Tempted to try another Wax....Collinite or other? For coming winter long protection.

[ShawnF350]

Trying to stay up until 3 am or later tonight, so I washed the Merc Marquis and covered it with FK1000p.
Wife may find me sleeping on the garage floor.

I`m working Sat and Sunday night 5PM-5AM for the Pope Visit so trying to prep for it so I`m not tired.
Will get some photos tomorrow.

[boxingfan30]

Cool man, I`m gonna post a review on the dodo juice nano wax soon, I just have to get my garage back in good condition...we thought we were going to move so a lot of stuff was out there

[ShawnF350]

Accumulator, my neighbor likes the FK on his Silver Mercedes.
The other one has a 2016 Mazda 6 ..I believe is Deep Crystal Blue. .
He says it looked glossier before the FK and his Mercedes friend agreed. I only saw the car one other time so don`t know the difference. Guess it might be the color he has.
He`s not into taking care of his vehicles much so FK will help when he keeps going to the car wash. I`ll try to get a photo of it next week to post .

Also do you feel FK should have multiple coats or will one be sufficient to get me thru winter? I`ll be using some quick detailer after washing until it`s freezing out.

[boxingfan30]

I would say if he wasn`t to into taking care of his car, it likely looked glossier because at that time the paint might have been in better shape. I feel like with doing this over the last 20 years off and on that I have an eye to be able to see SOME differenceswith different products, but to a completely untrained eye, it would be next to impossible. The differences are also so miniscule that even trained eyes are fooled quite often as well.

[Accumulator]

Accumulator, my neighbor likes the FK on his Silver Mercedes.
The other one has a 2016 Mazda 6 ..I believe is Deep Crystal Blue. .
He says it looked glossier before the FK and his Mercedes friend agreed...

Huh, that`s a funny one...never heard of that happening before. No idea what could be going on but if people say they see that then I`m not gonna question `em.

Also do you feel FK should have multiple coats or will one be sufficient to get me thru winter? I`ll be using some quick detailer after washing until it`s freezing out.

I`d put another coat, or even two on there before winter gets going. Good as it is (IMO) one coat isn`t enough IME. Two is usually sufficient but three is better. Just gotta wait a bit between them lest you risk the pseudo-holograms (which sure don`t *always* happen, so.. "do you feel lucky?" and all that).

[ShawnF350]

Hadn`t had time to post this....
Here`s my 98 Grand Marquis.
Not bad for a $900 car and some FK1000P

[RPPM]

Looks fantastic!

[Broceratops]

Use 476s. It is a pain to buff off but do two or three very very very thin coats and DO NOT get more than one panel ahead! I do the hood, move to the drivers fender, go back and wipe off the hood, wax drivers door and A Pillar, go back and wipe the fender...etc. IMO if you aren`t using a coating; Modesta, Cquartz, Gtechniq, Opticoat and so on, you should be using 476s for winter. I live in Michigan so winter for me is different than it is for a lot of southern guys obviously. If i lived somewhere that never saw snow I probably wouldn`t use 476s.

[edb]

My tin of fk1000p is schedueled to arrive tuesday. I`m excited to try it out. Accumulator you have advocated 2 to 3 coats for winter use in this thread with enough time in between coats to avoid pseudo holograms. But, i didn`t see a post how long, long enough is? (I may have missed it, and if so i apologize. ) Thanks for the help.

[skibik]

From a few years ago, if memory serves correct, the guru from FK said that there really was no need to wait between coats. The solvents supposedly flash off during the cure time and no need to wait between coats. I normally would apply either in the morning then wait about 4 to 6 hours and then another coat or I would apply a day apart. This year I only went with one coat. I have been using it the last 3 winters on my Camaro and it seems to last through our salty winters. I still notice it working decent after 5 months of cold. Car gets washed on the average in the winter once every 2 weeks at a touchless carwash if it is not sub-zero out.

For those that wonder about the "high temp wax" term, again from what I read, this stuff was actually made as a mold release wax. This slips my mind but I thought I read it supposed to stand up to 250F without degradation.

I am old school so it is hard to "put it on thin" and if you let it haze over completely when it is a little heavy it is hard to remove.

[Accumulator]

Broceratops- No way is a FK1000P user gonna switch to Collinite unless dealing with one very specific/unusual situation More likely to work out the other way IMO. Heh heh, sorry...couldn`t resist posting that as I just switched my `93 Audi (the one with *TRASHED* dark blue paint) over to the FK even though the 476S had some advantages going for it.

Thick 476S still buffs off easier than thick M16, but yeah...it`s not the *easiest* wax when you get a lot on there. Though I still just do the whole vehicle before buffing it off. But hey, not like you`re doing anything wrong by a long shot- 476S works great no matter how you do it, even W-O-W-O works fine if you don`t mind a slight drop in durability.

skibik- yeah, Ron and I went back and forth on the layering...but FWIW my concerns were based on my first-hand (and *VERY* frustrating) experience. Ron`s "eh, you should change how you wax, it`s user-error" didn`t, uhm...resonate with me. Heh heh, he also suggested I switch to cotton towels for buffing it off.

But hey, I *did* layer the stuff many times with no problems at all...worked until it didn`t. Might work fine the next 500 times, but I`m just not gonna take the chance.

I respect the [heck] out of Ron Ketcham, real fountain of knowledge to whom I owe a big debt. But his experiences/opinions/etc. and mine aren`t always identical.

And "yeah, exactly!" on the mold-release bit and the 250°F sounds right (if anything I`d think that`s a tad low). Ron told me that stuff when explaining how the late Floyd Meguiar had developed FK1000P as a competitor to his famous family`s wax products. Ol` Floyd sounded like a...uhm, interesting character.

Speaking of differing experiences, I find it interesting when people have to work to buff off kinda-thick applications of FK1000P. Maybe I`m juse used to struggling with over-applied M16 (heh heh, I can`t seem to discuss one of those products without mentioning the other!), but even when I go goofy-thick with the FK1000P and let it sit for a few hours it seems to buff off easy as can be!

edb- My usual advice is to wait until the next wash. But on my `93 Audi I just let it sit in the garage for about a week and did a second layer then. You could probably just not wait long at all and still do fine..."do you feel lucky?" and all that

ShawnF350- I liked seeing the GM! Which white is that...Performance White? Any "bad factory paint" issues with it? I like that it has the black "B" pillars (don`t overdo the polishing of those..)! And the cornering lights are a nice plus (oughta convert a set to fit my Crown Vic some day). Now (since I can`t stop spending your money) get a relayed headlight harness before your Light Conrol Module`s [crappy] foactory relays go bad and leave you without lights (or did you do an external relay on the LCM already?). The relayed harness will also *drastically* improve the headlight output too, like you wouldn`t believe until you see it.

Those cars are the [stuff] when it comes to "vehicle for the money" IMO, oughta get more appreciation than they do.

[skibik]

Accumulator- it really wasn`t too bad to take off. What I notice is that it gets grabby with the towel when you first attack it. It is not as bad as I remember trying to take off Turtle Wax hardshell in the green can back in the 70`s when I was a kid. I won`t go back to cotton towels, actually wouldn`t make sense for me since I spent a butt load on MF towels. I guess the reason I always did a 2nd coat was the insurance that everthing was coated. It is too much work and just wasn`t up to doing a 2nd coat this year. I made in with one last year so went with that again.

[ShawnF350]

@Accumulator
The car has some repaint in areas I`m guessing. According to my paint gauge. The hood and fenders were probably redone. This car had heavy swirls everywhere.
I`ve minimized them but I can actually see scratches and sanding marks under existing clear. Even on the trunk.
But no paint failing problems.
I looked into the headlights.
Wow..They run the load side of the headlamps thru the multifunction switch. (Turn signal gadget)
I`m ordering a harness today.
Even after changing the headlights with new clear lenses they are still not putting light out like I expect.
I upgraded Wagner 9007BL. The BLs are really bright in my Explorer.
Gonna see what the voltage is tonight and temp wire a new lamp socket to the battery and see how one looks compared to the other.

[Accumulator]

skibic- It occurs to me that these days I always fog the surface with by breath when buffing off the FK1000P. Wonder if that makes it even easier than I think it does, might explain why I find the stuff so easy to buff off (even when applied thickly to really trashed paint like I tried on the `93 Audi).

ShawnF350- Nice thing about white is that only Autopians will ever notice any sanding marks/etc.

Lucky you that it`s not failing, that paint is notorious for just peeling off. Eh, that might explain some of the paintwork.

Check the voltage at the headlight connection and you`ll be sold on upgrading to the relayed harness

There`s a guy at CrownVic.net who posts under BH1976. He makes a *GREAT* harness that`s not too pricey. Better than I could ever DIY and way better than the ones on Ebay. There are a few little tweaks you gotta do on certain GMs because they have sorta weird boots where the headlight connections are, have to see what you need in that regard. Nothing that`s *too* tough to sort out, but some GMs (no idea why it`s only some of `em) are just a bit more complicated in that regard than Crown Vics are.

BTW, that multifunction switch is kinda pricey! I had rapid-turn signal issues on my previous Crown Vic that ended up being caused by that (*not* by all the usual suspects I spent forever checking out).

[ShawnF350]

skibic- It occurs to me that these days I always fog the surface with by breath when buffing off the FK1000P. Wonder if that makes it even easier than I think it does, might explain why I find the stuff so easy to buff off (even when applied thickly to really trashed paint like I tried on the `93 Audi).

ShawnF350- Nice thing about white is that only Autopians will ever notice any sanding marks/etc.

Lucky you that it`s not failing, that paint is notorious for just peeling off. Eh, that might explain some of the paintwork.

Check the voltage at the headlight connection and you`ll be sold on upgrading to the relayed harness

There`s a guy at CrownVic.net who posts under BH1976. He makes a *GREAT* harness that`s not too pricey. Better than I could ever DIY and way better than the ones on Ebay. There are a few little tweaks you gotta do on certain GMs because they have sorta weird boots where the headlight connections are, have to see what you need in that regard. Nothing that`s *too* tough to sort out, but some GMs (no idea why it`s only some of `em) are just a bit more complicated in that regard than Crown Vics are.

BTW, that multifunction switch is kinda pricey! I had rapid-turn signal issues on my previous Crown Vic that ended up being caused by that (*not* by all the usual suspects I spent forever checking out).

I`m one step ahead. Already replaced the multifunction sw.
The turn signals wouldn`t cancel. That drives me crazy.
Thanks for the info. Found a Putco harness but will check into the .net one.
If you want to know how to communicate with every module in those cars without a high end scanner shoot me s PM.