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Over the weekend we had a few members from Corvettes of Temecula Valley stop by to join in with our typical mix of forum members who want to learn how to properly take care of their cars. Of course, we figured odds were likely that we would have a Corvette as our demo car for the day, and we were right - in this case, a 2002 black convertible that is regularly parked under a car port with solar panels on top. These panels collect a lot of dust and fallout during the day, and when the dew settles on them it eventually reaches a critical mass, dripping off the panels and down onto the body of the Vette. But that means it takes all the fallout with it, and then evaporates off the surface of the Vette, leaving all that crud behind. As if that weren't bad enough, the car has also collected up a bunch of swirls over the years, so it was in desperate need of some TLC.
Look at all that water spotting!!!!
And the swirls!!
You need good light to see the defects, so don't try to evaluate the finish when the car is totally shaded, or late in the day with the sun very low in the sky. A good swirl finder light or direct sunlight will do wonders for revealing all the below surface defects you want to remove.
We also noticed that the paint was a bit rough to the touch, so we clayed the finish before doing any correction of the below surface defects.
As we always do in these classes, we demonstrated proper technique for hand application of Ultimate Compound, Ultimate Polish, and Ultimate Wax. Here we're applying Ultimate Compound with a foam pad. Look at how the hand is holding the pad - flat across the length of the fingers, which is how you want to apply a paint cleaner so as to avoid pressure points from your fingertips.
This was an intentional demonstration of how NOT to hold the pad while working with a paint cleaner. Since defect removal requires some fairly serious elbow grease, if you hold the pad like this you'll create pressure points with your fingertips and that can lead to some pretty serious marring of the paint. So keep your fingers flat against that pad, like in the image above, not with your fingertips like in the image below.
After Ultimate Compound, we move on to Ultimate Polish and then finish with Ultimate Wax.
On the other side we use the same three products, but we apply with the G110v2 buffer.
The top half is full of swirls since we haven't done anything to it. The bottom half is after a single round of the Ultimate trio. It's a huge improvement but it isn't "perfect". There is some noticeable pitting in this paint, and that is caused by the front of the car being sort of sand blasted over the years (remember, this is a 10 year old car!) and those tiny pits are all but impossible to fully remove. Still, we knew things could be a bit better than this, and since people were curious about the DA Microfiber System, we gave that a go to see how it worked on this paint.
As a final full process, we determined that the best finish on this car was going to come from using the DA Microfiber System for the heavy defect correction, but then switching over to Ultimate Polish on a foam pad before applying the Ultimate Wax. We certainly could have done it all with Ultimate Compound, but the paint was hard enough, and the swirls bad enough, that the DAMF system was just faster. But it still left a bit of haze, which Ultimate Compound did not, and so the recommendation to follow with UP on foam before waxing.
As we always do, we let some of the attendees have a go with the buffer. Thanks to Tom for being so open and letting others spend a bit of time working on his car!
When we were finished with the hood, we had restored it to a deep, wet shine. Everyone was pleasantly surprised that we could make it look that much better - several people commented that they figured we could improve it to some degree, but they sure didn't expect this!
Look at all that water spotting!!!!
And the swirls!!
You need good light to see the defects, so don't try to evaluate the finish when the car is totally shaded, or late in the day with the sun very low in the sky. A good swirl finder light or direct sunlight will do wonders for revealing all the below surface defects you want to remove.
We also noticed that the paint was a bit rough to the touch, so we clayed the finish before doing any correction of the below surface defects.
As we always do in these classes, we demonstrated proper technique for hand application of Ultimate Compound, Ultimate Polish, and Ultimate Wax. Here we're applying Ultimate Compound with a foam pad. Look at how the hand is holding the pad - flat across the length of the fingers, which is how you want to apply a paint cleaner so as to avoid pressure points from your fingertips.
This was an intentional demonstration of how NOT to hold the pad while working with a paint cleaner. Since defect removal requires some fairly serious elbow grease, if you hold the pad like this you'll create pressure points with your fingertips and that can lead to some pretty serious marring of the paint. So keep your fingers flat against that pad, like in the image above, not with your fingertips like in the image below.
After Ultimate Compound, we move on to Ultimate Polish and then finish with Ultimate Wax.
On the other side we use the same three products, but we apply with the G110v2 buffer.
The top half is full of swirls since we haven't done anything to it. The bottom half is after a single round of the Ultimate trio. It's a huge improvement but it isn't "perfect". There is some noticeable pitting in this paint, and that is caused by the front of the car being sort of sand blasted over the years (remember, this is a 10 year old car!) and those tiny pits are all but impossible to fully remove. Still, we knew things could be a bit better than this, and since people were curious about the DA Microfiber System, we gave that a go to see how it worked on this paint.
As a final full process, we determined that the best finish on this car was going to come from using the DA Microfiber System for the heavy defect correction, but then switching over to Ultimate Polish on a foam pad before applying the Ultimate Wax. We certainly could have done it all with Ultimate Compound, but the paint was hard enough, and the swirls bad enough, that the DAMF system was just faster. But it still left a bit of haze, which Ultimate Compound did not, and so the recommendation to follow with UP on foam before waxing.
As we always do, we let some of the attendees have a go with the buffer. Thanks to Tom for being so open and letting others spend a bit of time working on his car!
When we were finished with the hood, we had restored it to a deep, wet shine. Everyone was pleasantly surprised that we could make it look that much better - several people commented that they figured we could improve it to some degree, but they sure didn't expect this!
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