marquez93

Are you sure those were scratches? Not to take away from the nice work you did, but to show up that heavy in a picture and come out so nice seems almost unbelievable. I've seen fairly often where something off the road gets flung up off the tire in a line like that, whether it be tar or something else. That's what it looks like to me, especially at the very bottom in the first picture where it's in a very irregular pattern.

I think Xpel rates them based on difficulty level on their website. I hear that some can be pretty challenging based on the bumper shape. I haven't done it, but I always thought about giving it a try. I agree that it seems fairly easy if you just keep it wet and pay attention and try to get all of the bubbles out. I know that some bubbles will even come out on their own as it dries, but I don't know how to tell what will and what won't.

I agree, nothing to be harsh about. Nice work.

Yes, you can layer those products. But you can also use Paint Sealant without starting from scratch. Sure it's ideal to use it on fresh, clean paint but you can still use it whenever you like just like all of the other products you mentioned.

Yes, you have an older formula. At most, it could have lost a bit of it's effectiveness. But if you're happy with results still, might as well use it up. Correcting polish should be more effective, but all that matters is what works for you and if you're happy with the results.

I had to go back and double check that I didn't miss it, but no, OP didn't mention anything about PPF.

It's probably either etched into the clear or tiny nicks in the clear like rock chips. Very common and can't really do anything about it. You can certainly try polishing it though, in case it is something else.

Touch up paint dries pretty quickly, so that's a bit excessive. I would wait like 30 minutes to an hour and if the paint is still there after polishing then you're good to go.

It's not unusual, especially if you've never detailed it before. And if you say it was worth it, then it was clearly time well spent. If you had rushed it, you wouldn't feel the same way.

Dual action and orbital is the same thing. Unless of course there are machines that orbit but don't rotate that I'm not aware of. Rotaries are the other type of polisher you are thinking of.

Nice work! I'm sure they'll be glad that they let you borrow their car.

I let it soak for a few minutes and then just used my wash mitt to agitate and then rinsed with the hose. I hadn't dried the car off yet anyway. It's not perfect, but it's good enough for now.

Thank you. And yeah, this was so bad I could feel the roughness through the wash mitt just gliding over it. These are shipped in like a bag that covers the whole car. I think Audi's are shipped like that also. It might actually be worse because it's not actually stuck to the paint and crap would definitely get under there.

How many of these remove all of the color from the dash at the same time? The last 2 especially seem pretty harsh.

Since there seems to be a lot of questions about whether to clay or decontaminate new paint, I wanted to share my experience with a new car. Yesterday I picked up a white 2017 Land Rover Discovery Sport for my wife. It had just come off the truck the day before and these are shipped with pretty much the entire vehicle covered. So I thought the paint would be in pretty good shape despite the fact that it had to make the journey all the way from the UK. I was going to do the baggie test after I washed it just to be sure that it was okay, but I could tell while washing that the roof especially felt very rough. Since I only had about 2 hours of daylight left, I tried to do a quick clay before applying PS. While claying, there were a lot of black specks on the paint that were not removed by the clay. So I got out my 50/50 Deep Wheel Cleaner and started to decontaminate as well. The worst areas were the roof, tailgate and fenders. I had to do multiple applications in those areas. My goal today was just to get some protection on it before we drive from Ohio to Florida for vacation next weekend. So I still kind of rushed through it and will do a more thorough job next spring. But the lesson here is that new cars will most likely need to be decontaminated and clayed. Just because the paint is new does not mean that it is in good shape.