carrya1911

After 12 hours or so just working on finish correction, I moved to the interior to clean the leather. What an unpleasant 3 hours of work THAT was. 1/2 a bottle of Adam's Leather Cleaner and several completely ruined terry towels later, (they were literally turned black by all the crud I scrubbed off the seats with a brush) the leather again looked like...well...leather. I followed up with a generous application of Adam's leather conditioner. The first pass was completely absorbed by the leather almost instantly. A couple of coats were required, but the end result looks pretty good: I can live with that. The carpet cleaned up nicely with a stiff bristled nylon brush and some carpet cleaner. Then I moved on to the engine and trunk compartments using some brushes and generous application of APC: After almost 30 hours of work, it's beginning to look presentable again. I still have work to do. As yet none of the plastic or vinyl has been treated, and the areas around the door handles and emblems need another pass with the claybar to get rid of years of accumulated crud before I can wax.

For your viewing pleasure, I present a 1998 Chrysler Concorde LXi with 34,500 miles. No, that mileage number is not a typo. I'll give you three guesses as to the demographics of the owner.... Since it was purchased in 1998 it has been washed mainly in one of the automated carwashes with the neat-o rotating brushes....when it was washed. That didn't happen too often.... Keep in mind that what you're seeing there is AFTER I washed the car....twice. Notice the lack of any apparent gloss on the finish and the numerous stains which are actually etchings from bird droppings. Apparently the birds in the area the owner lived in liked very acidic berries, and they viewed the big white car like Pollock viewed a blank canvas. ...and of course, some parts of the car never got cleaned at all by the car wash gorillas: I didn't get before pictures of the engine, as it was just too depressing. Of course, the owner just had to have leather seats: Now if you've guessed the demographics of the vehicle's owner by this point, ask yourself what sort of companion the owner is likely to have..... If you answered "yippy little dog who is allowed to roam free in the car", you win the gold star for tonight! So if you've ever wondered what happens to leather interior that is A: wiped down on rare occasion with WINDEX by the gorillas at the car wash (leather conditioner? What's that? We're car wash professionals! Not rocket scientists!) and B: exposed to a yippy little dog that drools/snots/pees on the leather, the pictures should give some indication. Frankly they don't show the true picture of how bad the leather looked. The carpet? Prolifically stained, of course. I bet you're thinking that a fellow could charge a pretty penny for cleaning up all that mess. Yes, well...the car belongs to family. Family who tried to break a jagged chunk of concrete with their face, resulting in lacerations down to the skull, fractures around the eyesocket, and a couple of broken vertebrae in th neck. ...so aside from not being a professional detailer, it's not the kind of job I would take money for. So what did I do? Well, from the start I wasn't looking for a 100% perfectly corrected, swirl-free finish. I was just hoping to make the car look...well...like something that wouldn't cause even Fred Sanford to barf at the sight. I just wanted to make the car look as good as it could look because mention was made of selling the vehicle to help pay for my relative's care. I whipped out the clay and detail spray and went to work. As you can imagine, that step took quite a bit of time as I struggled to get all that crud off of the vehicle. It was during the claying process that I rediscovered why I hate auto repair shops. The vehicle had been hit a couple of years ago while my relative was sitting still at a stoplight. The damage required a new hood, driver's door, and fiberglass nose. Apparently some stupid monkey in the shop went nuts with the spray gun, resulting in paint droplets ALL OVER the roof and trunk of the car. I won't repeat the language I used when I discovered this little tidbit of information, but suffice it to say it was salty enough to have the neighbors peeping through the curtains at me. Claying, of course, did nothing to resolve this problem (although it did return a lot of gloss to the finish just from removing all the crud accumulated on it). I couldn't even scrape off the droplets with a (carefully used) razor blade. I thought perhaps polishing would at least reduce the visibility of the spots, so I attacked the finish with the PC using Adam's orange waffle pads and some Meguiar's #83. (Why? Because I was out of SHR) I was 5 minutes into the hood polish when my pad went flying off the PC. I'm guessing this isn't normal for these pads after 2 uses: I'll have to call the customer service line at some point to have them send me some replacements. Forced to punt, I used some Meguiar's soft-buff pads I had in reserve with the #83 to attack the swirlmarks...and it did a decent job, although it was a LOT more difficult to work with than SHR. Still, the finish kind of sucked. I broke out the FMP and the white pad and made a second pass over everything. The FMP did the trick. It's tempting when you're in hour seven of a detail with only half the bloody car polished to skip a second step. Don't. Stick it out and use the FMP. It's worth it, as you can see: The spots of paint are still there, although they are less noticeable than before. Note that the pictures are just the results of the polish. I've been so busy just cleaning and correcting I haven't had time to put any wax on the vehicle. I'll put a couple of coats of MSW on the vehicle for protection. Still, the shine is pretty nice for a white car with finish that was in such bad shape.

I've experienced the same phenomenon with my orange waffle pads...only mine look a bit worse than that.

After re-working my 2007 Dodge Charger with the Adams products over the past week and finally getting my second coat of MSW on it last night...I'm sold. I'll be using Adams from now on.

I actually have two coats of MSW on the vehicle at the moment....nothing else. I'll have access to the car over the weekend again. If the weather holds up I might even add a third coat after I'm through re-working my Charger.

Well...nobody's perfect.

If it's your daily driver, trying to break it up would be a bit more difficult. The best thing to do is find a weekend when you don't have to go anywhere. When you get home from work Friday night, wash the front part of the car. Hood, front fenders, front bumper. Then carefully clay these areas. Then break out the Porter Cable and begin using the Swirl and Haze Remover on the hood. Get it exactly how you want it. Then hit it with the Fine Machine Polish. (The FMP shouldn't be skipped, as it adds considerably to the shine and depth of the finish when you are done) Then apply a coat of MSW. Depending on how bad the scratches on your vehicle are, just that section will be about a 4 hour job. A good way to kill time on a Friday night. Then on Saturday, work on the roof and doors. Sunday, the trunk and rear fenders. You can do it all in one day, but a 15 hour marathon session isn't something I find to be particularly enjoyable. I've done it several times (and I did it again this past Saturday) but generally it's not the most pleasant experience in the world. If you have a garage you're well ahead of the game, as you can work when it is dark outside or when there is bad weather. It will also keep the finish cool which will allow you to work with the products more efficiently than a hot surface will. If your finish is in pretty good shape it won't require hours of work to make one piece of sheet metal look spectacular. Generally the hood and the front bumpers get pounded the hardest from daily use. Doing the hood to your satisfaction should give you an idea of what you'll need to do on the rest of the vehicle. EDIT -- To give you some idea, this is what the rear deck-lid of the project I worked on this weekend looked like before I used the Porter Cable: I did three passes over it with SHR using fairly stiff pressure and the 6 setting, and then one pass with FMP on the 5 setting. Total time polishing was probably no more than 15 minutes. The end result was pretty good:

It's a Pentax digital SLR...I believe the K200D, but I'm not sure. I don't know beans about cameras. The lady of the house had a 35mm Pentax SLR and I bought her a digital that was compatible with the same lenses.

I applied another coat of MSW and took some shots of the car in the setting sun.... The hood: With flash: Without flash: The rear deck: The roof: So, to recap, I went from this: To this:

I did notice that, and I thought peradventure I might enter in the hopes of winning some free stuff. A personal note about myself: I'm always in favor of free stuff.

1. I'm about 95% certain that year Camaro has a clear coat on top of the base color coat. The other 5% is in case there's a REALLY weird paint option that I don't know about. Most cars made in the last 20 or more years have the same basic paint scheme: Primer, base color, clear. 2. My advice would be to watch the detailing videos found here: http://www.adamspolishes.com/t-videos.aspx If you do what is advised on those videos you'll more than likely end up with excellent results.

A fair question. The answer would be: 'Cuz that's all I got. My understanding is that the MSW is a sealer, and that there are advantages to adding a decent wax on top of the sealer once it has cured. Obviously the recommended wax would be an Adams like the Buttery wax or the new paste offering....but I don't have any of that. My interest here is trying to armor plate the clearcoat as much as possible. EDIT -- oh, as for the pictures...I'm seeing them just fine. They are from Photobucket. "I say, Madge...I think my HTML code has gone all wobbly..."

My intention is to let the MSW cure overnight and then I'll apply some NXT wax on top of it. I read on these forums that you need to let the MSW sort of "cure" because it behaves a lot like a sealer. EDIT -- Now the downside to Adams products....the reflection in that hood is now so clear that you can see how badly I need to pressure-wash the siding and replace the ties in the flowerbeds. Gak. Edit 2 -- is there any advantage to applying multiple layers of MSW?

My daily driver recently died and I had to pick up a new one. I ended up with a 2007 Dodge Charger in superb shape save for a few minor swirl-marks in the finish. No big deal, right? So I whipped out my Porter Cable and my Meguiar's polishing gear. Five hours later after having lost the buffing pad off the backer four times and seeing little improvement, I threw in the towel. Later that week I was on the Charger Forumz and I saw someone mention Adam's polishes in a discussion about finish care. "Who the heck are they?" I wondered aloud. So I googled. I looked around the Adams site for a while and then I saw the 2nd generation pad system from Adams. The improved backing plate and the design of the Adams pad caught my eye. So I says to myself, "Self", I says, "I bet that would solve the little buffing pad frisbee problem you have with your current setup." ...and that is a big deal for me. One of the issues on my Charger was the sharp corners on the hood and fenders. It's darn difficult to polish adequately there because if the bloody pad isn't making full contact with the sheet metal it starts to get off center, and then it feels like you're trying to polish with an unbalanced washing machine. The thicker, more flexible backer looked like it might be just the ticket. Intrigued, I looked around the forums for a while, trying to find out more about the pads. After a while I started to think that perhaps I should give the core lineup a try and see how they work. This was, of course, madness, as I already have a bunch of car care stuff....like several hundred dollars worth...from Meguiars that I had collected over the years. "These guys can't really be any better, can they?" Only one way to find out. I bit the bullet and placed an order for the 2nd Gen pad special, as well as one more of each pad type. In my experience 2 is one, one is none when it comes to polishing pads. I ordered the Swirl and Haze Remover and the Fine Machine Polish package. I bought some of the cookie-monster skin towels, and a bottle of All Purpose Cleaner. 200+ bucks. Ouch. (Oddly enough, with today's ammo prices this is about how much it would cost to really bite a bullet.) This week my box arrived and I had the perfect guinea pig project.... In 2005 I did a complete detail job on an Inferno red 2001 Dodge Intrepid R/T for some friends. The vehicle had been to a "detailer" who had apparently applied wax with sandpaper judging by the horrific swirlmarks cut into the finish. I re-worked the car with some Meguiars stuff and it looked 100% better...but it still wasn't up to 100%. I couldn't get out a lot of the swirls. They were just too deep for the Porter Cable to do anything with. Still, the car looked decent. Since then the car's finish had not been maintained. No wax. Rarely washed. Out in the elements 24/7, 365. The car looked its age. Nice deep scratches: Swirl marks (although nowhere near as bad as they were the first time I worked on the car...thankfully they listened to me and didn't return to that "detailer") Water spots: Etching from bird droppings: ...and all the small scratches you could ask for like these on the roof and on the rear deck lid respectively: Also notice how dull the finish appears. A badly neglected finish seemed like just the trick to find out whether or not this expensive little box was worth anything or not. So I washed and clayed with some of my Meguiars blue clay and what was left of my gallon of Final Inspection. One sweep of the clay on the hood yielded some fairly encouraging results: Of course, this was before I started claying around the wheel wells and noticed the tar that was all over the bloody place.... After claying, I began working with the Swirl and Haze Remover on the orange pad. It took several passes, a fair level of pressure, and a "6" setting on the magic dial, but eventually most of the paint defects were no longer visible. This door scratch is typical of the sort of thing I was battling against: The SHR worked very well on them: I followed up with the Fine Machine Polish on the white pad using very little pressure and the "5" setting on the magic Porter Cable dial. The end results were pretty good. Once I had the hood done I had figured out what I probably needed to try on the rest of the vehicle. I then repeated the clay/SHR/FMP routine around the vehicle, and followed it all up with the Super Machine Wax. 15 fun filled hours later... The big hood scratch was no more: The roof scratches were gone: The rear deck lid which looked horrible before started to look a bit better: The finish was darker, richer, and clearer than it had ever been: All in all, not too bad. The pics don't really do it justice because it's been cloudy all day today in my area. I've been playing peek-a-boo with thunderstorms and gale-force winds all day. Still, the sun did peek out from behind the clouds just long enough for me to catch this: I can live with that. The experience overall wasn't as big of a pain in the neck as it was the first time. The Adams pad system made life much easier on this car. These Intrepids are shaped like a jellybean that's been cut in half. There's not a single right angle or straight piece of sheet metal on the whole bloody car except for the rear deck lid. This made using the old Meguiars pad system about as pleasant as a home root canal kit. On top of that, the Dual Action Cleaner/Polish compound I was using didn't like warm weather or a warm finish...and by "didn't like" I mean it hardened into a powder that then was practically welded to the finish. It took a routine of polish a little bit, clean off the welded powder, try to polish more, stop, put the pad back on the center of the backing plate....repeated enough times to make the experience pleasant enough that if we made the Gitmo detainees do it, we would be tried for war crimes. In similar weather I found (to my VERY pleasant surprise) that the Adams stuff was much easier to work with. The SHR did create dust, but the "dust" was the result of buildup working toward the edge of the pads and then slinging off of the pad. This could be because I was just using too much product, but I had to go over several areas a bunch of times to get the results I wanted. The "dust" however, wiped right off with no fuss. When working the SHR and the FMP into the finish they remained liquid and useable...unlike the Meguiars stuff that went hard the minute they touched the finish. The sentiment that drove me to google Adams polishes in the Charger Forumz thread was that it was easy to work with even on a hot finish. Since I have no way to put a vehicle in any shade, that's another biggie for me. Working with the SHR and the FMP was easy even when the sun occasionally peaked through and heated up the finish. It was nice. I spent the better part of 10 hours polishing this vehicle and I didn't contemplate committing seppoku once during the process. That's progress. All in all, at this point I'm reasonably certain that the Adams stuff (especially the pad system) is a step forward for the Porter Cable equipped car nut.