Black Bowtie

So being honest I am a big fan of Adams products but have not had decent longevity with anything they sell. LPS, Patriot, etc.  I even had bad results with an Adams ceramic job which in my opinion was caused by improper instructions after a product change in Adams original ceramic. Actually, I was told this by customer service.
 
 It left a bad taste in my mouth for Adams protection products and I was led to another brand that was a hybrid ceramic spray wax. Was cheap, easy to apply and in my opinion worked as well as anything Adams I had used.
 
Because of my results with other brand I recommended it to a few friends.  On a whim I decided to try Graphene on my truck.  Little learning curve with it as well but in the end I got a decent coating on the truck and am very happy with it.
 
I had a little bit of the graphene left in the bottle so I thought I would do half my wifes hood with it and see how it held up over the winter. At the same time I did the other half of the hood with this other brand product.
 
Picture below. Graphene on the right, brand X on the left.  EDIT: this was after 3 hand washes with Adams shampoo!
 
I already have another ceramic kit sitting on the shelf ready to do her car when we have a free weekend.
 
Rich
 

I just want to say, so far this stuff is a huge upgrade from the standard CSC.  I spent the last few days prepping (wash,  iron decon, clay, hand polishing w/ revive) and finally applied the GCSC to my truck.   Having previously used the standard CSC in the past i was impressed.   The ease of use was great and the uv tracer additive was perfect for me as i took breaks and took my time.   I could always pull out the light and see exactly where i stopped.  I also used the tracer after applying each panel to be sure i didn't miss any spots..... and i did,  a couple times, catch some misses.   This thing looks slick man.... and being able to use it across all parts on the truck makes it great for the non pro like me lol. Here's some pics! 
 
 

Woke up to 23 degrees this morning and a couple inches of snow on the ground with a high of 33 degrees. Saturday it will be close to 60 degrees. Of course next week when i am taking vacation to deer hunt it is going to be in the 50's all week. 🤕🤕  

I always plan to correct/polish the paint when claying.

Finished my bench up.
 

People here in Iowa still without power a week later. Now with so many working from home it is hard to work when you have no power or internet. Homes and businesses destroyed and over 10 million acres of crops damaged. We had soldiers training in the shop and barely got the overhead doors shut when it hit. More destruction then any tornado has ever done in the state. 
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/08/14/iowa-derecho-deadly-storm-power-outages-national-guard/5581492002/

Practicing social distancing with my Riviera. Original paint that needs redone. Decided until I can afford to repaint it, I would make it look as best as possible. Day 1 Buffed out with 1000 grit, day 2 buffed out with 3800 grit , day 3 waxed.... Results = shiny patina

I had been delaying the inevitable for a few weeks now, since it was oppressively hot, and my car had to go in for its yearly maintenance last week, I bit the bullet and washed off all of the dust, grime, and other pollutants that had landed on the paint surface. I was planning on using WW, but I inspected the paint and found that there was just too much for the WW. 
 
I do have to say, I love using BG on the windows and lights, as it adds just a little bit extra over DS. 
 
 

It was a great show for sure, we had a lot of fun! It took a lot to make this show happen in such short notice. A big thanks goes out to Cain, Charles, and the shipping team at HQ for getting things together and shipped out asap. 

At this show we had Billy, Erin, and Joey from L&M Detail out of Illinois, Jeff, Cole, and Gavin from Speed n Shine out of Indiana, Sydney, our Event Manager, and myself. Thank you everyone for the help, and thank you to all of our amazing customers for stopping by. It was a great event and I'm fairly certain it will be added to our show schedule next year too - no promises yet though!

To my surprise the Adams gang showed up in Des Moines this past weekend at the Heartland Nationals. Stopped by the trailer and visited with Dan and several other staff members, sorry I'm terrible with names. I have asked for years for them to stop at this show, and I know with being on a holiday weekend and the week before the Columbus show it wasn't on the stop.
It was nice to finally have something happen that you look forward to every year happen with everything being cancelled this year. I have not heard what the final numbers were for the show, and know they will be down, but still was a good showing.
I picked up a few things at the trailer, again great visiting with the staff. I hope the stop at the show was worth adding the Heartland Nationals as a regular stop now. The Iowa State Fairgrounds is a great facility for this show and hope to see the Adams gang back!

Well finally got around to waxing the Denali finally, Clayed it with the medium clay bar, a light polish with some of the old finishing polish, a coat of brilliant glaze and topped with a coat of Americana wax 

🤣🤣🤣

You need to put it on your bucket list. The Iowa State Fairgrounds is 445 acres and you get a workout walking around to see all the cars. On a normal year they have about 7000 cars show up. What is nice is that it is all paved with no gravel plenty of shade trees, get tired of walking then find a place to sit by the main drag and watch the cars scoop the loop.

An orbital polisher is exactly what you WANT to use since they're "random," by definition. Rotary polishers should be avoided.
 
FWIW, my 8-year old GT500 has matte-finish vinyl stripes and I HAVE used my orbital polisher on them with no ill-effects.  The "harshest" products I used to do so were white foam pads and Fine Machine Polish (when it was available). Doing so can remove minor blemishes, stains, water spots, etc.  Generally, however, I used a combination of VRT and Matte Detailer, both hand-applied. If you haven't seen it, this video provides great insight on caring for factory vinyl stripes.
 
I've since ceramic-coated the whole car, including the stripes, making maintenance a lot simpler.

Sorry Rich, did not take any. 🤕  But you can check some out here....
https://www.fuelcurve.com/first-look-29th-heartland-nationals/

To my surprise the Adams gang showed up in Des Moines this past weekend at the Heartland Nationals. Stopped by the trailer and visited with Dan and several other staff members, sorry I'm terrible with names. I have asked for years for them to stop at this show, and I know with being on a holiday weekend and the week before the Columbus show it wasn't on the stop.
It was nice to finally have something happen that you look forward to every year happen with everything being cancelled this year. I have not heard what the final numbers were for the show, and know they will be down, but still was a good showing.
I picked up a few things at the trailer, again great visiting with the staff. I hope the stop at the show was worth adding the Heartland Nationals as a regular stop now. The Iowa State Fairgrounds is a great facility for this show and hope to see the Adams gang back!

To my surprise the Adams gang showed up in Des Moines this past weekend at the Heartland Nationals. Stopped by the trailer and visited with Dan and several other staff members, sorry I'm terrible with names. I have asked for years for them to stop at this show, and I know with being on a holiday weekend and the week before the Columbus show it wasn't on the stop.
It was nice to finally have something happen that you look forward to every year happen with everything being cancelled this year. I have not heard what the final numbers were for the show, and know they will be down, but still was a good showing.
I picked up a few things at the trailer, again great visiting with the staff. I hope the stop at the show was worth adding the Heartland Nationals as a regular stop now. The Iowa State Fairgrounds is a great facility for this show and hope to see the Adams gang back!

To my surprise the Adams gang showed up in Des Moines this past weekend at the Heartland Nationals. Stopped by the trailer and visited with Dan and several other staff members, sorry I'm terrible with names. I have asked for years for them to stop at this show, and I know with being on a holiday weekend and the week before the Columbus show it wasn't on the stop.
It was nice to finally have something happen that you look forward to every year happen with everything being cancelled this year. I have not heard what the final numbers were for the show, and know they will be down, but still was a good showing.
I picked up a few things at the trailer, again great visiting with the staff. I hope the stop at the show was worth adding the Heartland Nationals as a regular stop now. The Iowa State Fairgrounds is a great facility for this show and hope to see the Adams gang back!

To my surprise the Adams gang showed up in Des Moines this past weekend at the Heartland Nationals. Stopped by the trailer and visited with Dan and several other staff members, sorry I'm terrible with names. I have asked for years for them to stop at this show, and I know with being on a holiday weekend and the week before the Columbus show it wasn't on the stop.
It was nice to finally have something happen that you look forward to every year happen with everything being cancelled this year. I have not heard what the final numbers were for the show, and know they will be down, but still was a good showing.
I picked up a few things at the trailer, again great visiting with the staff. I hope the stop at the show was worth adding the Heartland Nationals as a regular stop now. The Iowa State Fairgrounds is a great facility for this show and hope to see the Adams gang back!

Ya, two plus hours on a Sierra Denali. I used an airbrush to apply the initial coat to ensure full coverage of all the angles. 
Second coat was just applicator on the chrome leading edges. 
Definitely took a lot of patience....

I strip washed, chemically decontaminated, clay toweled and lightly polished the SS using all Adam’s products. Today I wiped it down with Adam’s Coating Prep then coated it with Adam’s Ceramic Paint Coating. After I was done I pulled it out in the sun and saw that the hood which looked great under LED garage lights had numerous high spots only visible in the shade. I got out the Adam’s miracle product AKA Brilliant Glaze and lightly massaged the high points off. The rest of the car was fine, go figure. Tomorrow morning before I go to the office I will give it a coat of Ceramic Boost.


On a side note, I got my Adam’s shipment today. For the first time since my first order in 2009 I received damaged product. I’ll email them tomorrow for assistance. Packaging was good and intact so not sure what happened.

Did paint correction on the nice Chevy SS Intimidator Truck. Had to start with MF pad & Compound. Followed up with foam pad & Polish. Check out the before & after pics.
 
 

I just corrected & Ceramic Coated this black Buick with our  UV Ceramic Paint Coating.
With the UV tracers it makes the job so much easier. Check out the gloss, depth & shine!
 

Hey everyone! I've been working on a Corvette this past week in the evenings. It's for a friend's uncle. I think it is safe to say that in 20 years of detailing, this is the most difficult vehicle I have ever worked on. It's GM gloss black on a C5 Corvette - most will agree that this combo requires a lot of work to get right, as the clear coat is very hard and can be tough to get it to finish down just right.
 
It looks like this particular vehicle spent most of its life under a car cover, that was pulled on and off the vehicle, creating a lot of deep scratches in the process. Below are a few Before/After shots and explanations so far. Compounding is now complete, so I will move onto Polish and then our UV Ceramic Paint Coating Kit this weekend.

These first 2 pictures were how the car showed up to me, almost as if soap and water had been left to bake into the surface at some point. These pictures are AFTER washing and drying with Waterless Wash and clean waterless wash towels - it was far too cold and rainy outside to do a bucket wash, and there actually wasn't much dirt...this was all "baked in" to a degree. In other words, all of this spotting was so dried/etched into the surface that Waterless Wash did not remove it:





This was after claying the passenger-side hood, roof, front fender, door, and rear quarter with our Fine Grade Clay:


 
 
Claying did remove the majority of the streaking, spotting, and staining on the surface. In this photo, the passenger side was after clay, driver side untouched yet:


 

Here are some before/afters of Compounding different areas of the Corvette. I initially started with the Blue Microfiber Cutting Pad and blue Compound, but that combination was not strong enough to accomplish what I wanted in a time-efficient manner, so I moved up to the One Step Pad with blue Compound. For those that have not used it, the One Step Pad is a hybrid design microfiber and wool pad that has strong cutting capability:




 

The rear panel had spots of clear coat over spray in several areas, as did the lower portion of the passenger front fender. It appears these two areas and a few more appear to have been repainted at some point and not fully sanded and buffed out.
  



 

Deep vertical scratches in the passenger door from another door hitting into it. There was paint transfer too, but the clay bar took care of that:
 

 

It looks nice in this picture, but there is still significant haze in the paint when looked at under the Color Match LED Light. The White Foam Pad and Polish will take care of that though:




Stay tuned for more. I will try to update this thread throughout the weekend 

I posted the emblem a few days ago and have now completed the majority of the 1972 Datsun 240z.  The manufacture date was November 1971 and it was a bit rough to begin with.  This was the first picture once it was put in my garage and there was no doubt it was going to a bit of work to get it to an acceptable condition.  I knew going into it that there were some scratches that were not going to come out and a few other flaws that could only be solved with a repaint.  Overall, the goal was to clean it up for the owner and make it presentable so it could be put up for sale.  

 
The oxidation of the paint and many years of sitting in garage left me little doubt that it was going to be nasty details.  After the strip was, APC touch ups, a few more APC touch ups, I finally found the vehicle underneath the gunk.  To be honest, I didn't think it looked to bad once the crud was off from it. 
 

As the wife reminds me of often, I've been wrong before and this was no exception.  I did a small test area and decided that with the age and known flaws, I didn't want to go too aggressive, so I went with a Orange pad and Correcting Polish.  I knew I could get more aggressive if needed, but was more concerned about not doing any additional harm.   After all the washing, this is how the first came looked after doing the hood. 

Needless to say, I went through a few pads today and that is why it nice to a good inventory on hand.  Normally, I plan on 3 or 4 pads for a vehicle and as small as this one is, I was pretty sure 2 pads were going to be plenty, 6 pads later...   The Orange pads did was I wanted to them to and once I completed with the 240z with the Correcting Polish and Orange pads, I did only use 2 White pads with the Finishing Polish.

I had a few spots where some additional touch ups were needed so I finally got to try the new Scratch and Swirl Remover, https://adamspolishes.com/collections/exterior-polishing-liquids/products/adams-scratch-swirl-remover and it worked exceptionally well, so I also tried the new Hand Polish https://adamspolishes.com/collections/exterior-polishing-liquids/products/adam-s-revive-fine-hand-car-polish and given how much I loved Revive Hand Polish, I must say I'm real happy with the new formula.
 
 
Once the vehicle was completed, I went over it with Surface Prep to get everything off and then put down Ceramic Paste Wax on it.  While I considered doing a Ceramic Coating, I didn't think it would add to the resale value.  The owner is very happy with the results so far and hopefully the weather is be more cooperative on Friday so I get it outside and go over the tires with tire shine to get them up to the level of the rest of the vehicle.