Nice phrase with the srawberries by the way.

Last edited by Fordboy-1984 on Wed Feb 07, 2007 8:31 am, edited 1 time in total.

hey fordboy 84,

not to piss on your strawberries, but the Mitsubishi dealership is just that, a dealership. Don't hijack Aurora 98's niche' in this website because his advise is brilliant.

So stop preaching and start reading!

PS anyone who uses REPCO cut n polish needs all the help they can get.

Thankyou exholden
I must add some new tips on this site too
Maybe ask the members what they would like to read about and learn next

I do though accept other peoples opinions as we can learn from each others experience
Someone's tried a product or technique that I may not know of.

Cut and polishes are not my personal favourites
My preference are products that do one of six things

Level, compound, polish, ultra fine polish, glaze or chemically prep paint for sealing


Cut and polish or cut and glow products usually contain fillers, can be very deep cutting and generally used with a wool pad or hard foam pad and leave holograms and or spider web marks

Washing and drying a dark car as we know is what causes the swirl marks and scratches which ruin the shine of a highly polished paint finish

To cut this down to the most absolute minimal amount, do the following

be very gentle with wash mitts and only move the mitt in a slow, back and forth motion (horizontal)
Wash the lower section of the car last and with a separate mitt.

When at commercial car washes and a real dirty or muddy car, don't do a high pressure water rinse. Instead use the soap. Some places have warm to hot high pressure soap available. And as I've mentioned before, have the water coming out of the nozzle in horizontal pattern and go from the front to the back, sliding the water along the car. Do not stand four feet away from the car and blast the water at the car. This causes impact scratches sometimes or at the very least wavey like marring and can really effect wax or sealant durability

You also save water by sliding the water or soap along the car. This means you may get away with just a one dollar soaping and same high pressure rinse.
Dry the car with microfibre only and blot dry the panels that are the most visible
Bonnet, front bumper, guards and the boot/bumper
For the rest, slowly slide a drying towel from left to the right (fold the towel once or twice) from top to bottom.
Spray any quick detailer or spray sealant onto the wet car and begin blotting it dry.

if you are going to drive the car home with it wet, choose carefully which rinse you use
I've tried spot free and high pressure and found the high pressure to not bead up as much as the spot free which means no water stains (this is on my 94 hilux not the XR)

i thaught you were gona say you were driving the xr home wet and i was thinking 'has he gone mad or what' but then i read it properly. lol

Ever wondered why a polish that someone says is killer does SFA on your car or only half as good.

Here's my reasons why

The humidity and temperature on the day it was painted, temp of the bake oven, how much prep was done, brand and paint system, colour and a few other factors

Panel shops I've spoken to recently have confirmed this.

Acrylic laquer paint finishes sometimes need different levelers, compounds, polishes and glazes than 2K baked enamel, flat acrylics, urethane's etc

Ford have used PPG 2K paints for many years and now of course the AU II to BF have improved paint finishes over the older cars. The newer paint is not sprayed on, but are painted by jets (this is what I was told) and have far less orange peel (good)

So I've used PPG 2K final glaze as the third step on all neglected falcons I've worked on.
The stuff is no longer made but works wonders, especially on ED to EF cobalt blue falcons and even series 1 AU falcons

Not sure about BA-BF but in the E series cars, all red colours had lead in them and no clearcoat.
single stage paints seem to be more porous and respond better to polishes and you can get a richer finish because they really absorb the product

Ultra gloss superpolish from germany has always amazed me on SS and clearcoated red cars but doesn't do much on clearcoated blue's and blacks

From my experience, acrylic laquer painted cars (in most cases) do not have as much wetness and oil and it's harder to get the same result or even similar one as a 2K

Certain paints are harder than others. Subaru now have 2K paints and are really wet and oily looking and very soft. This means easier to repair and enhance the paint and polishes work better with them. seem more responsive than our cars.

Another thing that works well are coloured polishes. yesterday while working on my friends repainted EF XR6 wagon, I got out a bottle of soft 99 colour evolution finishing polish
This is a japanese brand and it not only improved the look but added some more colour to the paint and highlighted the metal flake
So his cobalt blue XR will look awesome at the FPV open day.

Watch certain brands of these colour polishes as one I've used before is too aggressive and puts minor swirls back into the paint.

Also if you give your new car a polish and sealant within a month or two of getting it, it will improve it a little but if you do not do that and let it get weather beaten and the sun soak into it for two years, when it gets machine buffed (hopefully by a good operator), the paint will look heaps better than when it was new.
There is something about letting paint get hit by the sun alot and oxidise a fair bit that changes it's characteristics and what it likes

Not sure if the paint softens and becomes more porous or goes harder but it bloody works.

AU owners rejoice. Your the first of hopefully alot of car owners who will never have to keep appying oil or water based liquid or cream dressings on your rubber/urethane/plastic and vinyl trims as I've mixed up a combo of three products that I call TRIM DREAM that can be applied by rotary polisher that turns even matte trim to black. Between low and standard gloss black
Hopefully with a few more tweaks, hi gloss black

And the great thing is that it will never fade or go back to brown or grey and is totally dry. Can touch it and leaves no fingermarks

I'm still in testing stage but it will work on all AU's and should work on E series models as well.
Gotta get one to test.

Hopefully once I get a new batch of all three, I'll mix up some 125ml bottles of it and give out for free to any member

let me know how it goes on the e series, im always interested in new stuff.

Will do bud. This is very exciting
Many people told me that you could never machine polish that stuff or even unpainted plastics. Well I've proven them wrong.

Hoping to have it work on any cars trim mouldings

Heck you could probably use a random orbital or one of those cheapo buffers as long as you have 4 to 7 inch pads.
That's the only drama. Some pads are too big and some body taping may be necessary by those without the right gear to prevent burning.

PICS OF TRIM DONE

Not the best one.

 

 

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The way cars are detailed at the Dream Factory are set to change in the very near future with the introduction of colour coded paint mixed in with finishing polishes, glazes and super strong paint sealants.

Currently undergoing rigorous testing are two paint enhancing formula's. The first does not contain any sealants and is designed to create more depth, wetness, clarity and sharper reflected images
the second is the coloured polish mixed with four types of paint sealants and paint that is exactly the same as what is on the car.

I find out the paint code of the vehicle, have 100ml made up and add 25 to 50ml of it with glazes that are also sealants and four types of super strong paint sealants

Both get machine buffed on with separate pads after the swirls, scratches, haze and imperfections have been removed.

So far this has resulted in a deeper and wetter gloss, sharper reflections, reduced orange peel and the paint is burnished in which refreshens the paint with a fresh coat of colour
Basically your enhancing the paint and putting paint back on.

This should work magic on single stage paints, especially reds as they are more porous than clearcoats and the paint will be absorbed and therefore the look and colour of the paint will be far better

Plus once you have finished applying them, the paint is totally sealed and super slick which should mean totally UV proof, water spots can't etch into the paint, no oxidation, fading and easy maintenance for at least a year
Very early days yet. Just mixed my first two bottles yesterday

Just wash it. Maybe some quick detailer. that's it
Anything that sticks should wash off.
And it may not even need re doing for two years or more. We shall see

 

 

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Last edited by Aurora 98 on Fri Feb 16, 2007 1:34 pm, edited 3 times in total.

do ya recon trim dream would work on the black mouldings on my doors?? somehow i got a new scratch on the black strip on the back driver side door and the scratch is a crappy grey colour not the nice wet looking black colour it should be. well its more of a skuff mark than a scratch if ya know what i mean (not happy when i found it )

Should do it mate. The formula I've mixed has so far taken out minor scuffs and oxidation.
Even a extremely thin cut got taken out

I'll give it a go on the 8th of march when I come down your way for speedway

sounds good man. i was gona come up that way early this year to get ya to fix up that bit of oxidation but after all the frost we had down here work has been prety slow so its gona have to wait