So I was not planning on doing a write up, and that is why the few pictures that I have are not of the best quality or identical angles; but I thought I would share one or two things I learned. A little background on the car, it is my brothers 2006 Nissan Altima which is parked outside in Chicago. It had not been washed in six months or more, and it was disgusting. The paint was HEAVILY contaminated and the interior was covered in dust and leaves. Running your hand across the paint was almost painful. Even after a decon with W99 abd Iron X shampoo the paint was still atrocious, and so a lot of time was spent claying. One thing that a lot of the pros talk about is always start from the least aggressive method and work your way up. Nonsense! I thought, and so I wasted an hour not getting the results I wanted before making adjustments. I will expand on this a bit with the pictures So here is the hood stripped and clayed. Not looking so good Here is part of the hood after two passes with M105... I did two because I was not satisfied with the results, and because I did not know any better. Here is part of the hood after one pass of PO85RD on a green pad. Although it is hard to see the results were better than the M105. To illustrate the difference in finish between M105 and PO85RD I taped off a section. The hazy X is a pass of M105, and the shiny remainder is a pass of PO85RD. I found that doing a two step (105 then 85RD) did not produce any better results on this softer paint rather than just doing one pass of 85RD.. this was the big Aha! moment for me. I know it sounds stupid to those with experience, but I am just glad to have learned my lesson Here are some more random before and after shots Not perfect, but I was on a time budget, and I was doing it for free anyways. No before pictures, but the top 1/3 of this headlight was destroyed by some adhesive remover that had eaten a 1-2 mm DEEP permanent eyelid into the housing. I spent 1.5 hours wet sanding the headlight to get it even enough and then did a polish on it. Up close you can still see variations in the height, but the overall result is presentable. This goes to show you that anything can polish out. Shot of the interior because it felt incomplete without it Once again sorry about the lack of congruency and before pictures.
