ilogikal1

Quick update after another wash today, in case anyone's at all interested; The Rim Wax has completely failed now, it's offering absolutely no protection at all now after just a month. The Poorboys Wheel Sealant on the wheel is doing okay - the wheel it's protecting is, I would say, 90% clean with nothing more than a quick snow foam and rinse. On the paint work, it's still sheeting well but not doing so well on the beading. I had applied the Candy Gloss sample from a Waxybox to half of the spoiler which did bead nicely for about a week before fading away to nothing. Also, two weeks ago, I tried Sonax Brilliant Shine Detailer on the various panels; it's a bit finickity to work with and the finish doesn't feel particularly slick... but the shine is good and it more than makes up for all of this with both the water behaviour and durability for a QD (it's still going strong). It could quite easily be used as an LSP in in own right, although it went over the wax (and wheel sealant on half of the spoiler) on mine, and the beading is just pure porn - more details here if you're interested. Edited to add; I forgot to mention, the C2 is still going strong. The Dr Beasley's Trim Sealant is starting to fail though, so this will be removed altogether now and replaced with Nanolex Trim Rejuvinator in a back to back test. I've also got a G-Techniq G5 vs PIAA Screen Protect thing going on too, but I suspect no one else is anywhere near as interested in any of this as I am so I'll leave it there.

I do love a good beading pic.

For the benefit of anyone else who got the gungy green dotted, oily, pleasant smelling mess; a couple of hours in the fridge (currently two and a half hours at exactly 8oC) has set it nicely. It still feels very oily at the moment so I'm going to leave it in there over night and see if that changes before I choose whether to use it or not. If it does, it'll get used on someone else's car though.

I'm quite impressed with that's included too (again). Which wax sample did you get? Apparently there's four that have been sent out this month, denoted by a coloured dot on the bottom of the pot. I got green, which doesn't appear to have set very well and some of the oils have separated en route - I'll drop Richard a message shortly to let him know - it's currently in the fridge but hopefully it's still usable.

Looks good.

Maybe you just didn't notice.

It would be worth posting/reading up here for some proper advice, too.

Soft should be fine, especially if you're using fallout and tar remover first.

Hope it's nothing serious mate.

I've only tried half of the stuff from the last box - I tried the Car Chem Clarity, but felt it's not as good as Pain from a previous box. The Candy Gloss sachet was nice to work with but I didn't notice any great improvement in gloss over other waxes (yes, plural) on my car and it's also long since worn off now anyway. The Nanolex Trim Rejuvenator I've been very impressed with though. It's been applied to the Leon (which has a big bit of trim at the top of the bonnet, for reasons that are beyond me) and it's still beading well. I also ordered this month's box early on too. The Z is overdue a wash so, weather permitting, I might actually use this one before ordering the next.

Today, a ginger 350Z at Dunswell roundabout coming off the A1079 at about 2pm. And a black JDM 350Z on Sutton Road about an hour later.

Please explain The Cafe buy scones from Tesco...

Good work.

I use this; the cleaner's excellent and the balm leaves a nice, natural matte finish to the leather. Or these for the sake of ease (Envy also offer a member discount).

£3.50. But I'll give you £4 for them if you deliver them to me.

I have no experience of Fixer or Optimum so I can't offer anything with regards to those. Ultrafina, as you've found, doesn't have a great deal of cut - it's okay for light wash marring, but it won't remove deeper swirls or scratches. You should get a bit more cut from pairing it with the yellow 3M pad, which itself has more cut than the blue pad. I doubt you'll need to use Fast Cut, I would have expected Extra Fine on the yellow pad (by DA) to remove a lot, if not all, the swirls perhaps stepping down to the blue pad. You can should then be able to refine with Ultrafina on a blue pad if you wanted to for that extra gloss. Unfortunately, as already stated above, it's very soft paint so is extremely easy to inflict marring which is partly why I like to use a glaze. I know what you mean though, it can be quite disheartening at times though.

I realise it was the extremely hamfisted way I phrased it, but what I meant was you can't entirely prevent inflicting more swirls over time (you can minimise fresh swirling though) rather than never getting rid of those already inflicted. I also disagree with the 99% of the time it being due to not working the compound. Whilst it is often the issue, the simple fact of the matter is if you're using something too abrasive for the paint you will never get a good finish regardless of how long or hard you work it. Similarly if the compound isn't abrasive enough, you can work it all you like it still won't remove all the marring... and then the longer you work it, the more it dries out, the more marring is inflicted.

That.

You'll never eliminate swirls and it's always a losing battle, you just have to try to minimise them really, having said that I've found Nissan paint to be very easy to induce marring (I'm sure the paint is actually just coloured butter rather than paint!) and in my experience you can actually cause a lot of swirls just with a mircofibre (albeit a cheaper one) and not a lot of pressure. Nissan paint is considerably softer than anything else I've worked on. What pads/compounds have you been using? I assume it's by DA rather than rotary too? I tend to use (by DA, on Azure) Lake Country Constant Pressure pads (orange & green) with Menz compounds (203S/PF2500 & 85RE/SF4000) on my Zed, and usually opting for a two stage polish to remove swirls. Although if using a glaze, I could often get away with a single stage using 203S. I've also been playing around with a few products this weekend; FK303 might be of interest to you - it's a glaze but also contains abrasives. When worked by machine it's actually quite good at removing wash marring, gives a great finish, is p*ss easy to work with and as it contains no oils can be used with just about anything. The only slight down side is that it does need to be worked quite a bit - it's not like any other glaze I've come across and certainly isn't a wipe on, wipe off product.

Sorry to see that, Wasso. I hope it all gets sorted.

He goes to the extent of mentioning all the "tiny blemishes" which "don't show up in the photos", but then fails to mention to the damage on the front splitter. Which does show. Quite clearly. In the photo he provided.

What code did you use mate? The juneshop one doesn't seem to work..... That's for use in the Waxyshop, for the products they sell rather than for the boxes.

LMGT4; GT4;

At least you're not the only one to have overlooked the switch then. You're welcome.