold when push comes to shove. Good luck with it though, I genuinely hope my cynicism is proven to be unfounded in this case.

I'm going to be honest here Granville, that might just be the best idea you've ever had.

Try polishing your current headlights first. It won't help the cracking but it should help with the ageing and may make it tolerable thus saving yourself a few hundred pounds. Those eBay lights you've linked too look bloody awful!

According to Wills "contacts" there will be no Red Bull next year. Probably. And they should know, they posted it on Facebook. Facebook! (Sorry, I'm just being childish now ). So when is the speed camera getting fitted in front of garage then?

Yeah, I noticed his latest absence - there have been a couple of threads that have actually stayed on topic and everything since he was banned... only a couple though! I wouldn't go as far to say that I'm glad to see the back of him but I'm not going to lie to you, I don't really miss him all that much myself. Have the speed bumps significantly reduced the number of speeding offences into your garage though? That's the important thing.

You're saving at least an hour by not taking a millionty photos of every step. Recommended by or invented by? The Z looks well, Granville, but I don't think much of those speed humps on your drive.

Anything between zero pounds and eleventy billion. As a conservative estimate. Realistically, you could be looking at nothing more than a couple of services. But then there's dozens of consumables which may or may not need addressing at any given point.

Seeing as the brake dust theory has only been poo-pooed (sorry, been watching Blackadder) by me, I got impatient and conducted a *ahem* "scientific test"... or in other words I dicked about a bit today. First off, before the car moved at all since its wash, I attacked one wheel with two fallout removers. Auto Finesse Iron Out thought about it for a while; Whilst Car Chem Revolt did this; So... er, yeah, that's a lot of fallout for a wheel that was fully decontaminated and sealed two weeks prior. The wheel was rinsed and left to dry fully in the sun. Then I went for a drive, which was ~7% the mileage of last time; I was sure to include a mixture of heavy, light and "normal" braking (because scientific, don't you know). Upon returning to the homestead, I immediately checked (and photographed) the state of the wheels. Slick Rims. Slick Rims. Slick Rims. Not Slick Rims. So there you have it. A wheel sealant that doesn't play well with brake dust. Useful. Considering this is before another wash, I spent a bit of time looking closely for any marks on the HubiRims. This was the extent of it; Whereas on the Slick Rims wheels, I found it a bit easier to find anything... And yes, it bled again (after a couple of hours to allow everything to cool off first). You get the idea. One of those was the same wheel that bled this morning too for what it's worth.

*awaits the "he gave me a dyno printout showing a 4bhp increase and refused to refund" post*.[/cynic]

Tight to you might be loose to somebody else though. Always best to do things properly instead. Fixed that for you.

Slick Rims have got back to me. They claim never to have seen anything like this before, they can't explain it either. They did suggest trying fallout remover, but as I've scrubbed it off already it's a bit late for that. I might throw some at one wheel anyway and see how/if it reacts. Also an excuse to test out how the coating behaves with chemicals. Someone else however did report that they've had a similar problem with Slick Rims and suggested it's the coating reacting to brake dust. Whilst possible, this also seems unlikely given how the "reaction" is limited to specific areas on any given wheel, if it was a brake dust reaction I would expect it to occur over the entire wheel to some degree - although it could be coming specifically and directly from the caliper come to think of it. Anyway, this will be easy to test as it should reappear the next time I drive the car, which is a good excuse for a hoon.

Infinity/Cure; Skin on top, Gyeon Prime/Cure underneath; Prime/Cure; Skin on the lower side panel (behind the door); Hydro Coat; Infinity/Cure & Hydro Coat; Hydro Coat, Infinity, Prime and Ammo are out on their own already. Phaenna appears to have the legs over Candy Gloss, but they're both show waxes so anything they acheive from this point on is quite impressive. After the wash either EX-P's sheeting slowed way down or FK's sped right up again, either way in terms of sheeting EX-P is now only marginally ahead of FK, whilst Skin continued to **** all over the other two. Cure isn't looking too strong at this point. The sheeting is still good (better than EX-P & FK) but the beading is... "questionable" already. The 50Cal Track Wheel Wax on the exhaust is holding up every bit as well as HubiRims is too. For anyone who's interested, there doesn't appear to be any waterspot etching on the coating sections that weren't topped with Cure (although it's worth noting that the coatings were left several days to cure before being exposed to any water). Overall, I'm pleasantly surprised by how well AMMO Skin is doing. I almost wanted it to be a meh (largely to deter me from spending a fortune importing some for myself ) but it's surpassed my expectations thus far.

After the bucket wash, the first new thing I noticed was that my DI resin filter needs some new resin. I'd replaced the sandy waterspots with fresh waterspots, only to then replace them with even fresher waterspots despite using the filter. As such I'll skip the "finished" photos and go straight to the beading photos. EX-P; AMMO Skin; FK UPS; All with Origin on the front bumper beneath them. Close ups. FK; Skin; EX-P; Side-by-sides. Left is EX-P, right is Skin; Left is Skin, right is FK; Skin on top & Origin underneath and... something else on the badge; Wax Addict Candy Gloss Whipped; Obsession Wax Phaenna; Nanolex Trim Rejuvinator on the trim, Cure on the A pillar; Gyeon Cure; Car Chem Hydro Coat and what I suspect is Car Chem Hydro Coat by now (the spoiler was topped with Phaenna, not convinced that's still there though); Phaenna and Dodo Juice Infinity (and/or Cure - I'm more inclined to accept that Phaenna is still working here, not so sure about Cure though given the roof); Also, beading number plate!

Some snow foam happened. After a couple of minutes, that looked like this; Particularly of note was what was going on, on the bonnet (after struggling to get any foam to stick to the two coatings at all ); The rest behaved like this; I also noticed the windscreen. I'm not (yet) sure if that's signs that the wiped area is more worn or more/less dirty at this point. I will be conducting further testing now that it's been cleaned to determine as the G1 is only 2 or 3 months old. I had to really turn the foam up for the rear bumper and side skirts to get anything to stick to it at all, it just beaded up and ran off straight away with "too much" water in the mix. And for anyone who thinks snow foam doesn't do anything at all; The foam was given a few more minutes to dwell and then rinsed thoroughly. At which point I turned my attention to the wheels, so after they were completely clean I was left with a relatively clean car with waterspots (of the non-dusty variety) and the odd fly carcass like so; At this point, it was clear that the coatings are both awesome - aside from the fresh waterspotting, they both cleaned up in a completely touchless wash. It was also clear from the bonnet that Skin is easily the best sheeter of the sealants, whilst FK is the slowest. EX-P, for the record, was smack bang in the middle. At this point I would normally say that the FK sheeting isn't really all that good, not terrible but not good. EX-P on the other hand is about what I'd expect from a decent sealant at this point, so Skin has thoroughly impressed me already at this point. It wasn't as quick as the coatings, but it was closer to the coatings than FK was to Skin at this "half washed" point. Skin's impressive sheeting came as a bit of a surprise after seeing the snow foam on the bonnet as Skin appeared to be the one that wasn't repelling it at all... although perhaps that allowed for a better, deeper clean of that section. Hydro Coat continues to impress me too, it was both sheeting and beading away very well at this point - the sheeting was on par with Skin for reference. The buckets and a new shampoo then came out to play. I've been raiding Car Chem again and bought into the Detailing World Award Commemorative Limited Edition shampoo (it's just the 1900:1 with a "unique" scent really) for a bargain price.

The paintwork then. It started off not too bad, like this; EX-P. AMMO Skin. FK UPS. Basically just some dusty waterspots and traffic film. And some bug corpses on the front facing panels... Cure. Hydro Coat. Phaenna. Phaenna & Infinity/Cure.

Interesting theory, but I suspect that it's unlikely. The car was stood in the garage for almost 2 weeks between the brakes getting wet and the car being driven and there was no sign of these spots before the car was driven - it was also moved from the garage to the driveway where it sat for a day, give or take, so it had been moved too - so I'd be surprised if there was any water trapped around the discs by then let alone enough to cause this level of staining. The car wasn't driven in the wet at all since being cleaned either - the rain occurred whilst it was parked up and was then followed immediately by 21/2 hot, sunny days. It's not like it's where rusty water spots have just dripped down when it rained as it was sat either as the spots cover the full circumference of the wheels. I'm not sure they were rust marks either, they appeared to be heavy carbon spots at first but do look more rust/iron spots after a scrub with a Woolie. But then they lifted off with a m/f mitt, so... Also, it only affected the three Slick Rims coated wheels, there was no sign of these marks anywhere on the HubiRims wheel. As I say, the spots were around the full circumference of the three wheels but along different areas on each wheel; one nearer the back of the spokes, one near the middle of the barrel and the other was all over the place (including outside the spokes). I'm at a complete loss to explain what the marks actually were, let alone where they came from and why they only appeared on those three wheels to be honest.

I resorted to using a Megs Microfibre Wash Mitt, which still required scrubbing the spots to lift them and left me with this; The HubiRims wheel. Slick Rims wheel. The beading after wash 1. Slick Rims; And HubiRims; A few observations from this; Firstly, I don't have a ******* clue what what has caused those spots. What I do know is this; Snow foam didn't touch them. They were plentiful on the Slick Rims wheels - moreso on the near side, but still present on the off side. They did not affect the HubiRims wheels at all. That it only occured on the Slick Rims wheels but not on the HubiRims wheel suggests that it is to do with the sealant. That the least of this occured on the last wheel treated with the dregs of the Slick Rims (and therefore I used a little less sealant) seems to back this up. That HubiRims required nothing more than a once over with Wheel Woolies and shampoo to clean and that Slick Rims required much, much more attention means that this is not a strong showing for Slick Rims. The next few washes need to prove to be very good for Slick Rims to redeem itself to me! On the plus side, it's still beading quite well - even when not quite clean. Also, they do still clean up well, even if it does require a fair bit of effort; there's no sign of tar spots and appears to be no brake dust left over. I will submit this feedback to Slick Rims and update with any comments they care to make, in the mean time I'll give it the benefit of the doubt for now and see how it goes from here. On a more positive note, Blackfire Total Eclipse Tyre Gel continues to impress me every time I use it. This was one coat, after 450 miles with nothing more than a snow foam and rinse to "clean" (it does well at repelling dirt too). It does seem to like Michelins more than Falkens though. The Falkens, whilst still repelling water and dirt, are a little more satin than the Michelins - it is a satin finish dressing with one coat, but the Michelins are about the right amount for my liking whilst the Falkens are a little too satin for me. For that reason and that reason alone (it's got nothing to do with my finally killing those Falkens off, honest) they Falkens are getting swapped for Michelins when i get round to ordering them just so that the dressings match.

2 weeks have passed, 450ish miles have been covered, "blood rain" (that's slightly sandy rain for those who aren't headline writers), the worsteristest air pollution of all time evarrrrr (or something) and some lovely, lovely sunshine has happened. There's quite a lot to report, so for tonight I'm going to focus on the wheels but the rest will follow when I find some arsed. So, just to remind you, three wheels were treated with Slick Rims whilst the remaining wheel (OSR) got a coat of pre-production HubiRims. The car was parked up in the garage for several days after application so it's fair to assume that everything was about as cured as it could possibly be. The discs were rusty from the clean so the first outing shed quite a bit of that rusty dust over the wheels - the fronts in particular - combined with the DS2500 pads which are commonly known to be "dusty" pads. This is the first time they have been washed. Starting with; NSF. NSR. OSR (the HubiRims one). OSF. If you were looking closely you might have seen what is about to become the larger issue. I started with a snow foam (Car Chem Snow Foam at ~5% PIR), allowed to dwell for 7 minutes followed by a thorough rinse. That left me with this; NSF. NSR. OSF. OSR (HubiRims wheel). There was also a film of dirt still on all the wheels - largely on the barrel where it's difficult to aim the pressure washer at it. So out came the Wheel Woolies and the Britemax Cleanmax (yes, I know it adds protection but it doesn't last on the wheels, and all four were treated the same). With considerable (and I do mean considerable!) Wheel Woolie scrubbing, I was left with this;

Being asked to narrow down my many, many. many pet hates to just one for absolutely no reason at all.

You can't believe a word of that Daily Mail tripe; after all, they state Clarkson was sacked.

Have a look in the car profile whilst in Torque and un/check the "use alternate OBD header" (or something like that - it specially mentions some Nissans need this). See if that changes anything?

The "logic" is two fold; firstly it gives any would-be thieves a nice secluded area to work undisturbed and unspotted in to take as much time as they need. Secondly, you're statically more lively to drive into the garage wall if you're aiming for a big hole in the front of it than if you're just abandoning the car on a drive. For the latter you can thank the useless, idiot drivers for your additional cost.

And you're a brand whore.

Unless you're Dan and Mrs Ekona shares the same glorified, Apple branded clipboard, in which case that surprise present might not be such a surprise any more.