Meguiar's Online Detail Day at Meguiar's

[Mike Phillips]

Meguiar's would like to extend a very warm welcome to the members of our online forum!








And the class begins!

Mike

[clsc510]

so the only day i get to sleep in and not have to drive in traffic or go to work and stare at numbers for 10 hrs straight, i find myself to a "rude awakening" by the alarm clock at 6:45 AM....on a sat morning...

My friend(mmgrad) had convinced ME to attend a Meguiar's Detail Day, and i needed to wake up early enough to wash my car before heading out....arggggggggg.

detail day?? ... do i really need to take a class for this?? can't i just slap on some wax, come back in 5 min and wipe it off??? (...don't get mad just yet!)

that was my thought at 7AM this morning...well, that's how i perceived detailing for the past 24 yrs of my life....

at 12:30PM as i was eating my free pizza and watching mike "the magician"
work his magic on a red viper....thoughts running through my head (other than that the pizza was kinda dry ) was:

"damn!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! never knew so much science and art went into detailing a car! i never knew those kinds of scratches can be taken out by detailing a car!....(*shake head*) damn!!!!!"

anywayz ...to make a long story short....I learned so much today!!! Unfortunately, I wasn't able to stay long enough to work on my own car or on anyone else's, b/c i needed to move out of my apt today...but just by watching Mike work on the Viper and listening to his advice....i think i learned more in 2 hrs than in a whole semester in college!

haha...ok...that may not be the case...i learned more in 4 mo. of college!! but, i did learn a great deal about how to take care of my car and what to and NOT to do!

i would have never known that using a rotary buffer can damage your paint! I never knew that there were so many steps involved. I, much like 98% of the world -- just slapped on turtle wax and wipeD it off ...

BUT NOT ANY MORE!!!

I tried to put all this down in the feedback sheet Mike, but I tend to go on and on and not BE able to get my point across (as you can see here...that is if you get this far down to reading!)...and I ran out of space....

So if your execS tell you otherwise...just tell them to read this thread and know that you have successfully converted a fool into a much more informed and intelligent consumer when in comes to car care, what products to use (Meguiar's of course), and how to do it the right way!

I can honestly say that now that i have a better understanding of how to better take care of the paint on my car, I won't be as perplexed and look like an idiot, when standing infront of all those car care products at PEPBOYs (pretending to look like I know what tha heck I'm doing there)! Lastly, now that I know how to make my car look better and maintain it that way, I'll probably enjoy my ride even more!!!!

THANX!!!!!!


BY THE WAY, YOU CAN SEE MY CAR IN THAT FIRST PHOTO!!! ITS THE MERCEDES PARKED ALL THE WAY AT THE END NEXT TO THE SUV AND THE TRASH CAN!

[Mike Phillips]

Originally posted by clsc510
So the only day I get to sleep in and not have to drive in traffic or go to work and stare at numbers for 10 hrs straight, I find myself to a "rude awakening" by the alarm clock at 6:45 AM.... on a Saturday morning...

Hi Chris,

Thank you for the kind comments and everyone here at Meguiar’s appreciates you and all the rest of the members from Meguiar’s Online that gave up your Saturday to attend this event. Especially all of those that drove from as far away as San Diego. I would also like to offer a special thank you to Joe, (Superior Shine), and Brian, (SqkyKln), for not attending the event, but for sharing their expertise with their fellow Meguiar’s Online members. Thank you Joe and Brian!

Here’s a picture of our members seated in the classroom,



After the classroom session, the first order of business was a demonstration on how to remove swirls and scratches from the hood of Carl's Viper and restore a show car shine.

Before the demonstration, everyone is invited to first inspect the finish in full sun to see the true condition of the paint.



Here's how the finish looked before using Meguiar's products. The brilliant white area in the middle of the hood is the reflection of the Sun, the scratches surrounding the sun are called cobweb-effect



Next, we pulled the Viper back into the Training Garage,






Then we taped off the passengers side of the hood and I did my best to explain the relationship between paint hardness and the products and procedures required to remove swirls and scratches.



Next was an explanation of how the rotary buffer direct drive rotation action can be used in your favor to pick up a strip of product without splattering your product all over the place. This technique is also demonstrated in Meguiar's "How to remove paint defects"



Meguiar's teaches the philosophy of,

"Use the least aggressive product to get the job done"

In this case, we tried the G-100a with some #83 Dual Action Cleaner Polish on a W-8006 foam polishing pad but found it was not aggressive enough as the paint on this Viper was extremely hard.

So the next most aggressive step was to substitute the rotary buffer for the G-100, but keep the pad and the chemical the same. This changed the procedure from using a machine that oscillates, to a machine that rotates. The rotating action of the rotary buffer is dramatically more aggressive than the oscillating action of the G-100.



We tested a section with the above #83/W-8006/Rotary Buffer combination and then inspected the results and discovered that this combination was still not aggressive enough to remove the scratches and swirls. The next level of more aggressive products meant to substitute the Meguiar's W-7006 foam cutting pad for the W-8006 polishing pad, and Meguiar’s #84 Compound Power Cleaner for the #83 Dual Action cleaner Polish and then try a test section again.



After compounding the entire hood evenly and removing the remaining residue for the process, we were then able to closely inspect the finish. Here I'm showing the owner some of the deeper scratches that were left in the finish. The compounding process removed about 95% of the surface scratches and only the deepest scratches were left behind. Before compounding the finish, these deeper scratches were hard to distinguish, that's because they were surrounded by hundreds of thousands of finer scratches. After compounding the finish and removing all of the fine scratches, the deeper scratches will stand out and be much more noticeable.



While it's possible to often times completely remove a scratch, it is better in some situations to improve the scratch to the point that it's harder to see. The reason for this is because removing a scratch means removing paint in an effort to flatten, or level out the surface. Of course the problem with this is you only have so much film-build to work with and because all of the UV Protection in the clear layer of paint, you don't want to remove too much. So after conferring with Carl it was decided to stop at that point.

After compounding and inspecting the results, we then re-buffed the entire area using the W-8006 foam polishing pad and the #83 DACP to remove any haze from the compounding step and to restore a crystal clear finish. As an extra step, to insure any and all swirls were removed, we then used the G-100 with the #83 and the W-8006 foam pad to polish the finish. After that, one coat of Meguiar's NXT Generation Tech Wax was applied, allowed to dry for 10-15 minutes and then removed. We then backed the Viper out into the sun so that everyone could inspect the results.



Here's a shot of the hood of the Viper, the left side is the before side, the right side is the after side.



Here's a close up with the sun on the demarcation line,



The below photo is what is called a Raw photo. It is an actual size, un touched section cropped out of the original.



After everyone had a chance to inspect the results, we drove the Viper back into the Training Garage and buffed out the rest of the car. We also put the owner, Carl to work!





Here is the Viper when it was all done being polished and protected with Tech Wax,





Thanks Carl for letting us work on your Viper!

(More pictures of forum members working on their cars to come soon)

[Tim Lingor]

Hey Mike,

Wow!! What a gloss on that Viper!!

No one does it better than you Mike!!! Great job Buddy!

I wish I could have attended the event as I would have enjoyed putting faces to all of the names of the various members of MOL!! Maybe next time, if my work schedule permits!!


Cheers!
Tim

[2000]

wish I could of made it....a bit to far to drive.

[Mosca]

With a little more lead time, I'll be at an event next year.


Tom

[Rockpick]

Looks like it was a killer class Mike! Glad so many of our fine members made it out there!

RP

[Superior Shine]

Mike,

What a better way to spend the weekend than to be surrounded by people that are as passionate about their vehicles as we are.

I would do it again in a heart beat.

I had a great time ( and a little TOO much pizza!!!!!!!!!!)

[TwoTooBlack]

I was one of the lucky few who got to attend. I have never used ( or seen used) a PC, but ordered mine before I left. My 17 year old son went with me and we are both anxiously awaiting the arrival of our Meg's box this week. Actually going and watching has given us the confidence to take the next big step in detailing: PC+DACP. ScrachX by hand took out the worst swirls on my wife's BMW, but in the sun it still looks much like Carl's Viper. Once the PC arrives, I'll try to post some before and after shots so those who are still PC virgins can get an idea of how a first timer did.

A big, major THANK YOU to Mike and Meguiars for such a FANTASTIC, CUSTOMER ORIENTED, FREE EVENT! There just aren't a lot of companies these days that care that much about their customers. Customer loyalty builds brand loyalty. . . now where's that UPS guy?!

[EVO8]

This message is a little late, but I finally took pictures of my Evo almost two months after the online detail day. Still, I like to thank Mike Phillips for letting us use any Meguiars product we wanted to on that day. After two months, I gotta say our car still looks pretty good considering we did everything by hand on that day. Some people took just too long using the orbital buffers!!!

One coat of NXT