ilogikal1

No worries mate, happy to help

More or less, yes. I'd still wax every three months personally. You'll be hard pushed to find a carnauba wax that will last 6 months. BSD you can use instead of a wax between annual major washes, although for the relative ease of applying a spray sealant like BSD I'd be looking to top up monthly with that really. QD and BSD are very different. QD's will give you 10 minutes of protection (or there abouts) whilst BSD is an outright spray sealant. QD's are designed to give quick, short term gloss on a clean car - I certainly wouldn't be using one to wash a car though.

Polishing by hand isn't going to remove much paint, but even so every three months is probably still a little too aggressive for my liking on Nissan paint - personally I polish once per year (albeit by machine) and glaze whenever it needs it in between. Shine is obtained by making the top surface as clean and flat as possible, a glaze will fill the scratches rather than correct them but at the same time won't remove any paint at all. If I were you, polishing by hand, I'd reduce that to at most twice per year and glaze every other time. With regards to claying, you don't really want to be doing this too often either and I'd always be looking to polish after claying. You'll probably find once you've done it once and you're keeping the car protected, you won't need to clay more than once a year (twice at a push) anyway though. With Dodo Juice Wax, look into either Poorboys White Diamond/Black Hole or Auto Finesse Ultra Glaze. Both work exceptionally well and also play well with waxes. When using the glaze, replace both the G3 and SRP with it - ie, wash, optional clay, glaze, wax. In order to get a proper shine, look into fallout removers (Bilt Hamber Korrosol from PB is hard to beat!) as well. A major wash would be; wash, dry, fallout remover, rinse, clay, polish, optional glaze, wax - say once/twice per year. Maintenance wash would be; wash, dry, glaze, wax. No need for wax remover, both claying and polishing will finish off anything on the surface of the paint. I wouldn't bother between claying or polishing either as you'll just be topping up any protection that remains anyway. Personally I think your biggest issue is your wash stage. If you're getting swirls and/or scratches in 3 months, that's likely to be the cause. The problem with this is that you've only got a finite amount of paint and every time you polish you're removing some more, therefore polishing less often is always best. Unless you've got a respray fund...

It does really, yes. Ultra Glaze will just wash off it's not topped with an LSP. Being an oily glaze it works best being topped with a wax, but some sealants will also work (albeit resulting in a slightly reduced durability compared to applying to bare paint). The only exception being solvent heavy sealants, as the solvents will strip the underlying glaze.

My only tip for your technique is that the pad doesn't look to be quite flat on the surface (looks like you're applying more pressure on the front of the machine than the back there), so maybe just something to be conscious of next time you're using it. I am a big fan of AF Ultra Glaze, easily one of the best glazes on the market in my opinion.

Why would you use a waterless wash after washing? That makes no sense at all. Use a proper LSP and make it worth the effort. Something like Gyeon WetCoat will add much more protection as well as being quicker than any waterless wash.

It's one of those internet myths that just refuses to die.

It depends entirely on what you're using it for/on; If you're correcting paint, a proper compound polish is always best - Scholl and Menz are both perfect for the soft Nissan paint (which ones again depend on what correction work you're trying to achieve and if you're using it by hand or machine). If you're just trying to tidy up relatively good paint, G3 will be fine. In my opinion there's better products out there (Scholl S30+, for example) but what you've got will be fine - maybe use that up first before replacing it with something else. If you're just going for shine with little-to-no need to improve the paintwork then a glaze with fillers would be best - you only have a finite amount to paint to play with after all, why remove any more than you have to? The Megs 205 you've linked to is again average, in my opinion. It'll do a job, but there's better things out there. It won't do anything different to the G3 you've already got though. In this case 205 doesn't contain any fillers but neither does it contain diminishing abrasives which makes it pretty old hat really and that little bit more difficult to use than S30+ or 85RD which I prefer. To be honest, 205 isn't different enough to what you've go to justify changing, whilst both Scholl and Menz will be that bit easier. If you're polishing by machine, there's a wealth of pad options out there to consider - happy to offer my insight but I'll wait to find out if you're machine polishing or not first. If you're polishing by hand you'll want either a Tangerine or Crimson one of these, depending on the level of correction you're aiming to achieve. To obtain shine, there's about a dozen more stages you can introduce to improve that but before I baffle you with those, what's your budget? What wax do you currently use? How much time/effort do you want to put into it? And finally, what colour is your car?

Sorry Stu but Fairy Liquid doesn't strip wax (and I still can't for the life of me figure out why anyone would use on a car); it contains surfactants designed to help dry your plates and glasses through sheeting which are left behind on the surface. This affects the water behaviour of the wax giving the appearance that it's been removed when it actually hasn't. Wash it with Fairy Liquid if you like, test the water behaviour then give it a good wash with a decent car shampoo and you'll see the surfactants have been removed again and the wax is still there. As Coldel said, it's average/adequate (at best, personally I think that's being generous...) but there's plenty of other products out there that are infinitely better.

No point, tbh. What they clay doesn't remove (and it should remove the wax) the polish (G3) will finish off for you so there's no need to add another product to the process. But do replace your Autoglym "polish" with something decent though, like the aforementioned Car Chem Pre Wax Cleaner.

I must have used a pre-production version then. Fairly sure it was from Waxybox.

Hellshine Pain is a pretty good glass cleaner. FAB isn't bad, but I've not found it to be any better than a few others so it doesn't really stand out to me. And it's bright pink and smells of strawberries On the topic of shampoos, suds are a personal thing (I prefer enough to show there's some shampoo in the water at least) but they do nothing to aid the performance of a shampoo. It's all psychological because that's what we've been taught to expect from shampoos.

All three share the top spot, differentiated only by cost really. They are Avalanche, Bilt Hamber Auto Foam and Car Chem Snow Foam. I find these three nothing but excellent every time I use them.

I bloody love the stuff, tbh. But I meant from an ease of use perspective in particular, clean and protect in one is that one step easier than clean then protect with WetCoat. But then, as you know, I bloody love WetCoat too.

Look at my face. Do I look smug? I feel smug. Ironically "Coincidentally" the one, lone product of theirs I don't hate is the one that isn't a bright colour, nor is it particularly cheap either. (not ironically, that's very much the wrong word!)

...Except Bathe+.

If you're topping up Bathe+ on a weekly basis you won't need anything else at all. These spray on rinse off products are essentially the same basis for Bathe+ just by a different delivery method. You could probably get away with using Bathe+ on a monthly basis with little detrimental effect so there's no need for another product as well.

Luckily there's always some smarta*se around here to come and explain these things.

One of my top three foams. The only downside is that it's the most expensive of those three.

This is by no means a QD. Then again neither is BSD by any stretch of the marketing ploy... despite the marketing ploy. This is is no way comparable to BSD in any measure. BSD is a spray on wipe off sealant, this is Bouncers version of HydrO2, WetCoat or HydroCoat. It's designed to be a maintenance product of sorts but can be used as a stand alone sealant. It's nano based rather than polymer based that BSD. Even if it wasn't as good as the other three mentioned, this will always urinate all over BSD in every way, every day of the week.

You can hardly blame people for being a little sceptical, given how Admiral in particular historically go to whole new levels (an impressive achievement in the insurance industry!) to increase premiums to the benefit of their bottom line.

From that picture I'd be more concerned by my noggin, but I get your point. It's probably not the safest thing to do but if you're upside down it's probably more of a natural instinct thing... I'll concentrate more on not going upside down that where to put my hands if I do though.

I don't know, bracing yourself against a solid, non-moving, surface that's incredibly unlikely to break seems quite sensible to me.

Ask and ye shall receive. It's actually no more advanced to the chemicals found in Fairy Liquid, which is at £12 cheaper for the bottle... (which is also the stuff that'll get [wrongly] recommended to strip off old LSPs too by the way). As Ricey says, the surfactants merely facilitate the loosening of dirt making it easier to remove. Except you're still left with the task of physically removing that looser dirt. It's a similar theory (although different execution) to pre-washing, except with pre-washing you tend to rinse off rather than wipe off so that loose dirt is washed away with the water rather than (ideally) lifted off with a cloth. ONR is one of those products where people who like it swear by it and claim anyone who doesn't get along with it isn't using it "properly". As Ricey says, fillers masks a lot of the sins inflicted, at least for a short time. If you do a test make sure you check before and after doing an IPA wipedown after the test to check for those fillers. As with anything detailing, there's a technique to getting the best out waterless washes in general; that technique seems to be to use a lot of product, a fresh microfibre cloth every 2 inches and apply no pressure at all. Preferably on a clean car. That's white or silver. With hard paint. And a bad light source. For the record I've tried ONR and a few other waterless washes in the past and put it this way; I don't have the option of washing the Z with water where I currently live so it's not been clean in months. I'd rather live with a filthy car than not wash it properly.