All shined up for show

Jngrbrdman

New member
I hosted my 3rd Annual OCDetails show this weekend. I didn't enter my car, but I figured I should at least have it clean. :) Lots of pressure to make it perfect. If someone spots an area that I missed then I lose credibility. So I spent 10 hours on it between yesterday and this morning making it look perfect. I repainted the calipers and cleaned the inside of the rim and the wheel wells even. That was probably the longest part. The engine took longer than I expected too. All in all I think it turned out pretty good though.

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Just beautiful work!!!

Is that an engine cover that is off in the first shot and then installed in the second??
 
Better than new IMO!


Anthony, amazing work. Granted its a new car and you keep on it, it looks impeccable. I love your attention to detail in the wheel/tire/well area. So many miss that.


Good luck with the show.
 
Absolutely beautiful. What was your LSP? Did you stop at WGSealant?
I see why you had a dilema over the engine cover.
I did not know that the stock intercooler looked so.....stock.
This would make it sharp, add a little power, and make you not want to run the engine cover, hehe. Pics are from Perrins website(where I got my front mount).
 
Notice that I painted all those obnoxious yellow caps too. Those really didn't flow with my style. I like the engine cover. In fact, there are some JDM covers that clean it up even more in a couple places that I want to get. More power is not what I need right now. It is fast enough the way it is. ;)

That is 2 coats of WG on it for those pictures. I got one on yesterday and one right before I left for the show. I got about 12 hours between the layers, so hopefully that was good enough. Wolfgang isn't my winter sealant anyway and I'll be stripping it all off for my standard 4 or 5 layers of Klasse SG before winter.

If you think my engine is clean, then you should have seen the competition. The Best Engie award went to a '94 Legend with nearly 200,000 miles on it. That sucker looked like it just rolled off the showroom floor.

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Here are some other pictures of some of the cars that were entered. We had 25 or 30 cars there total. We don't advertise it much more than just on a couple local forums and by word of mouth. We have a few regulars every year but half the show is usually new people. It's always fun.
 
Oh yeah, and for what it's worth, that owner of the engine that won is a recent Pooboys convert. I'm pretty sure he told me that he used Bold 'n Bright on that engine.
 
Your engine looks great! What did you use to dress it, the tires and the wells? Also what tools did you use to dress the little hoses and reach down through the bay?

Andrew
 
I used CD2 Engine Detailer under the hood. If you spray it on the night before then by morning you have hoses that look like they were just dipped in wet paint. It is a really neat effect that gets alot of attention. :)

Thanks for not pointing out that the car is only a year old and probably should still look new anyway. :) Everybody here knows how much work it is to maintain a car. I put just as much work into maintaining this car as I did my last one. Swirls don't get any easier to stay on top of just because the car is new. The soft paint doesn't help either... I'm very happy with how this beast looks when it is all shined up though. That blue was a really good choice... I would have prefered red and almost got a TSX just for that color, but the Blue is good too.
 
Usually 3 months or so. It's not as durable as Klasse or Zaino, but it looks better than 10 coats of either. I use it for looks and don't care how long it lasts really. I don't wait for it to fall off before applying another coat anyway. I reapply it once every 8 weeks to keep it looking fresh. I polish the car two or three times a year anyway, so not enough time goes by for most of them to wear off on their own anyway.
 
The only place I can source CD2 these days is at AutoZone. Think of it as tire shine for your engine. It is usually in the degreaser aisle. You can order it online from a few places. Just look it up in Google. Usually runs about 5 bucks a can. I really like it.

I cheat on the wheel wells. I spray them down while I'm washing the car, but to get them black like that I use Eagle One Wet and a foam applicator. Tire Shine is very versitile. ;) I would imagine something like Bold N Bright would work just as well, but what is easier than spraying tire shine under there and swiping your applicator around? Eagle One Wet is something I would keep using under there even if I changed products on my tires. I've found that it doesn't attract dust and it really does keep the plastic looking good for a few weeks. I've never had any problems with this method and I've been using it on cars for several years.
 
I dress the tread when I get to shows. I think it looks nicer that way. I did the wheel wells while the wheels were off. The calipers needed to be touched up and the wheels needed to be cleaned on the inside and sealed. Besides, it is easier to detail the wheel wells without all that in the way. I might have made a swipe over the top of the tread for kicks and giggles, but I wasn't really dressing them as I knew it would be ruined as soon as I drove it. The close up of the wheel showing the nicely painted calipers and rotor with the black tire and wheel well is my favorite shot. I just wish more people would pay attention to little details like that. I think next year I'll have to put up little signs around the car pointing out the little things that you usually miss. Not that I detail like that every time I wash the car, but participants in a car show, especially inexperienced ones, should have details like that pointed out once in awhile.
 
I purchased a case of CD-2 from Midway Auto Parts online last week. Got a case for $39. My local autozone stopped carrying it in lieu of me badmouthing the new product on the block by Black Magic (which is a supposed 2-in one degreaser and dresser--doesn't work).
 
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