Attempt #1 was a great success but then the car was only a few months old. Next came the red WRX which started life as a rally car in March 2003. In the last few years it has been royally abused and carries lot of scars that are way beyond slvation from a detail. Attempt #1: http://www.detailingbliss.com/forum/f47/2009-subaru-sti-dark-grey-metallic-12502.html Never the less, the car deserves to look its best so I had at it last month. I was taking my time doing a coat per day and leaving the car in the garage but eventually I had to rush the last steps and just let it go back onto the road. MY04 WRX, San Remo red, 170K km+ First gravel rally was within the first 2 weeks. Here it is about 6 weeks old. It gives you an impression of how tuff the first 4 years were. Now after a wash... Loads of water spots that did not come out on camera. A lot of paint fade. Reasonable from a distance But you just cannot hide the swirls... Now the after pictures. Obviously, the damage (chips) cannot be repaired by detailing and the sun did not co-operate before the car was back in duty but the results were really impressive, even close up. No swirls... Close up (cos Ken @ Autowerkes says you guys can read a photo real good)... Started with a wash... Duragloss 901 concentrate Clay step... AutoMagic Body Shine ClayMagic Blue (car consumed the entire bar) Polish step... Menzerna Power Finish Menzerna Power Gloss (for the tuff areas) Sealant step... Werkstat Prime Acrylic Sealant... Werkstat Acrylic Jett Trigger (3 coats) Tires... Meguiar’s Gold Class Endurance Glass... Windex Autoglym Glass Polish Important lesson learned on this exercise. Let the machine and the chemicals work their magic. Pressing harder does not make a swirl go away any faster.
Great work! Get some paint and fix the chips if you really want to... After getting my rotary and getting marginal results I started doing some research, watched Nica's vids and read everything Dave KG posted... the main thing I found that I was doing wrong was way way too slow of speeds... I would bump it to 2.5 occasionally... now 3-4.5 is very common... this is on a Makita...
Thanks. Almost makes me want to admit in public that I didn't find the speed switch on the PC for quite a few months. Dumb place to put it anyway.
Pete..that's too funny. Betcha you're not the only one. Nice job on the WRX. The PC will not generate as much heat as a rotary so your work time will be a lot longer so just let the machine and chemicals do their job as you say...that realization saved you a lot of heartache.
