Well all in all things went well and I am pretty satisfied with the products I bought so far. I will have to see the wax's performance in the elements before I give it my final seal of approval though. Since I had never used a buffer EVER before, I asked the gf to let me borrow her jetta to try it out. She's been asking for me to try and get the scratches out of her trunk lid and after failing to put a dent in them by hand, I figured she'd make a good trial run.

If you look at my other thread (https://www.s2ki.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=830602), you'll see what I bought, but pics are a lot better, right? I had no idea the quality of Majestic Solution's products and really did the gullible thing and took the sale guy's word for it. Anyways, on to the story

First, got the gf's car into the wash bay. I was using Blue Coral soap and just a regular mitt to do the washing, as I do with all my cars (flame suit on).


As you can see, the scratches are pretty bad



Oh yeah...I know you love that lather job



Scratches are really bad


Other side isn't bad though, just some light swirls


Had to pull the S out of her garage Got a pic for good measure though


Pre-prep


All the products, already had the Leather cleaner, Plastx, and mf clothes


1000 cut and polish


glaze, wax, and clay lube


Shitty tape job...but hey, it was my first time


left side before claying, lube applied here...this is something I will NOT do next time. The clay lube got under the tape and I guess I should tape the car AFTER claying. Would you agree?


before shot of clay. Played with the clay till it got a little softer and folded it over a few times



After shot, not really that dirty.


Scratches


Under one of those fancy lights (jp, it's a $1.50 flashlight from Radioshack)


Other side's not bad


Yellow pad...ready for cutting polish. I didn't have any pad conditioner, so I used a LIGHT amount of water. Is that ok?




After buffing round 1, as you can see the scratches are still quite prevalent. Now keep in mind this was my very first time. I had watched the youtube videos about how to do this and the best practices. I started off by spreading the polish with the PC off. Once spread, I cut the PC down to #2 speed and made 2 passes, let me say I thought for a second I was using a freakin jackhammer and not a buffer. That thing freakin shook like hell. So I turned it up to #4 speed and worked it in for about 3 minutes, with moderate pressure, until the polish started to seem clear and powdery. I wiped it all up with a microfiber cloth after these shots were taken.



After some considerate thought, I decided to clean the yellow pad (with warm water) and use it for the finishing polish to try and get the scratches out. I increased the speed from 2/4 to 3/5 here.




After....How you love that splatter-skill?


Green pad time, with the glaze. This is where the scratches really start clearing up.




After...looking good here...zoOmg splatter...Ill remember that next time I need to cut the PC on when it's touching the car and cut it off in the same manner



Finally, black pad with the wax




Moment of truth...







You can really see the difference in the swirls (or the lack there of) left to right...hell even the color looks a little different to me.

Well a full detail on the 2002 Altima is next (the DD) and then maybe the S will get the swirls removed before Christmas.

Thanks for reading

 

Yea, my first thought was you are using WAAAY too much polish per application. You can tone that down a lot.

Yes, tape after claying.
Water is OK, but I sometimes just use Quick-Detailer.

-Matt

 

got it...less polish next time

 

excellent little documentary.

i'm hoping of picking my own PC machine after the holidays. After reading some, it seems to me you use ALOT of product for one application. I read that it should be about a dime to quarter sized amount.

 

Good job. Less product would be better but it is your first attempt and you take criticism well. I'm sure you will improve with experience. I made some mistakes when I first started but that is the learning curve.

 

Looks good! Red is the most satisfying to do but once i did a faded red car and my pads turned red!

I used to use a lot of compound as well. Yeah, i spray a bit of QD on the pad but water should be pretty much the same.

 

good for you for taking the motivation to do good paint work, but you def. need to do some research! most obvious things i saw...

1) obviously tape after you are done with all the prep...
2) you are using WAAAAAYYYY to much of every one of the compounds/polish/glazes
3) a glaze is not going to correct scratches. you say thats when you really saw results. this means you didnt correct the paint, and are simply hiding it.

 

1) True
2) Tell me about it, after looking into it further, everyone suggest to use a quarter sized amount of product...I used 10 times that much!
3) So I should see the correction in the cutting polish?

 

You should see the correction in your correction stage... That concise of your compounding and polishing. The reason you probably got bad results is because you never got the stuff fully broken down.

 

the yellow pad was the most aggressive available: http://autogeek.net/hk7424.html

I am thinking that the scratches on her car are still too deep to get out without wet sanding...so this was the next best thing and she's really happy with the results.

I think I actually shouldn't have used the yellow pad on her car with such a deep cut polish. Probably should have just done the green pad with the polish and then used the black to apply the glaze, and I need to buy a red pad to apply the wax.

How does that sound?

Thanks for all your suggestions. Points are well taken. Any more suggestions are openly welcome