MarcHarris
New member
This took place a couple weeks back while I had a nice long weekend planned to polish out my baby during the ugly cold weather. Turns out that long weekend turned out to be hectic, so I just did the entire front end, and will do the second half come Spring / another opportunity.
with limited time to use the garage, a hectic weekend schedule (helping my sister and her husband move, girlfriend taking me to a Piston's game, studying for the 5 classes I'm taking, etc), and cold temperatures (my current weather), I wanted to get done as much as possible with what I had to work with. additionally, because I plan on keeping this car until its death, I opted out of trying to achieve 100% correction and opted for a good 95%. I didn't need to take the clear down as far, and it leaves me a lot more room for future buffing.
Products:
1000W halogen lights
extension cord for lights
Makitia 9227C
3m backing plate
heavy duty extension cord for buffer
Menzerna IP
Menzerna 106
Two bucket wash system with grit guards
ONR (1 cap-full per gallon)
lambswool mitt
chem sprayer with citrus degreaser diluted down to 1 part to 20 parts water
chem sprayer with water
blue painters tape
CG Luber
Adam's clay
CG Jetseal109
99% ISA
Eurow Shag microfiber towels
Detailers Domain Uber towels
Viking microfiber detailing towels
LC white flat pads
LC black finishing pads
wax applicators
LSP: Dodo-juice Supernatural v2.02
Too cold for hose, so I had to go the route of ONR. This is a great product that has gotten a lot of attention mainly due to it's ability to allow for washing without inducing defects in the winter, as well as being environmentally friendly (wash your car with only 5-6 gallons of water vs the usual 40+). Don't get me wrong though: I look forward to using my foam-gun come sumer time
Everything is set and ready to go!
all clayed and ready for inspection. Eurow towels were used for the ONR. I really like these for removing water/dust/quick detailer. they're very dense and thick, and the long microfiber stands absorb a lot of water. On the downside, they lint...and lint...and lint. A good prewash helps to solve that issue, but won't eliminate it. The green mf's are the Viking detailing towels i picked up on clearance for 87cents each (Thanks BigAl !); they're huge, soft, and can't be beat for the price. As things got going however, I had to switch to my "uber" towels to remove polish and wax. I thought some of the marks on my paint were do to the towels marring (the green ones), and once i switched to the ubers i no longer had this problem. Because half of my ubers are the smaller ones, I found they were much easier to work with, and their slightly longer pile made wax/polish/sealant removal a bit easier.
My paint is in much better than average condition due to the way i baby my car, but it has never been polished and under the lights it shows:
swirls and scratches from back in military when I had no place to give it a proper wash and therefor had to go to "swirl-o-matic" car washes. Very sad, but very true
time to test and see if my combo of polishes+pads will work. I didn't want to get too aggressive with the correcting as Honda's are known for their soft paint. As I've learned, always start with the least aggressive method and work your way up if you're not happy with the results.
left side done, right side untouched (this is after an IPA wipedown to insure the polishes used were not just "filling" the defects and they were in fact truly removed)
this time the top is untouched, and the bottom (hood) is complete:
with the hood done and it getting late (and cold), I called it a night. first i made sure the completed hood got it's IPA wipedown, then applied the Jetseal109 to sit overnight
The next day I began on working on the fenders and front bumper. As you can see in the picture, there are still many defects from 57k+ miles of driving to the paint. little divets, dimples, paint chips, etc were all present. With these areas getting polished however, they contained no more sharp edges so they don't stick out as bad in light.
Half the bumper done, half not:
now check out the clarity to that same front passenger fender:
with limited time to use the garage, a hectic weekend schedule (helping my sister and her husband move, girlfriend taking me to a Piston's game, studying for the 5 classes I'm taking, etc), and cold temperatures (my current weather), I wanted to get done as much as possible with what I had to work with. additionally, because I plan on keeping this car until its death, I opted out of trying to achieve 100% correction and opted for a good 95%. I didn't need to take the clear down as far, and it leaves me a lot more room for future buffing.
Products:
1000W halogen lights
extension cord for lights
Makitia 9227C
3m backing plate
heavy duty extension cord for buffer
Menzerna IP
Menzerna 106
Two bucket wash system with grit guards
ONR (1 cap-full per gallon)
lambswool mitt
chem sprayer with citrus degreaser diluted down to 1 part to 20 parts water
chem sprayer with water
blue painters tape
CG Luber
Adam's clay
CG Jetseal109
99% ISA
Eurow Shag microfiber towels
Detailers Domain Uber towels
Viking microfiber detailing towels
LC white flat pads
LC black finishing pads
wax applicators
LSP: Dodo-juice Supernatural v2.02
Too cold for hose, so I had to go the route of ONR. This is a great product that has gotten a lot of attention mainly due to it's ability to allow for washing without inducing defects in the winter, as well as being environmentally friendly (wash your car with only 5-6 gallons of water vs the usual 40+). Don't get me wrong though: I look forward to using my foam-gun come sumer time
Everything is set and ready to go!
all clayed and ready for inspection. Eurow towels were used for the ONR. I really like these for removing water/dust/quick detailer. they're very dense and thick, and the long microfiber stands absorb a lot of water. On the downside, they lint...and lint...and lint. A good prewash helps to solve that issue, but won't eliminate it. The green mf's are the Viking detailing towels i picked up on clearance for 87cents each (Thanks BigAl !); they're huge, soft, and can't be beat for the price. As things got going however, I had to switch to my "uber" towels to remove polish and wax. I thought some of the marks on my paint were do to the towels marring (the green ones), and once i switched to the ubers i no longer had this problem. Because half of my ubers are the smaller ones, I found they were much easier to work with, and their slightly longer pile made wax/polish/sealant removal a bit easier.
My paint is in much better than average condition due to the way i baby my car, but it has never been polished and under the lights it shows:
swirls and scratches from back in military when I had no place to give it a proper wash and therefor had to go to "swirl-o-matic" car washes. Very sad, but very true
time to test and see if my combo of polishes+pads will work. I didn't want to get too aggressive with the correcting as Honda's are known for their soft paint. As I've learned, always start with the least aggressive method and work your way up if you're not happy with the results.
left side done, right side untouched (this is after an IPA wipedown to insure the polishes used were not just "filling" the defects and they were in fact truly removed)
this time the top is untouched, and the bottom (hood) is complete:
with the hood done and it getting late (and cold), I called it a night. first i made sure the completed hood got it's IPA wipedown, then applied the Jetseal109 to sit overnight
The next day I began on working on the fenders and front bumper. As you can see in the picture, there are still many defects from 57k+ miles of driving to the paint. little divets, dimples, paint chips, etc were all present. With these areas getting polished however, they contained no more sharp edges so they don't stick out as bad in light.
Half the bumper done, half not:
now check out the clarity to that same front passenger fender:
)
