It has been about 10 months since I last gave my personal car any kind of exterior detailing.
While the Opti-Coat 2.0 was still working fairly well, I felt that I had greatly improved my paint correction skills since my car was last worked on (thanks JSmooth), and as a result - I think I could get my car`s finish to a much higher level.
In addition, when the car was last coated, I only did a light polish using a very light finishing polish, so there were still defects leftover from my tunnel carwash days.
So here we go...
Tools used:
Rupes LHR21ES - correction step
Rupes LHR12E - finishing step
Rupes LHR75E - used for the correction and finishing steps on the liftgate
Rupes Swirl Finder Pen Light
Products used:
Wash: Meguiars D110 Hyper Wash
Decontamination: Meguiars C2000 Fine Grade Detailing Clay
Clay Lube: Optimum No Rinse - Diluted 1:16
Correction Step: Meguiars M100 with Meguiars DMF6 Microfiber Finishing Discs (to remove Opti-Coat 2.0 and remove most defects)
Refinement Step: Meguiars M205 with Rupes Yellow Foam Polishing Pads
Pre-Coating Wipe-down: CarPro Eraser
Paint Protection: CarPro CQuartz UK, 2014 Edition. Two coats on the roof, one coat on the rest of the car.
Note: Also wiped down the car with CarPro Reload as per the application instructions.
Here`s a picture of the paint after the compounding step.
DSC_1119 by thecritic89, on Flickr
I used light pressure, speed 3 and a total of 3 passes in approx 16"x16" sections; I think the total work time was about 2 minutes per section. There`s a minimal amount of DA haze and some light to moderate micro-marring from the Meguiars microfiber finishing disc. I was getting 90% + correction with this combo and approach.
(For what it`s worth, I later used M100 with the new-style Meguiars MF Finishing Discs and found that there`s almost zero micro marring using the same approach, hmm...)
I did not take any additional pictures during the correction process, but I should mention that I tested multiple combos for the finishing step. HD Adapt wasn`t working too well with the heat and humidity, but M205 was. This is somewhat unfortunate since Adapt finished out a hair better than 205, but we`re splitting hairs here.
Anyway, here are some final pictures. My photography skills really do not capture the gloss and darkening effect that CQuartz UK added to the finish:
DSC_1141 by thecritic89, on Flickr
DSC_1139 by thecritic89, on Flickr
DSC_1147 by thecritic89, on Flickr
DSC_1142 by thecritic89, on Flickr
DSC_1127 by thecritic89, on Flickr
DSC_1131 by thecritic89, on Flickr
- Critic
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