fiveoh

It was in the garage at about 55-60. I'll try and get another coat on tonight to see if that helps. I prepped it the same as the other pieces that came our great which is why I was so surprised. Thanks for the reply.

This ceramic trim coating made a huge streaky mess out of my rear bumper cover on my 11 mustang.  Is there anyway to get it off, or am I stuck with it looking like this for a year?  It worked good on the side trim pieces but the rear looks horrible.  I'm not sure why.  I used the same technique and cleaned it well with both rubber tire cleaner and the trim prep cleaner.  

Edit: attached some pics...  2 are what I was referring to.  1st pic is bottom side piece that I tested on with half of it coated and half not.  Last is the side rear which turned out good as well.   I'm at a loss why the rear turned out so messed up.

http://www.amazon.com/Aussie-Merino-Wool-Wash-Mitt/dp/B00IKMTXXU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1397848617&sr=8-1&keywords=merino+wool+wash+mitt

 

You can also check out some Adams dealers.  The Adams mitt and pad were nice!  Remember to clean them WELL with APC before using.  The natural oils in them KILL suds.  

 

It's the main reason why I use the synthetic pads and sold my black car for a silver one. lol 

Thanks for the link!  Do I need to clean them with APC every time, or just before the first use?

That paint is not your friend.  My wife's Mazda has similar clear coat to it, and without the use of a Merino Mitt or other high end wash media, I will get marks back in it, with even brand new, clean wash pads--11x11 or 9x9.

I had a suspicion this was the case.  Just did a little test.  Taped off a square in the driver side door that had the marks.  Washed, clayed, swirl remove, polish, and waxed this little portion.  No swirl marks left.

  I then went and washed JUST that square with a full bucket of soap/water just like I normally do.  Then I blew the panel off with a electric leaf blower and didn't touch it with the towel.  Some of the marks are already back, and yes I am 100% sure they were gone before, I took before and after pics.  UGH.

After this I went and sprayed some detail spray and used the great white MF towel on part of the spot that was still swirl free.  No swirls.  This leads me to believe it is the wash pads. 

Where can I buy a merino mitt from?  I thought adams offered one but don't see it on the site. 

I stand by my suggestion to add some RW in the soap bucket! 

when you say you are working from top to bottom, are you first doing the whole top half of the car then moving to the bottom half? Or are you cleaning top to bottom of the first panel then moving to the next panel?

Top half and then bottom half. 

It looks like you're doing it in the right order, I would only ask how many swipes you take with your pad before rinsing and starting over. I take one swipe on one side then flip and take a second, rinse, repeat.  

 

Try using waterless wash as your drying agent, and look into buying some rinseless wash and adding a little to your soap bucket.  The extra lubricity may help.  

 

What waxes are you using?  Adams? 

Chris

What do you mean by a swipe? 

I'll have to try the waterless trick, I have really hard water and heard that helps for that too. 

I use MSW when I polish 2x a year and in between use adams buttery wax(still using old formula bottle)

It is of course possible to get a daily driver 100% swirl-free, but unrealistic to maintain it as 100% swirl free since it will be driven and washed often. However, you should be using more than one wash pad in order to minimize the amount of dirt that gets put back onto the car. At least two, one for the top half down the the midpoint of the doors, one for the lower half where the majority of the dirt is. They're cheap enough that I use three.

Good to know.  I actually have an extra, so I will start using 2.  How long do you think its realistic to expect the car to stay swirl free after removing them?  I wash the car about once a week sometimes every other week. 

I've gotten halfway decent at using my DA polisher and removing swirls.  However, it seems that EVERYTIME I do this after 2-3 washes the swirls are back again.  I assume I am doing something wrong that is causing this. 

My washing technique is:

Prepare my 2 buckets with grit guards, I use an adams jumbo pad and adams car wash soap

Rinse down the car with a hose nozzle

Use a glimour foam gun w/ adams car wash soap to get a coating of foam on it

Use the jumbo wash pad on the car, working my way from the top to the bottom

Rinse with water/hose

Mist with Detail Spray

Use 2 adams MF big white drying towels

Feel free to critique/give me any tips or suggestions.  Should I get a power washer to knock off more dirt initially?

The car is a 2011 mustang gt candy red metallic.  It is my DD and gets driven 5-6 days a week.  Is it possible to have a swirl free daily driver, or should I not worry about it?

Is this stuff safe for stainless steel appliances?(serious question)

Good job Ryan, just make sure you tape off the edges of the body panels around the headlight, the paint in those areas can be real thin. As you'll be using heavy pressure on the headlight you don't want to burn through the clear coat on the edge of your hood :2thumbs:

i actually just popped the hood and left it popped but thats definately a good suggestion. I'll make sure and tape around the other edges next time.

I went ahead and gave it a shot with the PC and my big pads tonight. It would have been nice to have the smaller ones as there was a little bit I could not reach in the very corner of the light but overall good results. 2 passes with SHR and 1 pass with FMP. Love Adams stuff!

Is it possible to do headlight correction with a pc and the normal 12" pads, instead of the 4" ones? I'm assuming the 4" are easier because of the smaller size but wouldnt they both work the same?

I too washed the pads with my MF after reading that on the website. Good to know I shouldnt be. How do you people that wash the pads by hand get all the dirt stuck to them out? I try to knock it on the grit guard in the wash bucket to get it off before I wash the pad but it still seems to hold on to a lot.

Nice lightning! What all do you have done to it?

I am planning on detailing my wifes camry either this weekend or next. I washed it last weekend to see what kind of condition the paint was in. There is a dime sized rock chip on the bottom of the hood that is already rusted!(the car is a 2007) Is there anything I can do about that besides getting it repainted? I dont want it to rust below the rest of the paint.

I dont have the boars hair brush..... yet, just the fender one. Its on the list thou.

The brush is gentle or I should use it gently? Thanks for the reply.

Is the fender brush ok to use to clean machined aluminum wheels? It says safe for chrome or wire wheels on the description page but I wasn't sure about machined aluminum.

I gave in and washed it. I couldnt resist. for no rain or only rain while its in the garage tonight.

good plan... no sense in trying to clean it if its just gonna be raining all week... its just the torture of knowing your car isn't spotless... trust me, I can sympathize.

That and I think I'm turning into a hypochondriac about my car. I always think any little thing on the paint is going to eat thru my clearcoat and ruin it.

Calcium doesn't so much eat into the paint as it just deposits on the surface. Hard to say what will be in your rain water... depends entirely what kind of pollutants are tied up in your local air or the rainclouds.

 

Often times the worst contamination is from the water falling from the trees during a rain storm. The day to day dirt and pollution that gets deposited and filtered thru the leaves concentrates into some nasty stuff. Then when the rain comes along and mixes with this sludge before falling to earth it can leave some high concentrations of minerals, acids, etc all of which are bad for your paint.

 

For 'real world' demonstrations of this simply look at walls or fences that pass under large evergreen or palm tress... they tend to be stained and discolored and this would be why.

 

So... in a round about way... you have nothing to be concerned about with waiting until the weekend. The calcium is simply a deposit on the surface... it should come off with washing. If it doesn't a quick pass of polish should take care of any tough spots and then you can reapply your wax.

Good info thanks! It's forecasted to rain until the weekend so I'll just leave it till then.

This is probably a stupid question but here goes... I know water spots from local water(out of the hose or sprinkler or whatever) can leave calcium deposits etc that will eat into the paint. Does rain water do the same thing? Car got rained on yesterday at work and has dirty rain spots all over it, I wasnt sure if I should be concerned about it eating into the paint or if its fine to leave till the weekend.

Be really careful around edges, the paint can be really thin there and even a PC can burn through, it doesn't happen ofter but it can happen . If you need to get really close to an edge you should tape it up just to be safe

Good to know. Thanks. I'm assuming painters tape works best for taping?

We want pictures :banana::banana:

Heres a few I snapped this morning with the iphone(need to buy a new camera). You can kind of see in the last one the spots on the fender and a few on the edge of the hood(I need to work on going over edges more with the PC).

I didnt clay it since I did it yesterday. I used SHR with the orange pad, then fmp with white pad and then a coat of buttery wax for when I drive it tommorow. I had to start at 7:00 becuase of the heat around here so I finished up right as the sun went down. My garage lighting sucks but I can see spots on the fender(only did the hood) and none on the hood so I think it worked. :pc:Guess I'll find out tommorow in the sun. I'll be doing the rest of the car tommorow night and all day Friday. Oh and thanks to everyone that helps me and answers my threads.

Fiveoh, Where are you located in Texas?

Houston, Katy area.