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How to apply a very thin coat of wax with a Dual Action Polisher
This write up originally appeared in a thread about the Thursday Night Open Garage session where this experiment took place. But not everyone reads the TNOG Images threads so we're duplicating this in the How-To section for better exposure.
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.
We used a small bottle available at WalMart, Target and the like in order to measure our wax usage. Application was with a W9207 Soft Buff 2.0 Finishing Pad (7" diameter, flat face) on a G110v2 at speed setting 3. The wax was NXT Generation Tech Wax 2.0. The car in question is a 1999 (4th Generation) Chevrolet Camaro. Obviously something as small as a Mazda Miata will require a little less wax than this, while a Chrysler 300C will require a bit more.
Let's get started.
First we poured some NXT Generation Tech Wax 2.0 into the sample bottle, but we didn't bother filling it. We knew we wouldn't need that much.
With our sample bottle holding more than enough product, we poured a bit of NXT 2.0 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. As we did previously, 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 went back over a bit of the door just to ensure complete coverage - no extra product was added at this point, however.
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 usable 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!". In all seriousness, using the least amount of wax to get the job done is all you really need to use. 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, is more difficult to remove and is simply a waste of product.
This write up originally appeared in a thread about the Thursday Night Open Garage session where this experiment took place. But not everyone reads the TNOG Images threads so we're duplicating this in the How-To section for better exposure.
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.
We used a small bottle available at WalMart, Target and the like in order to measure our wax usage. Application was with a W9207 Soft Buff 2.0 Finishing Pad (7" diameter, flat face) on a G110v2 at speed setting 3. The wax was NXT Generation Tech Wax 2.0. The car in question is a 1999 (4th Generation) Chevrolet Camaro. Obviously something as small as a Mazda Miata will require a little less wax than this, while a Chrysler 300C will require a bit more.
Let's get started.
First we poured some NXT Generation Tech Wax 2.0 into the sample bottle, but we didn't bother filling it. We knew we wouldn't need that much.
With our sample bottle holding more than enough product, we poured a bit of NXT 2.0 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. As we did previously, 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 went back over a bit of the door just to ensure complete coverage - no extra product was added at this point, however.
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 usable 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!". In all seriousness, using the least amount of wax to get the job done is all you really need to use. 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, is more difficult to remove and is simply a waste of product.
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