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I just found a good deal on a basic buffer - 90w and 3500RPM. Would this be good enough for your basic home polish or do I need note speed/flexibility?
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Apr 25, 2015 14:42
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^^^ Still have like 5 applicators left so hopefully not  Is it true that Japanese clearcoats tend to be softer and require an appropriate compound? I'm about to buy some Dodo stuff for the miata and they have a special Japanese kit but this all seems like hearsay.
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May 5, 2018 08:28
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MrOnBicycle posted:There are variations (like Mazda has really thin paint), but I think that in the end it doesn't really matter that much. It's more likely to be poor technique / bad residue control giving poor results than "drat this paint is soft and impossible to work on".
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May 9, 2018 20:18
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Crescendo posted:Ahh, maybe I oversold it a little bit, but the bogan-ness is more in the name of some of their products and how they describe them, not so much the graphics. MrOnBicycle posted:They should be good. I haven't actually tried one yet. The only tip I can give is to try to find any sort of review of it. Preferably one where they try to check for abrasion on the paint after use. But once my Bilt Hamber clay (amazing) runs out, I'll be looking into getting a synthetic one. Other than that, detailing definitely is a pain in the rear end but I did manage to get some pretty bad scratches and door dings either completely out or minimize their visibility. Although it seems that Dodo's medium cut polish can't fully take out 2000 grit scratches from wet sanding (or I'm just doing it wrong). The are still some dents left from door hits though, has anyone tried DIY paintless dent removal? Does it require special glue sticks or do the regular ones work ok? I can get the little pulling tool off ebay and already have the gun and sticks.
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May 22, 2018 18:05
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Would touching up wheels fall under detailing? Because that's what I'm doing while the car is under snow outside. There is some curb rash from the idiot PO and idiot me that I decided to clean up after ignoring for years. Basically I did what seemed to be usually recommended. Cleaned up the area with a wire brush or sandpaper, filler, sanding, painting. The issue seems to be mostly in the last two steps, since I'm hand sanding small areas, it seems impossible to get everything perfectly level and smooth. Maybe because the filler is softer and would sand down faster, or sometimes not even being able to tell which parts are higher and which are lower. I can feel that something is uneven under my finger, but not exactly what. I could be sanding for minutes and it's still not as smooth as the undamaged parts. Any pro tips? Before  After  Not terrible, and definitely better than a big black gash, but you can still see it's not completely smooth https://i.imgur.com/P8EY2O6.mp4 The color actually looks closer in person, but also not perfect and doesn't really have the same metallic effect which becomes more obvious under certain lighting. Is there any chance of getting these nice large and distinctive flakes from a can? I couldn't even find any paint codes for these Miata Enkei wheels.
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Feb 17, 2021 23:15
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Nope, I don't have any tiny sanding blocks but I should have at least one pencil eraser, that's a great idea. I'll try it tomorrow!
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Feb 18, 2021 01:30
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It's important to protect your truck equity!
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Feb 19, 2021 19:34
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Sadi posted:
Try the tar remover first of course. I didn't have any so I just used some ceramic sink cleaner paste. It's somewhat abrasive but I didn't see any noticeable damage to the clearcoat. And realistically I'll have to repaint them completely at some point anyway due to the corrosion sneaking under the paint somehow.
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Mar 9, 2021 21:53
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Like two years ago I bought an orbital polisher and also got the foam gun along with the different accessories. It had a number of connection options and I got the Kärcher one even though I didn't have and still don't have a PW lol. So I guess that's what I'll have to get now.
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Mar 16, 2021 18:39
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For almost 6 grand, couldn't you just repaint later whatever is necessary?
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Mar 29, 2021 09:19
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I just bought a pressure washer "for my parents" since they live in a house and I'm in an apartment. It's from Lidl but probably made by one of the regular suspects, and was cheaper and better than the Karcher alternatives as far as I could tell. Only issue is that it has a different hose connector so the foam gun I've had laying around for a few years isn't compatible. So I had to come up with a custom adapter that I'd have to have it machined somewhere since a 3d printer won't hold the pressure probably.  The default wand is definitely a bit annoying for car washing purposes, though this adapter would get rid of it when using it for foam at least. So far just rinsing it with the a bit of pressure already makes a big difference, though some dirt still stays there but a lightest touch with a finger removes it, so I definitely need to foam it up and have a go with the mitt.
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Apr 6, 2021 20:42
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everdave posted:Has anyone found a buffer/polisher that is very small? Like 3 inches? I have a normal size DA and various wise of pads. Is that not an option? I've seen pros use a tiny buffer but dunno if it's really necessary.
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Sep 17, 2021 08:07
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Head Bee Guy posted:Some local youths egged my car last night, and now some of the yolk has baked in to the paint. what’s the meta on removing it safely?  I did some experimental stuff to my shitbox Jizz. It's got a ton of stone chips and a decent number of scratches of various depths and general swirlies from 20 years of street parking and machine washing I assume. First there's this area on the D pillar, no idea how one gets scratches like that. Seems like someone had a go with pretty fine sandpaper and then just left it there. I had a go at it with a rougher and then finer compound on a foam pad. Took a quite a bit of polishing to get rid of the deeper scratches but it's good now.   It seemed to be also good for the "undamaged" paint, you can see where I stopped polishing near the top sun reflection. I eventually did a bit more of the panel but not too much as I used a cordless drill instead of a DA polisher.  You can see a bunch of other scratches on that panel as well but they were all quite a bit deeper so I left them be for now. The main thing I wanted to finish up were the stone chips. I cleaned and painted in most of the bigger holes a few days ago and now went to finish it. Here's a pretty big one. Looks relatively good but there's a clear low spot and a hole in the top left of the fill.   I probably should've tried to fill the low spot and holes with some more paint at that point, but I didn't want to wait again so I polished it to see how that looked. The little holes and the low spot is still visible of course, but more surprising, I thought that the edge of the chip wouldn't be visible any more. It felt completely smooth to me. And 2000 grit sandpaper isn't fine enough and a pain in the rear end to buff out. Here's another pretty big one. No idea what's the deal with the right side.  I think it's the same one, just rotated?  This type of repair is never going to be perfect of course, and it doesn't really matter on this shitbox, but I'm curious if you could do better. Feels like there are very specific issues like the bubbles (?) and low spots that could be improved if I knew WTF I was doing. So if anyone has any suggestions, I'd be happy to test them out since there's no risk to loving it up more 
mobby_6kl fucked around with this message at 19:25 on Aug 21, 2022 |
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Aug 21, 2022 19:18
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honda whisperer posted:One of those dish sponges that's like scotch Brite on one side. Old roommate did that to his civic once vs some bird poop. You don't see the damage until it drys. Then you ask your car nerd roommate with a box of car cleaning stuff what can be done. Ironically I actually tried using the soft side of a new dish sponge to polish this car. It actually worked ok, though seemed to leave some scratches that were probably not caused by the sponge. Gonna try to clean off the residue from the number sticker I had on for the rally. It's been there... for a while. Don't have goo gone but a bunch of dangerous chemicasls IPA, acetone, petrol cleaner, so we'll see what works without annihilating the paint. 
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Aug 24, 2022 09:42
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Well IPA took care of that fairly easily. I guess I didn't have to drive around with the residue for a year  I also did the most half-assed headlight job ever and the results are... extremely adequate. They were pretty bad to begin with  I did a test on an area that wouldn't impact the light output if I hosed it up really bad  But it turned out pretty well. There's still some weird cracks and crap that seems to be on the inside but   Step 1: Compound with a literal dish sponge on a drill. Step 2: There is no step 2. Well it should probably be to apply some protective coating but I had none on hand. But since it takes literally just 5 minutes, I'll gladly do this again as needed.
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Aug 29, 2022 20:37
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Mr. Apollo posted:I used the Sylvania Headlight Restoration kit a couple of years ago on a 10 year old car and the results were fantastic. I'd say like 90% as good as new. It comes with everything you need (including a UV resistant sealer). I thought I saw someone ask about scratched plastic interior bits but it had to be in another thread. The rear door armrest is this dimpled texture plastic that got scratched up pretty bad at some point, I guess when sticking something into the trunk. Sanding's obviously not going to do it any good, but has anyone tried slightly melting it with either heat or maybe chemical like acetone or something? I think if it were slightly deformed it would be less objectionable than this extremely obvious scratches. 
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Sep 3, 2022 21:15
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the spyder posted:Heat gun is your best option. Please try it in a inconspicuous spot first.  I'm sure there are some scratches somewhere on the bottom of the door cards to test on.Also, when looking for the K2 Lamp Protect reviews, I came across another product they make, the Vapron Pro. It's the most bizarre thing for headlight restoration, you sand them as usual, and then use this heated mug that they give you to heat up and evaporate some mystery chemical that I guess bonds with the surface, filling up the scratches and making it shiny. Really weird but seems to be pretty effective, from what I understood they think it looks like they've been clearcoated. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IINn_VYYfvw&t=690s
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Sep 3, 2022 21:49
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Has anyone tried cheapo Aliexpress/ebay coatings? I'm looking for something to apply to my beater Fit mainly to protect the headlights and just make hosing it down easier. And it's not just to save a few bucks, I'm not in the US so most of recommended products aren't even available here. Hell I even found this review of "cheap Chinese coatings" and can't find any of them on aliexpress lol. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyD3J7wCwfU Popete posted:My biggest hangup with using a polishing compound is it removes a layer of clear coat and I'm paranoid about removing too much.
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Mar 17, 2023 10:58
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meatpimp posted:See my post in this thread on from February 17. Spoiler: I'm impressed with the cheap chinese ceramic coatings. As you say there are many of them, they do perform differently (although some are clearly the same) and many are actually impossible to find
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Mar 17, 2023 17:16
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Detailing thread: Grim determination and sanding
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May 10, 2023 10:15
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| # ¿ May 13, 2024 03:01 |
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a mysterious cloak posted:Thread title right there I've used the brush to touch up the Honda (previous posts) but the chips were pretty enormous. I've seen people use toothpicks or some weird calligraphy pens to do more detailed stuff.
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May 10, 2023 22:06
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