ilogikal1

Nice beads.

Today's new toy is... The CarPro Polyshave Decontamination Towel. There's a sales pitch/blurb here, but in short it's a replacement for a clay bar - "Like clay the Polyshave Decon Towel removes the above surface contaminants but unlike clay it is not nearly as time consuming. Also if you drop it, it can simply be rinsed off and used again. The CarPro Polyshave towel not only rinses easily but outlasts clay time and again." So, is it as good as traditional clay? Let's find out... (yeah, I'll stop with the patronising TV presenter sh*t now). The prep; Foam & wash the car the evening before (left in a garage, out of the elements overnight). Attack with fallout remover & rinse. Attack with tar remover & rinse. The method (in short); Clay a bit of a panel using a traditional clay bar. Clay the rest of the panel using the cloth. Re-clay the whole panel using a fresh traditional clay bar. Compare the two bars, decide if the towel works. I'll also be noting any marring to the paint caused by either. Or the long version of that; Take one Dodo Juice Supernatural clay bar and cut off two pieces, which start off looking like this; Using Chemical Guys Speed Wipe as lube and one of the above pieces of clay, clay one half of a single panel (in this the boot lid), inspect the clay, notice it's picked up absolutely nothing (from a cleaning perspective , from this tests perspective ). Repeat on the bonnet. Then the front bumper. Then the wing directly behind the front wheel and finally find this; The obscure green bits would be the Tar-X I obviously missed when rinsing. As you can see, there's not a great deal there anyway, so I may repeat this comparison if I find a suitably dirty car. Ideally one whose owner won't mind me attacking it with clay... Anyway, back to the test. Having obtained a baseline for the clay, I filled a bucket with Chemical Guys Mr Pink shampoo (sticking with the pink Chemical Guys products to provide lubrication, entirely unintentionally I may add). I left the clay cloth to soak in that whilst I set up the pressure washer and using Mr Pink in a foam lance, foamed a panel at a time (working in the sun today!) and then wiped the panel over with the clay cloth - I had the cloth folded into quarters, did the windows first to "break it in" on the glass as recommended before touching the paint with all four folded sections and applied no pressure at all to the cloth. I also rinsed the cloth off after every panel just to minimise the risk of marring. Having "clayed" the entire car with the clay cloth, I then returned to the sections behind the front wheels with the second clay bar, again using Speed Wipe as lune (this is after re-claying both sides - the first side, predictably, picked up nothing at all but then it's been clayed with a bar already so I wouldn't expect it too); I then spot checked various areas that were the dirtiest prior to washing and found... nothing at all. Although it actually looks dirtier in that picture than it does in person it should be noted that the surface isn't actually smooth, and there's some Speed Wipe residue on it there too. There's actually one little line of dirt in that clay bar. Here's the before (left) and after (right); A couple of things to note; I had intended to do two panels with the cloth (the area on both side behind the front wheels) then check it with the other bit of clay bar, however it took so little time that I decided to do the rest of the car and then check those areas with the clay bar instead. Now, when I say it's quick to use, if you're just claying on it's own it's probably no quicker after filling buckets, setting up pressure washers and then packing it all away afterwards like I did today. However if, like most people (including me usually), you do the wash/decon stages in the same day then using the cloth is akin to the hands-on wash stage - there's no need to re-foam the car, I was just being paranoid and wanted maximum lubrication, despite intending to polish anyway, and you can use your wash bucket mixture for this too. It's quite difficult to get the cloth into tall the little, tight spaces around the car, whereas it's less difficult to get the clay bar into those areas. That said, it's also quite easy to get bits of clay residue stuck in panel gaps and around badges, etc, which just isn't an issue with the cloth. Which is particularly usefull when it comes to plastic trim (particularly textured plastics) as you just don't have to make any effort to avoid them. Also, as I was working in the sun today, I noticed on the hotter panels that the cloth slowly became grabby as the rubber warmed up. This was simply overcome by turning the cloth whenever it started to get warm on one side - I only mention this becuase with the cloth folded, you've got 4 working areas wheras with the mitts you'll only have the one. It should also be noted that it would have been too hot for regular clay too, so I see this as an advantage to the cloth there too as it didn't slow me down much at all (seriously, how long does it take to fold a cloth!?!) whereas I'd be constantly changing bars to keep them cool. Summary; It's terrible. Stick with clay bars. On a completely unrelated topic, does anyone want to by a full, unused Supernatural bar and half a Bilt Hamber bar? Okay, so really... suffice it to say I'm a convert. It's not great for small spaces but for everything else it's just better. Larger working area means less time spent. There was absolutely no resistance so it really was like just washing the car. There's no obvious marring and certainly no more so than a traditional clay bar. It leaves the surface glass-smooth and the traditional clay bar didn't pick up much that the cloth didn't. I was actually very impressed with it.

I'm surprised no one's mentioned that this is one way to lower your car...

Luckily it was only a panel pot, not sure I'm generous to give away a full size pot! I've tried flowers before but they make an awful mess of the paintwork...

My pot of Supernatural was generously and selflessly donated to a woman of the female persuasion. It turns out I'm both hugely generous (read as 'a sucker for a pretty face') and very good at procrastinating as I never got round to replacing it.

All comments/suggestions noted, thanks guys. After falling for the 'BSD is the bestest everest at everything ever' hype and being left a little disappointed with that, I've overlooked a lot of the Sonax range, PNS included. I might get round to trying it out but I haven't got any to try at the moment. I've used it briefly, on one panel on a mate's car (it was his wax, he was doing the rest of the car at the time... it wasn't quite as random as that may have first sounded, honest). Initial impressions were very positive and if it weren't for the fact I've got far too many LSP's as it is, and I've had reports that it's not the most durable wax, I probably would have bought a pot by now. I was very impressed by the finish it gave though, it'd make a decent summer wax. I should consider charging for this public service.

That. Being a hybrid, it gives more of a sealant look rather than the warm wax finish, but it works very well and will last a good few months. It's very easy to use too, providing the layers are kept thin you can leave it forever before buffing off with no effort.

Appreciate the offer (and the suggestion too), if I change my mind I may take you up on that, thanks.

It has been discussed here.

That list should keep you going for a while. You're right, BH clay only needs water as a lube. If the car's well protected, a QD isn't really necessary, but you can use one to add protection between waxing or as a drying aid. Personally I'd see how you get on with what you've got and then decide later if you think a QD is required. Wheels, once they're clean, get the protected too and then you shouldn't need anything more than a shampoo wash to keep them clean. Windows, GTechniq G6 and leather, Dr Leather wipes to keep them clean and/or the Dr Leather spray for an occasional deep clean.

http://www.350z-uk.com/topic/82410-the-ilogikal1-test-thread/page__st__40#entry1289825 Or, to summarise; Wax = FK1000P. Coating would be better though which would come down to personal preference of Nanolex Professional or GTechniq C5.

There's just two problems with this. Firstly I'm trying to reduce the number of waxes. Secondly, and perhaps slightly more importantly, I don't actually have any of that wax... Although the Simoniz stuff is £8 for 150g, whereas Poorboys is £15 for 227g so any of the Poorboys would suffice as the low cost offering. I've actually tried to get a fair spread of waxes (pardon the pun) as that list contains everything including expensive/ cheap/ boutique/ flagship/ show/ long durability/ middle of the market waxes. I'm just struggling to choose 6 myself, and seeing as I'll be posting the results up in my other thread I thought I'd see if anyone had any preferences on what they'd like to see really.

Right then chaps and chapesses, I have a dilemma and need your input. It's time for a bit of a wax test but I have too many waxes and not enough panel. The plan is to do it on the bonnet (other panels are reserved for... let's just 'other things' for now ) so I was thinking of 6 waxes, although I could stretch that to 9 if needs be. The problem is I have only managed to narrow the options down to 13 options. So... pick 6-9 waxes for me from this lot, basically. Choose as many as you like, but less than 13 would be the most helpful The one without a visible label is Blue Velvet, by the way. I'll leave the poll to run until I get to the waxing stage which could be anywhere between a couple of days and a couple of weeks depending on whether it ever stops raining when I'm NOT at work...

About £6 cheaper would be nice.

Unless your current speed is printed on the road, that's true of every car. Ever. Eh? What use is that? Why don't you put the speed up on that display at glance at something useful instead?

If you can't wait until tomorrow, I'm willing to hand over my Z in exchange for your GTR tonight.

Unlikely to do it on a ship, I would have thought, (think of the space it would take up that could be used for paying customers!) but it's not uncommon for dealerships to have paintwork done between the factory and the customer handover on new cars.

How about 'The Grundy Mismatched Wheels' look?

You appear to have a bit of a fixation there...

GTechniq P1 is probably the most effective, easy to use polishes by hand.

If you can't feel it with your nail, it should just polish out easily enough.

Polishing by hand, DA or rotary?

If you were speeding, suck it up. If you weren't, contest it.

No.

To be fair, it became increasingly obvious that mine (a '98 Turbo 2000) had clearly not been treated particularly well prior to my ownership but I rushed into the purchase, in hindsight - lesson learnt! I'd gladly have another, I'd just be more picky about what I buy next time though.