Pictures from Thursday Night Open Garage - September 30th, 2010

[Michael Stoops]

Pictures from Thursday Night Open Garage - September 30th, 2010

This session is going to start in just a couple of hours, but we want to give you a heads up on something we're going to demonstrate tonight.



Can you guess what it is?

Yes, it's an empty bottle!!



With a capacity of just 2.4 ounces.

Can you guess what we're going to do with this?

[Bill Davidson]

Re: Pictures from Thursday Night Open Garage - September 30th, 2010

My guess: Demonstrate how many vehicles you can wax with 2.4 ounces of wax. Something like that. Perhaps correct an entire vehicle's paint with 2.4 ounces of Ultimate Compound.

[rapport25]

Re: Pictures from Thursday Night Open Garage - September 30th, 2010

Pictures from Thursday Night Open Garage - September 30th, 2010

This session is going to start in just a couple of hours, but we want to give you a heads up on something we're going to demonstrate tonight.



Can you guess what it is?

Yes, it's an empty bottle!!



With a capacity of just 2.4 ounces.

Can you guess what we're going to do with this?

Simulate scratches and swirls? Give away a free sample of a new product Meguiars are developing? mmmmmmmmmmmmmm failing that not a clue

[imacarnut]

Re: Pictures from Thursday Night Open Garage - September 30th, 2010

Can you guess what we're going to do with this?

Yes, fill it up with whatever new product it is, send it to me with instructions on how to use it.

[bmrfan]

Re: Pictures from Thursday Night Open Garage - September 30th, 2010

Why are you teasing us like that!

Can't wait to get over to Meg's..... Is it 5 o'clock yet???

[smack]

Re: Pictures from Thursday Night Open Garage - September 30th, 2010

I think I may be a little of on my guess but I would say the minimum amount of soap needed for a gallon of water.

[rapport25]

Re: Pictures from Thursday Night Open Garage - September 30th, 2010

I wish we had these nights in the uk may be in a couple of years when I start detailing full time or Meguiars in the uk gives me a job .

Friends think I already work for Meguiars with the amount of products i own

[Marc08EX]

Re: Pictures from Thursday Night Open Garage - September 30th, 2010

It's either you're going to use it for car soap measurement or like what one person said, to show how little product you use when applying a coat of wax. I do use this as a wax/sealant dispenser and I barely use 1/4 of the bottle for one whole vehicle.

[Michael Stoops]

Re: Pictures from Thursday Night Open Garage - September 30th, 2010

We had a bit of a quiet evening last night, partly due to it being late in the season and perhaps partly because it looked like it might rain. Still, we had several first timers out who were interested in learning proper use of the G110v2 D/A polisher.

A little claying to get things started.


After a little intro and instruction, Luis has a go with the tool.


A little clean up on the carbon fiber hood.


Jaime Araya, one of our local Pro Sales guys, stopped by for a little fun. What the heck, he'd only been working since 4:00AM!!!


The hood on this Camaro was pretty well beyond full repair, but the rest of the car could still be saved. We did a test spot on the door to show what could be done with it.


We had to get pretty aggressive with the Ultimate Compound and W8207 pad but it did wonders. By "pretty aggressive" we mean that we used a bit more pressure than we might normally do, and we concentrated on a very small area when correcting the paint, but we never went higher than speed 5 on the tool. The result was elimination of swirls, cobwebs, etc but the process left a bit of haze. We followed up with ColorX and everything was beautiful in the end. On the right side of this image you can see the "before" condition of the paint. On the left side, bottom half, you can see the corrected paint (a single pass of UC, W8207) but it's a bit hazy. On the left side, top half, the paint looks clear, glossy, deep and very rich - this was after a follow up with ColorX on a W9207 finishing pad.


All in all, a fun night as usual! Thanks to everyone for coming out!

[Hemin8r]

Re: Pictures from Thursday Night Open Garage - September 30th, 2010

Had a great time once again. Even though it was a low number showing up everyone kept pretty busy. Thanks Mike for a great job once again and thanks Meguiars for having TNOG.

[Michael Stoops]

Re: Pictures from Thursday Night Open Garage - September 30th, 2010

And now, that little demo we promised.



Prompted by a couple of discussions recently about application of a very thin layer of wax, and talk about the amount of product actually used, we thought we'd prove that you can indeed wax a car with just an ounce or so of product.

So, once again, here is the bottle we used to record product usage. It has a maximum capacity of 2.4 ounces.






So we poured off some NXT Generation Tech Wax 2.0, but we didn't bother filling the bottle. We knew we wouldn't need that much.





Time to get started. We poured a bit of product on the pad, distributing it over the surface.



Not a lot of product, but enough to get us started.



We covered half the hood with this first application.



2nd application of product to pad.



That pretty well finished off the hood and the entire front bumper. We also got started on the front fender with this application.



3rd application of product. This got us most of the way down one side of the car.





4th application of product.



We finished off the first side and half of the roof. This car has glass T-Tops but we waxed those anyway, just to mimic having that surface area to cover on a regular hard top vehicle.



5th application. Just a thin line of product distributed across the face of the pad.



This got the trunk, spoiler, rear bumper, other side of the roof, and a small bit of the rear quarter panel one side two covered.



6th application. You can see how thin that line of product is.



That finished off the quarter panel and most of the passenger door.



With just part of the passenger door and front fender to go, we squeezed excess product out of the pad so that we could use it to finish the car. Here the tool is switched off and the pad is very firmly pressed against the paint.



There's the product we managed to squeeze out of the pad.



And we used it to finish off the car.



We even back over a bit of the door just to ensure complete coverage.



Here's part of the door showing coverage. We went over every square inch of the car a couple of times at least, in different directions, to ensure full coverage. We didn't just give everything a quick brush with the pad just to make sure we could accomplish what we set out to do. No, we wanted to actually wax the car fully and honestly. Besides, we had too many eye witnesses. And a camera!!



This coverage on the hood is pretty indicative of how the entire car was covered.



Poor lighting here, but the spoiler and trunk are fully covered.



And here's the 2.4 once bottle showing where we started and ended.



And now for a bit of math to figure out what we used.

The useable portion of the bottle is 3.125" tall. That works out to 0.768 ounces of product per inch of bottle.

We used almost exactly 0.75" worth of product to wax this 1999 Camaro. That equates to 0.576 ounces of product.

Yep, just over half an ounce to fully wax a car that size, with a fresh W9207 finishing pad on a D/A. The whole process took about 10 minutes and after letting the wax fully dry it wiped off with almost no effort at all with a single microfiber towel.

So, are we saying you should only use half an ounce of product when waxing your car? Well, no. But to those of you who use 1/3 or 1/2 a bottle every time you wax we say "thank you!". But we also say "ease up, you really don't need to use so much!".

Remember, no matter how thick you apply a wax there is only so much that will be left behind and bond to the paint. A heavy coat just takes longer to dry and is more difficult to remove.

[Shawn T.]

Re: Pictures from Thursday Night Open Garage - September 30th, 2010

Yeah, I use about that much or maybe even less when I apply my LSP by hand.

Very informative Mike. Thanks. I have to try this using my Civic.

[rsmbturner]

Re: Pictures from Thursday Night Open Garage - September 30th, 2010

Had a great time and learned a lot in one visit.

And I was one of those eye witnesses, the car was fully waxed and looked 500% better than when it was pulled into the garage at about 5:30 last evening.

Thank you Mike and Nick for showing us several techniques through the evening. And as Arnold would say, "I'll be back...".

rsmbturner

[k3ith]

Re: Pictures from Thursday Night Open Garage - September 30th, 2010

That's amazing. I am going to have to practice to get the sort of coverage I see in these pictures with such little product. Probably try a flat pad too. Was that a 7" you were using? Also, just so I know, about how long did it take for the product to dry before you began removal?

[Michael Stoops]

Re: Pictures from Thursday Night Open Garage - September 30th, 2010

Yes, that was a fresh W9207 Soft Buff 2.0 finishing pad - 7" diameter.

We ran the tool on speed 3 and used light to moderate pressure, moving it fairly quickly over the paint but going over each area in multiple directions to ensure complete coverage.

We let the wax dry for about 20 minutes or so before wipe off, but we did use the swipe test first. Temperature and humidity will effect drying time, but a thin coat like this should dry pretty quickly. Of course, some waxes dry faster than others so take that into account as well.

In all honesty, if you pick up a little bottle like we used here and fill it up about halfway, you're still doing great even if you drain the thing to wax your car. And we'd rather see you get total, uniform coverage that way than miss something by trying to set a world's record for the least amount of wax used to cover a car! It's not like we're trying to set up some sort of challenge here!