ilogikal1

Aww, I suppose I'll have to keep the Defi's for now then. What a shame... Oooh, interesting! (Sorry Gareth, you can have your thread back now. )

I do have a set of Defi's. They may even be for sale in the not too distant future (after my holiday)... perhaps... possibly... maybe. They might not be though. I'll give you a heads up if that happens though.

I loved my Defi's in my old car. And that's the very reason I'm putting off selling mine for as long as I can, because I just know as soon as they're gone I'll need (read want) them for something.

Hoverboard.

I don't work there, I have too much of a conscience to charge someone for damaging their car... I just volunteer there in my spare time.

I don't hate anybody And I am very good friends with a lot of 'youths' on here, some of them younger than my own kids I, on the other hand, hate everyone not just the youths. Just to balance things out you understand, it's nothing personal.

It's pretty much all computerized nowadays so anything vehicle specific flashes up on screen for the tester anyway (including the brake test), no need for a specialist to do an MOT. Because of the LSD. It's well documented on the forum if you search for it.

Cheers mate, that means a lot to me coming from a pro. Strictly amateur hour over here though, I have a lot of respect for anyone like yourself who does this for a profession as I'm fairly sure it's not something I could do for a living.

I haven't, I've overlooked coatings of any kind until more recently to be honest. They're generally a little too durable for use on my own car (I like applying waxes in the summer on mine) and until fairly recently have been a little fussy to apply but with a lot of easier-to-apply coatings on offer these days I think I'll probably be looking at another coating for the Leon when the time comes. Me being me, I'll probably want to try something different to Prime next time, Opticoat will definitely be on the short list.

No update on the Nanolex yet, but; MOT passed. The tester's comment; "I wish even half the cars that came through here were as clean as yours always is" (after the traditional "you could have at least cleaned it before you brought it in").

It depends on how much you want to spend, how committed to are to doing it yourself, whether you want to hide the problem and reapply more often or go all out and correct the paint. Cheapest way is buy a good filler glaze and apply by hand before your wax. Expensive way is to buy a machine polisher, paint depth gauge, compounds & pads. Or a dozen options in between, such as polishing by hand or glazing by machine. On top of either of these options is the decontamination - clay, fallout and tar remover. Ideally before either, essential before machine polishing really. Or you could pay for a professional detail. Or a respray for that matter. What's your budget? How much effort do you want to put in yourself?

Don't you start too! Cheers mate.

Cheers mate. I do take great solace in knowing that my last act for the company that I've worked for, for 11 years will be to spend nearly 3 weeks on holiday, in the sun though.

Then I'd hazard a guess that you'd need to spend about £7.5k.... Surprised no one beat me to that one.

Depending on how long it takes to me to figure out what I'm going to do with the rest of my life, I may need to sell stuff (random belongings, wheels, Z and all) to buy food, let alone alloys - this time next month I'll be officially unemployed. The upshot of that is if I do sort myself out quickly I'll have a moderate redundancy payment to fund my desire for shiny things. Anyway, this thread is about your shiny things so get on with it.

A cunning plan, I may just have to resort to that. Except now you've got me wondering about other wheels instead. I do like the Grids, but I've also got my eye on a set of Volks too. My current circumstance doesn't exactly lend itself to splashing out on Volks (or Grids, or even painting the Rays for that matter) just now though so I've got plenty of time to change my mind a lot first.

Nice pictures

Gareth, I want you to know that I'd made my mind up about what colour my wheels were going today. Then I've seen these posts regarding yours wheels. And now I've undecided. But this time it's your fault. That is all.

One of my friends has one. It was quite an entertaining little car before she discovered the VW "scene" and proceeded to ruin it every way possible. Now it's not so entertaining. F**king dubbers.

I gave the car a quick wash today (MOT tomorrow, the car's got to look pretty ). I was demonstrating pre-washing to a mate who has taken a sudden interest in exchanging all her free time and money for a shiny car so whilst I normally would do one or the other, today's process was; AF Citrus Power, rinse, Car Chem snow foam, another rinse, wash using HubiKote HubiWash (the Kryton Green version to be precise) and then a final rinse with filtered water followed by a spot of lunch (not on the car, though. Obviously). HubiTrim on the headlights is working well all of one week in (I know it's early days yet, but still) - no signs of hazing, which could be due to the almost complete lack of sun shine since application (of the coating, not application of the sun... just clarifying) but I'll give benefit of the doubt to the coating and assume that it's working as desired. It does make the headlights both bead and sheet very well though. BSD on the wheels didn't stop them from getting absolutely filthy, however they did clean up well with a completely touchless wash - albeit with the help of Citrus Power & snow foam - and they are still showing the insane beading that BSD is known for. As for the Nanolex, I can't say I've overly impressed after today. The car's covered about 200 miles since it was applied and it lives outside so has been subjected to the wonderful Yorkshire weather this week. Now on the one hand it showed great beading earlier in the week during the rainfall, also after one particularly muddy journey (they're still building houses around here so you can imagine the state of some roads when it rains heavily!) the self-cleaning attributes were clearly evident by the mud outline of where the Z was parked on my drive after a brief rain spell. This I liked. However today, before washing, the car was filthy so the beading was compromised as you'd expect. After the wash however, the beading was, if anything, worse and the sheeting was horrendously slow. This I did not like. It did occur to me that the LSP was technically Final Finish rather than Premium Spray Sealant, and I am led to believe that FF can last up to 6 weeks on its own, so I suspect this is just FF failing after the first week rather than the underlying PSS - I'm not sure how chemical resistant FF is, so I'm willing to accept that either Citrus Power, snow foam and/or shampoo has weakened it to this extent, not least of all because I really only used it to stop water-spotting on PSS this first week anyway. I'll give the Z another wash if I get the chance to before I go on my jollies in a couple of weeks otherwise it'll have to wait until I get back - if I come back, people have been telling me for weeks now that everything in Australia is designed to kill you (it's a wonder anyone lives there with all the stories I've been told!). Assuming I do make it back alive I'll have plenty of free time on my hands for washing cars though so with any luck I should be able to confirm whether it's FF or PSS some time in the next 1 to 4 weeks.

Tarmac, if you start selling detailing gear as well you'll be able to retire before next Christmas just from GM's business alone. Gareth, enough with the teasing, we want the money shot already! Good write up mate.

Yeah, I'm with you now - it's been a long day.

Congratulations Gixxer

I'll also agree with Ekona and Roscopervis, I've done numerous layers on a number of cars and I'm barely half way through any of my panel pots. Although I will disagree with Ekona on layering Dojo Juice waxes (at least PH & BV) as per my recent wax test as a second later did appear to extend the durability - they were applied more than 24 hours apart in my case and only apparent on the Dodo Juice waxes though. You don't achieve anything other than wastage by slapping it on thick either, if anything it just makes it more difficult to remove or it won't last as long due to the wax that's actually in contact with the paint not curing, and therefore bonding, properly.