This Miata Club has been in to our training garage several times and it's always a great session - their enthusiasm and passion is always huge!! This past weekend was no exception.
Our demo car selection for the day was Liz's limited edition, first generation Miata in a beautiful shade of burgundy, called "Merlot" by those in the know. The car is 20+ years old and is all original - this particular limited edition package actually came with these cool BBS wheels! The shot below is before we started on the car. Looks pretty good, doesn't it? Well, pictures can lie.
This is the car up close, with some light on it. Plenty of swirls, and more deeper straight line scratches than anyone wants to see. And some of these were pretty deep.
Not so pretty now, is she?
As per usual, we started off with classroom time to go over how to properly wash a car, what's involved in the various steps of cleaning the paint, compounding, polishing, etc. We dispel some myths about waxing, we help narrow down product choices, and make sure people understand which products actually do what for the finish.
Even break time is full of discussions on appearance care!
Once out in the garage we showed a couple of different washing techniques, using both Ultimate Wash & Wax Anywhere (or D115 equivalent) as a waterless wash, and D114 Rinse Free Express Wash as a rinseless wash option.
Once the loose contaminants were off the car, we inspected the finish again.
Ouch.
We clayed the car, but fortunately the level of above surface bonded contaminants was very low. After that, it was time for our first test spot on the hood. Given the amount of swirls and deeper RIDS (random, isolated deeper scratches) we opted for Ultimate Compound on a DFC5 foam cutting pad.
The obligatory "everybody feel the paint after compounding" test!!
The results from the initial test spot speak for themselves: the improvement is huge, but it needs a bit more work to make it perfect. Not a problem! If this is after the initial test spot, imagine what can happen when you spend a bit of time on it!
We did pull the car back in the garage and did a test spot with the DAMF System, but although the microfiber disc removed a slightly higher percentage of defects, it hazed the paint quite a bit whereas the foam discs left a fantastic finish right off the bat. We opted to proceed with the foam discs.
As always, when we talk about "hands on training", we really mean it!
A group shot to close the day.
Now that's a gloss you can be proud of!! Thanks to everyone for coming out and spending the better part of a beautiful Saturday with us!!
Our demo car selection for the day was Liz's limited edition, first generation Miata in a beautiful shade of burgundy, called "Merlot" by those in the know. The car is 20+ years old and is all original - this particular limited edition package actually came with these cool BBS wheels! The shot below is before we started on the car. Looks pretty good, doesn't it? Well, pictures can lie.
This is the car up close, with some light on it. Plenty of swirls, and more deeper straight line scratches than anyone wants to see. And some of these were pretty deep.
Not so pretty now, is she?
As per usual, we started off with classroom time to go over how to properly wash a car, what's involved in the various steps of cleaning the paint, compounding, polishing, etc. We dispel some myths about waxing, we help narrow down product choices, and make sure people understand which products actually do what for the finish.
Even break time is full of discussions on appearance care!
Once out in the garage we showed a couple of different washing techniques, using both Ultimate Wash & Wax Anywhere (or D115 equivalent) as a waterless wash, and D114 Rinse Free Express Wash as a rinseless wash option.
Once the loose contaminants were off the car, we inspected the finish again.
Ouch.
We clayed the car, but fortunately the level of above surface bonded contaminants was very low. After that, it was time for our first test spot on the hood. Given the amount of swirls and deeper RIDS (random, isolated deeper scratches) we opted for Ultimate Compound on a DFC5 foam cutting pad.
The obligatory "everybody feel the paint after compounding" test!!
The results from the initial test spot speak for themselves: the improvement is huge, but it needs a bit more work to make it perfect. Not a problem! If this is after the initial test spot, imagine what can happen when you spend a bit of time on it!
We did pull the car back in the garage and did a test spot with the DAMF System, but although the microfiber disc removed a slightly higher percentage of defects, it hazed the paint quite a bit whereas the foam discs left a fantastic finish right off the bat. We opted to proceed with the foam discs.
As always, when we talk about "hands on training", we really mean it!
A group shot to close the day.
Now that's a gloss you can be proud of!! Thanks to everyone for coming out and spending the better part of a beautiful Saturday with us!!
Comment