Honda City Metallic Black

The owner of this car and I are members of a same forum, so he got to know me through there, and as you would expect from a car lover, he takes great care of his care by washing it and waxes it himself using Meguiar’s #21 Synthetic Sealant.

I also had a time allowance of two days on this car, it has been detailed by Hypercoat before. You can see shots after detailed photographed by Zey in this forum thread

http://www.meguiars.com.my/forum2/viewtopic.php?t=1818

Now the car is here to remove some very very light swirls, being soft paint, it was easy to marr with just wiping. I was going to make it as perfect as I could which I didn’t have a chance to do. The story soon to come.

Here are some before pictures of the car

The white residue was removed with clay and polish, but the outline is still there.

Process started with cleaning the wheels, wheel well and tire.

Meguiar’s All Purpose cleaner for the wells and tire. Meguiar’s Wheel Brightener for the wheels.

The car is then foamed with Hyper Wash and rinsed off with the pressure washer.

In the right picture, is after a foam and rinse, since it only had light dust on the surface before this, it was quite clean after the foam and rinse. M21 in action repelling water.

After drying, I performed a test spot on the bonnet. This is before anything was done.

So I sprayed some QD on to the pad for lubrication, and applied some Menzerna 106FF onto a Meguiar’s w-8006 polishing pad.

From here on, things start to go wrong. The Menzerna 106FF wasn’t spreading nicely, and it is not breaking down or turning clear properly either, usually the pad would just glide over the surface smoothly and you don’t require much or any strength at all to control the buffer, but here, I am fighting with it.

The picture below shows the 106FF after a few passes,

It is very difficult to buff off, the good news is that under than rock hard residue is a clear finish, with the light washing swirls gone.

So I tried again, and again, also same problem. I wiped down the car with M6000 Wax and Grease remover to remove any M21 on the surface to start with a clean surface, the problem still persists.

So I switched polishes, I tried M80, M82, M83, ALL OF THEM dried and clumped up before they could turn clear. I was so frustrated and I couldn’t figure out the problem, I tested different pads with different polishes at low and medium speeds also the problem persists.

I spent about 1-2 hours testing and finally gave up. So I switched to Optimum poli-seal with a w-8006 polishing Pad on the ROB speed 5.

I used lots of pressure and slow passes to make sure some of the swirls are gone. After an alcohol wipedown, I can only say 30% of the swirls are gone. So I told the owner the swirls are still there and only charged him minimal fee to cover the cost.

After polishing, the following is done:

• Apply Meguiar’s #21 Sealant
• Apply Meguiar’s #16 Paste Wax
• Vacuum interior
• Wipe down vinyls and plastics with Meguiar’s All Purpose Cleaner
• Clean Glass with Meguiar’s Glass Cleaner Concentrate
• Wipe door jambs with All Purpose Cleaner
• Wax door jambs with Meguiar’s #16 Paste Wax
• Dress exterior trim with Autogylm Bumper Care
• Dress tires with Meguair’s All Season Dressing
• Wipedown wheels with Meguiar’s Ultimate Quik Detailer
• Polish Exhaust with Meguiar’s NXT All Metal Polysh

Below are the after pictures, don’t be deceived by the sun shots, swirls are there, and mostly covered up.

Lesson learned during this detail : Ambient temperature plays a role during polishing!

Thanks for looking and please feel free to ask if there are any questions =)