ilogikal1

They'd look better if all the bolts were present. Although not by much in my opinion.

After anything specific? Polished Bliss Car Chem i4Detailing Slim's Detailing Clean Your Car Bear's Wax Factory Or there's always direct from manufacturers - aside from the aforementioned Car Chem, there's also; Bilt Hamber GTechniq Auto Finesse I could go... I really could!

Fixed that for you.

Becoming? The rule making has been a farce for as long as I can remember; "That barge board is too big, you're disqualified", "But Ferrari's are bigger?!", "Yeah, but... they're Ferrari so it's okay". For example...

About 90 minutes of your life you'll never get back...

Not to make any new year resolutions. Oh fu...

Car Chem have 12% off on orders over £20 using the code "detail12" at checkout.

For a focus or a Astra, but not a Z. For the driving population of the UK as a whole, regardless of car driven actually. It would still considered average mileage even on a Z though.

10-12K per year is considered average mileage these days.

Won't offer any protection at all against stone chips. Doesn't need to be professionally applied, but you do need to know what you're doing to get the best out of any coating. Again, not strictly true. The 3M film will yellow over time, the more you neglect it the quicker that will occur... it might be a "do-it-twice-or-so" type job. Cquartz doesn't require maintenance as such, but it will need reapplying every couple of years, but as I said there are (currently) no coatings, including Cquartz, that will offer protection against stone chips anyway.

Happy New Year and all that guff, more importantly though; more bargains! i4Detailing - 15% off orders over £50 using the code "2015" at checkout (excludes delivery and some special offers). Valid until 31st January. (Ended). Prestige Car Care Shop - 15% off with the code "2015" for "24 hours only". (Ended). Waxamomo - currently list the 25% off all items using the code "MERRYXMAS25" at checkout as active still, however they are also closing down operations so will be selling off remaining stock at discount so get in there quick - my understanding is that stock has yet to be recalculated but they have stated that any orders not fulfilled will be refunded in full.

If it's any consolation mine has been washed once and driven once this week. It's currently dirtier than it was before it was washed!

It'd look great if you ever washed the thing...

Mainz Car Care are offering upto* 20% off from tomorrow, between 1st-7th January. "*Terms and conditions apply | No discount codes | 20% off none sale items" etc. (Ended).

Not to mention the number of Argentinian bureaucrats who processed the paperwork that allowed them to film a car with that "offensive-to-them" numberplate... oh, wait. I find it very easy to believe it was overlooked. Not least of all because the three digit number relates as much to that specific car than it does to the Faulklands conflict (right digits, albeit in the wrong order, but that's just as logical as sticking on another random digit to make the connection in my book). I also maintain utter contempt for "txt spk" so I would never consider FKL to spell Faulklands. At all. Ever.

Way too late for that. Probably not to be honest. There's little between them in terms of looks and you'd have to be looking for it to notice it unless it's side-by-side (even then the vast majority of the population wouldn't notice it!). The only difference I've noticed in application between waxes and traditional sealants is that sealants are almost universally easy off whereas some waxes can be trickier to remove - I'm big fan of easy on/easy off and tend to select my waxes based on ease of use over all else really (obviously it has to be worth applying once it's on, so durability does come into it too) so for most of the waxes I use regularly there's no extra effort in applying a wax over a traditional sealant (or 6 waxes over 6 sealants ). More modern spray sealants/QD's that are wipe on/wipe off with no curing time are obviously quicker than waxing though, I just prefer to spend the extra time on waxing... for no real reason at all.

Of course you have, it's the only way you've got post count up that high in the 12 minutes you've been here.

And then I washed the rest of the car; Citrus pre-wash (to use the Car Chem CPW I had mixed up) followed by lunch then started again with Car Chem foam, 2bm wash and final rinse with DI filtered water. The third new (to me) product was Chemical Guys Vintage Series Wonder Wash shampoo. It's... okay - neither bad nor particularly impressive to be honest. The dilution ratios are... try it and see (as with most CG stuff, their marketing exceeds their products which is a shame because their products aren't actually bad!) I used about 20ml in 15litres of water. It foamed up well enough and was moderately sudsy (if that's important to you), it has a scent that I've not placed yet but wasn't by any means unpleasant. It provides moderate lubrication - again, not the best I've used but also far from the worst. It did clean very well though. Again, it's one of those of products that does the job and I'd happily use it again but it's not likely to replace any of my current shampoos (of which I have far too many anyway!). So on with the fake beads (sorry Stu, but it is the end of the update ) on a clean car. Edition 20; The other Edition 20; The little unlabelled pot of wax; Edition 19; Edition 18; Vitreo; Edition 19 was the slowest at sheeting (but by no means bad at this point, just slow in comparison to the others), followed by Edition 18 which was slower than the others but more thorough on the sheeting front. The rest were much the same and very fast at sheeting the water off the surface. My current favourite of the lot is the little unlabelled pot of mystery... annoyingly. BSD-Wipe Hybrid seems to have been adversely affected by either the citrus pre-wash, the foam and/or the shampoo though; The beading was much better before the wash. The sheeting is still quick and thorough though so I'm still quite happy with this at the moment. PlasmaCoat and Tough Coat sections on the boot are much the same - the bead is **** but the sheeting more than makes up for it - the fact that they are both sealants, this is no surprise to me as that's the compromise with sealants over waxes. PlasmaCoat; and literally 2 seconds to zoom in later - you can see the sheeting in action; and Tough Coat; And some general "after" shots; That's it, I'm done and you've made it all the way through. Well done you.

I then spent most of the day removing the motorway from my car (I washed it...). Basic foam & wash for the most part but I did try out three new products in doing so. First up, the wheels. Two were cleaned with Meguairs Wheel Brightener from the Waxybox Christmas hamper. Megs review was posted on Instagram, so I'm lifting that picture straight from there; Cleans very well, rinses very easily, foams a little (but not much) when agitated with Wheel Woolies, it smelt okay - nothing special but not unpleasant. It did the job. It did kill off the (pure) BSD though so it's quite harsh - it can be diluted though so unless you're tackling filthy rims I'd recommend that... well actually I'd recommend something else, but if you had this I'd suggest diluting it. The other two were cleaned with this; Clean & protect in one... yeah, I have to test that out! It was simply sprayed on, allowed to dwell for one minute, agitated with Wheel Woolies & rinsed off with the hose. It cleaned very well, it rinsed very easily, didn't foam up at all for me, it smells very neutral - if anything it's a slight chemically smell - but added protection rather than killing it. Whilst agitating, the dirt was beading on the wheel (if you're using this on a hot day, I'd recommend rinsing often otherwise you're going to end up with dirty waterspots!). The protection it left behind wasn't the strongest beading but it's not bad either (I think Gyeon have ruined me for easy, amazing beads!). The sheeting is very good though. Will have to see how durable the protection is and whether it can stand up to brake dust now - the two wheels cleaned by the Megs were also treated to a hit with the Wolfs after to add a bit of protection.

No snow here (yet at least) but it did rain overnight, so just for Stu ; actual, proper, real, natural, non-fake beadage. On a dirty car. Edition 18; Vitero; Little unlabelled pot of wax; Edition 19; Edition 20; The other Edition 20; Compared to (older) HydrO2 on the wing; BSD-Wipe Hybrid; HubiTrim doesn't appear to be fairing so well on the headlights these days;

I would like to apologise for the following update which is going to be quite long. I won't of course, but I would like to. Anyway, you'll probably want to make yourself comfortable before setting down to this, there's a lot of pictures... 430-odd motorway miles later and the Z looked like this;

More bargains to be had if you're quick; 20% off online at Perfect Detailing using the code "KNOCKOUT" at checkout (now ended). 20% off at MadCow for today only using the coke "BOXING" at checkout. (now ended). 17.5% off at Zaino Europe with the code "EOY14" until 31st December (now ended).

So, it's (relatively) late on Christmas day now, so if you haven't opened your Waxybox Hamper (for those who bought one, obviously) by now then it's your own fault. The two "mystery" waxes are; Car's due a clean in the next few days, just as soon as I can move again after all that turkey... it may be a while.

An absolute bargain for the final selling price too at a mere £6,100. Nearly time for those Boxing Day sales to start...

That would be nice. Redundancy.