ilogikal1

This. Or better still a clay cloth....

You can all sorts of cheap tat off eBay, doesn't mean it's any good though. That said, the Megs stuff isn't the cheapest of the decent stuff anyway.

Clay mitts or cloths can cover a larger surface area than a bar can, and any pressure is more evenly distributed too so there should be less chance of marring. Just be sure to break a new mitt/cloth in on glass before going for the paintwork. There's also the advantage of being reusable, so if you drop it you just wash it out and you're good to go again. You use normal shampoo as the lube or, as I tend to, snow foam. The only downside is tight areas, you may have to resort to a clay bar to get into very small areas that the cloth/mitt doesn't quite get to.

Megs bars are fine with any QD or lube products, but they don't tend to play too well with just water as it causes too much marring. Some shampoos are a bit hit and miss too with Megs bars, some seem to react with the clay which then deteriorates the integrity, but others were fine. Unfortunately it's been so long since I've used a clay bar I can't remember which shampoos should be avoided. But to answer your question; Luber will be fine with Megs Clay.

Poorboys Natty's paste wax. Cheaper than cheap thing and twice as good... or something. Very cheap and one one of my all time favourite waxes - here. Glaze is full of fillers, so there only reason you'd glaze after polishing would be to get a deeper, wetter finish. It doesn't add a great deal after polishing. Glazing instead of polishing, however, adds the same depth & wet finish with but also fills minor swirls giving the impression of a polished surface for a short time (until the glaze wears off). You'll always get more from a glaze if you're not polishing than you would after polishing. Polishing is best achieved with a machine polisher, but with the soft paint on the Z it's not essential to get a reasonably good finish - you'll never get as good a finish by hand, but with the right equipment and technique you can get a fair level of correction done. And you will always get a better finish polishing by hand than you would not polishing at all.

I think we have a winner. From here.

Ideally, you should clay first as it'll add a little gloss itself and also give the best surface for any LSP to bond to however, on a Z in particular, you can inflict marring with clay (either bar or cloth/mitt) so unless you're planning on polishing or using a glaze I wouldn't bother, personally. A wax isn't going to add a huge amount of gloss in itself - again, you'll want to polish to get the best gloss and then I'd recommend a coating like Gyeon CanCoat over a wax for maximum glossiness. That said FK1000P; whilst not strictly a wax, it will last a couple of months and being a sealant of sorts it'll add some gloss too. Plus is costs next to nothing for a lifetime supply, is easy to use and has a picture of a shark on the tin. What's not to like?! And just to tie it into the first sentence, I wouldn't use FK with a glaze (the solvents in FK will remove the fillers from the glaze so it's just wasting product). If you choose to clay and then glaze rather than polish, I'd recommend Poorboys Black Hole/White Diamond (it actually doesn't matter which) followed by Poorboys Natty's Blue for cheap but fantastic results, or Auto Finesse Ultra Glaze followed by Auto Finesse Desire for not-at-all-cheap but fantastic results.

The mark on the bonnet, does it catch on the nail if you run your hand over it? If so it's likely to need touching up bit otherwise a decent retailer should be able to polish it out (even an adequate one should be able to improve it hugely).

DEFCON 2/1 would be sirens going off. DEFCON 5 would be an improvement over what we have now as that would mean we're back to "normal". Just being pedantic.

. ...and lunch and dinner either side of that coffee.

Whatever the decision is, can you at least sort that orange peel out on the rear quarter panel, please? It's driving me nuts from here! I can't stand the RB kit and tend to agree with Ekona on this one, so I'd say don't do it.

Admiral Group, for example, only made £336m profit before tax on car insurance in the U.K. in 2016. Hardly worth the bother for them really...

Standard Admiral group practice.

That IS a lot of fabrication to make it fit the front wings....

It was unreasonable of the seller to charge 4x postage. It was stupid of you to accept that. Then pay for it. Then expect anything back. Your fault I'm afraid. Seller was then in the wrong to actually combine the shipping, you having paid for separate shipping, but by then you'd already agreed to pay the extortionate amount for that. Your only ground here is that you didn't get the separate postage that you paid for; you don't have a leg to stand on, on the price of the postage at all.

Conversely I've gone over a clay mitt (well, cloth) with a clay bar and it's pulled nothing else out. I've then done another section with just the clay bar and it's pulled something out so the clay mitts (well, cloths) do work. As with anything it'll depend on how well you use it and even then results may vary. Also depends on how aggressive the clay mitt/bars are comparative to each other. *In the spirit of fairness, I've also gone over clay bar with both a more aggressive and less aggressive clay bar with varied results. Unsurprisingly the more aggressive tends to pull out more than the less.

So you gave it the TLC after all this, then?

Also certain insurance companies will see this as a modification and will expect to be informed. I doubt many of the better insurers will care but some of the more mainstream ones will consider it a "colour change" and apply an inappropriate loading accordingly. I know for a fact that at least one of the more popular used insurers on here certainly will do that.

To be fair, Melbourne being a street circuit doesn't tend to lend itself to overtaking at the best of times. Not saying there will be the billed levels of overtaking but don't write it off just yet... give it another fortnight. Haven't seen the race though; Sky is still registered in Hull, the internet here is broken (f*****g Talk Talk!) so no Sky Go and I've been out all day today so not even seen the C4 highlights... which they're not replaying... and I can't even watch on catch up because the f*****g internet is broken! [/first world problems]

You need to layer it 4+ times, on a white car, side by side with a clean panel to even notice it. You won't notice anything at all on a black car.

Yes, there's a review of it somewhere on my thread, basically it didn't live up to the hype and was out-performed by everything, both more expensive and cheaper waxes.

Using this criteria, the MX5 is the definitive everything, being the answer to everything and all.

Desireable? Meh. Looks good for about the 10 minutes it lasts. Remarkably average products to be honest. There's better stuff out there for the money, but there's also worse.

I was going to raise you an RUF BTR (well you're going to pay for something that'll kill you, you might as well do it properly)... turns out even the imaginary money that I don't have isn't enough.

So, I return to my car one night to find this; Parked on the road, in a reasonably quiet street. No note was left. No signs of the offender in the vicinity. No CCTV footage. No neighbours saw or heard anything. In the cold light of day, before it went off to be fixed. One was... displeased. Miffed even. A phone call to the insurance and they made it worse... ...for a 10 days. Not only was the "courtesy" car (I think we need to discuss the definition of courtesy) a wheezy little Micra, it was a sodding automatic wheezy little Micra! I'm moaning but in truth I did appreciate not being left without at car at any point, even if it wasn't exactly an interesting temporary replacement. Bloody horrid thing to drive though. For some reason it had a rev counter on the dashboard... I still haven't worked out why you'd need, or even want, one on an auto, but it was there. Red line at 6,500 revs. Never did manage to get it above 2,500, no matter how hard I tried. Horrid little thing! Anyway today, this; Also got the front end tidied up whilst it was in, so bumper, bonnet and both front wings have been done as well. Which solves that lacquer peel issue. I have to admit my first impression is very positive. There's a bit of over-spray on the bonnet struts (both sides) and at the front of the engine bay, they've also replaced the fixtures for the arch liners at the front with shiny new bolts which may or may not bug me to replace with something more OEM at some point (but as they're under the car, they're not noticeable unless you're lying in front of the car). Nothing major though and I know they rushed the front end work a little more than the rear arch to get it back to me on my time-scale. The colour match looks to be pretty good, but I'll take a good look at that when the sun comes out again, similarly the finish looks to be pretty good too which is hopefully more an indication of their polishing skills rather than the use of filler-heavy products but again time and/or proper light will tell. Everything that hasn't been painted could do with a quick wash now (inside and out is a bit dusty) but even though the paint was baked, I'll now be letting it gas out for a couple of weeks before I consider doing any detailing on it.