ilogikal1

Polish is an abrasive compound, it's purpose is to remove a small amount of top coat to level it out with the valleys of swirl mark and scratches and taking the top coat down to that lower level resulting in smooth, shiny paintwork- essentially it's a liquid, fine grade sand paper as so one recently described it. Glaze is a broad term these days, blurred by many "all in one" type products and hybrids but for the purposes I intended contains only chemical cleaners, fillers and no abrasives - in essence it adds shininess by filling the valleys, bringing them up to the level of the surrounding top coat, leaving shiny, smooth paint. Fillers are only temporary though, they need to be sealed in with either wax or sealant on top, however you can glaze as often as you like with the only damage being to your wallet, whereas you only have a finite amount of top coat to remove by polishing. If your paintwork is already in pretty good condition then I'd recommend either Poorboys Black Hole ("for dark cars"*)/White Diamond ("for light cars"*) at £14 a bottle or Auto Finesse Ultra Glaze for £13. Poorboys is easier to use as it can be used in direct sunlight, but they're all just wipe on, allow to cure, buff off (like wax). *It really makes no difference at all what colour the car is, but; marketing! And before anyone asks, if your paintwork is more heavily swirled, there's very little better at filling than 50Cal Cover Up Glaze, especially if applied by machine.

Also to answer your first question, OP, is it worth polishing by hand? That'll depend on a millionty things; how long is a piece of string? What polish did you use? What pad did you use? How long did you work the polish? How bad was the paintwork beforehand? How bad is the paintwork afterwards? Polishing by hand is hard work. For a quicker, easier but a more temporary solution consider a glaze instead.

This. Also, for tar spots use a tar remover and not clay, for fallout use a fallout remover and not clay. Clay will only sheer off the top level of anything above the surface, also the last thing you want to do is drag lumps of tar and shards of iron across the paintwork in the face the clay. This applies to both bars and mitts.

Well at least you broke it properly! Go on, treat yourself.

Between us lot on here, I reckon we can get him through that in a couple of months. P.S. This is the drying towel to have. Although I still prefer using a DI vessel and just going for a beer instead of drying.

Sonax equivalent - not used it myself so I can't guarantee it'll be as good as Einzett, but it's Sonax so it's probably a fair assumption to make - and other, potentially cheaper retailers are available.

As if I would ever do that...

That's the brake disc bell. They do that. It's only surface rust, so you can, 1) live with it without any issues or, 2) paint it and make it look prettier... until you change the discs at least.

Yep, way too much wax going on there - you'll need no about 2 pea sized drops per roof sized panel, perhaps 3 for a door sized panel. Ultimate Wax buffs straight off too, it shouldn't be left to cure first as it then becomes much more difficult to remove, so working on smaller sections at a time and buffing before moving onto the next is the best way to use it. Regarding the water streaks, get yourself a decent quick detailer ("Ultimate Quik Detailer" if you want to stick with Megs), give the car a once over with that after washing instead of waxing - you shouldn't need to wax more than once other month - and that should be enough to remove any water marks from washing. A QD is much easier to use; spray on (sparingly!), wipe, buff - nothing strenuous at all. The knack to getting a great finish is learning to use as little product as you possibly can to cover the car.

If your arms hurt applying a wax by hand, try moving a 2KG machine against a vertical panel at the right speed and motion whilst applying just the right amount of pressure for extended periods. Applying wax by hand shouldn't be all that strenuous (unless you're rushing round at pace), which Megs wax are you using? I suspect that Dan is spot on and you're applying too much at the moment; remember that you want as thin as layer as possible. This will help with the buffing too, but what else will help is learning when to remove the wax - you want to leave it long enough to cure but so long that it bakes on and this differs from wax to wax.

That's why I used the term "multi-fit look"

Nismo or otherwise, I still think the multi-fit look cheapens the aesthetics.

So this here Quartz wax then... It's a very easy wax to apply, it just spreads and spreads so it's very easy to get a thin, even layer but it also goes a long way so the proposed price tag (£95/pot) isn't quite as bad as it first seems. Buffing was a matter of trial and error as there was no usage guidelines included. At first I allowed it to cure fully until it passed the swipe test, about 8-10 minutes which gave me time to apply to three panels, and found it a touch grabby when breaking the cured surface but otherwise fine. After that I applied it to the next panel, allowed roughly 2 minutes to partially cure before buffing off "wet" and found it much easier to remove so I continued round the rest of the car like that - effectively applying to a single panel, dithering for another 30 seconds then buffing immediately. The finish it gives is a nice combination of the gloss from a coating and the depth from a wax, although it does lack the warmth of an outright wax. Excuse the Instagram picture, that was a quick snap on the phone but I did get the camera out after it rained some more; Because rain happened, beading happened too. Then beading porn happened. And I just really like these shots. It'll be interesting to see how this stands up in the coming months.

I'm just going to leave this here.

Stick some pictures up of the damage otherwise it's going to be difficult to advise.

Or through the roof, behind the seats à la 918. If you're going to do something ridiculous, you might as well do it properly.

You could always paint the machine to match your eyes when it arrives. Or paint your eyes to match the machine. Either way...

As Ogman says, Nissan paint is very soft - which is a bit of an advantage when it comes to correction as it requires less effort. The Polished Bliss kit is ideal for the Z's paint IMO, it's the kit I started out with (and the pads I still prefer now) so I would always recommend this kit for the Z as it comes with everything needed, which then just leaves the choice of machine. The standard DAS6 is perfectly adequate for correcting Nissan paint, however the Pro is just that little bit better all round. The additional throw on the Pro over the standard doesn't really cause too many issues with the Z's curves, but there are areas that even the standard struggles to get to (around the rear spoiler/boot lid/badge area for example). Personally, given the choice, I'd opt for the Pro (or rather the Power Plus with the PB kit) if it fits into your budget, but the standard machine is still a very good "budget" option.

I've gone off you all of a sudden.

Or, if you still want the Plus after my last post, get the machine separately and this kit. FYI, the "Power Plus Polisher" option on that kit link is the same machine as the Pro, just a different colour so it won't match your eyes (and still listed under Kestrel's old naming system). For the postage cost on the Pro from CYC, you'll get the spot pads, backing plate plus extras as well from PB (which is free postage).

The Pro has a similar motor to the Plus - from memory I think it's ~830w. Pro has the 8mm throw, the DAS6 is 6mm. They can all fit different backing plates so you can get the spot pads for each of them, but there's areas on the Z (350 at least) that are difficult to access well with the larger throw - the angles on the arches, for example, are more difficult to polish with the Plus than the standard DAS6 even with spot pads. The advantage is that the larger panels like the bonnet are quicker to tackle with the Plus because of the extended throw. If it's mainly for use on the Z, I'd suggest at least considering the Pro unless you already have a standard DAS6 or there's a particular reason you were after the Plus.

You're quite welcome, thanks for supplying the expensive product. Cheers mate. I'll be okay with avoiding raw fish (and I don't care what weeds you wrap that in, it's not food!), have you seen the property prices down there? It'll be a while before I can afford to eat anyway.

There is group buy on Detailing World (or at least there was very recently, but I think it's still open), but otherwise that's the best price I've seen for a kit with that machine. I'm assuming you're aware of the pros and cons of Plus over the cheaper Pro and/or standard DAS6?

Time for an overdue sealant update. This is likely to be the last update for a while due to large life changes (new job, starting on Monday, and relocating to London... ish.) so I'm not sure if/when I'll get the chance for much detailing sadly. The Z has been washed twice since the last update, but I've been busy... and by busy I mean lazy. Anyway, this is the third wash since that update, which consisted of a snow foam and then shampoo wash. Midway through said wash it decided to rain briefly but heavily, so I took advantage of real beads for a change. This is after the bonnet had been properly washed and rinsed. Ammo Skin; FK UPS; And Poorboys EX-P; The beading is now pretty even and showing signs of a fair amount of wear to the protection. The sheeting was a different matter though, yet again Ammo pi**ed all over the other two and is still looking good there, FK was still languishing behind EX-P but not by such a great margin this time but both are looking quite questionable at this point. The interesting thing about Ammo is that it seems to get better the more it's rinsed whilst FK remains the same throughout and EX-P seems to slow down (albeit marginally). Due to the change in my circumstances I'll be applying a layer or two of Waxaddict's new wax, Quartz, to the rest of the car - for those of you who don't get the Waxyboxes, this is a new blend that incorporates SiO2 - or to put it another way, essentially, HydrO2/Wet Coat in wax form (if I have time a review might follow). I'll probably leave the bonnet as is for now. Anyway, the point was that this is likely to mark the end of this particular test so I'm going to add my conclusions here, however I may resurrect this when I'm settled in my new surroundings. Basically, Ammo Skin has led the pack the whole way for me, it's always just (or easily at times) outperformed both EX-P and UPS in just about every way. The only direct parallel between the three is the level of self cleaning on offer, none were noticeably cleaner than the others at any given time. As time has gone on, the looks of each, which were slightly different upon application, have become closer to the point of being indistinguishable from one another now however when freshly applied I found the looks of Skin to my preference of the three - as a wax lover, it's likely to be due to the slightly more oily nature of Skin. In terms of water behaviour, Skin has consistently sheeted noticeably faster and better than both the others and the beading has, until more recently, been better throughout too. It's hard to come to any other conclusion that Ammo Skin wins this hands down, for me. Unless you factor in the cost, which muddies the water somewhat as Ammo is by far the most expensive due to the (current) lack of UK distributors. If cost is the deciding factor, both EX-P and UPS are adequate (I prefer EX-P though personally, I found it to be marginally better than the FK throughout) but if you want the better polymer sealant then you're going to have to pay for it, frankly. That is until I convince SuperStu to become a UK distributor anyway...

I've found hiding the Mrs' phone from her prevents me receiving those messages.