My detailing "hobby" ended up turning into a weekend side thing. I started out with a simple porter cable buffer and ended up working myself into a flex 3410 VRG.
It was probably about 5-8 years ago when the big ceramic coating technology kicked off. Now everyone is offering some form of it. I've used black diamond, Wolfgang and Opti gloss ceramic coating. My go to is the opti gloss. It's easy to apply and lasts about 2 years with the right maintenance.
My polishes and compounds are all menzerna. I've tried several others. Maguires 101 foam compound followed up with their 205 finishing polish is pretty good.
My best combo I've found is Menzerna 400 compound on a orange or yellow lake country flat pad followed up with menzerna 3500 micro polish on a white lake country hybrid pad.
Keep in mind with any paint correction you want to take the least aggressive approach. Clear coat is VERY thin. Some jobs don't require a compound and for that I use menzerna 2500 on an orange pad. Usually this will not leave behind any imperfections that require a micro polish.
I start out with a typical 2 bucket wash. (Look it up on youtube).
From there I use iron-x to remove any ferrous materials.
Next I use pinnacle clay bars to continue to decontaminat the paint.
Then it's time to assess the condition of the paint. I have a paint thickness gauge that gives me a ballpark reading on how thick the total paint thickness is down to the metal.
As mentioned before you want to take the least aggressive approach. Don't just grab a compound and a wool pad and go to town. Foam pads on a porter cable DA with a polish would be pretty difficult to screw up for anyone interested in trying it out.
Once the car is fully corrected I'll use some carpro eraser to remove any left over oils from the polish before applying the ceramic coating.
True paint correction is not for everyone. It's takes a LONG time to perfect your process and fully correct a car. Trucks are a whole other nightmare. The shortest paint correction I've done was on a mini-cooper that was in pretty good condition and that took 1.5 days. One of the trucks I did took 4 days.
Here is some of my work.
It was probably about 5-8 years ago when the big ceramic coating technology kicked off. Now everyone is offering some form of it. I've used black diamond, Wolfgang and Opti gloss ceramic coating. My go to is the opti gloss. It's easy to apply and lasts about 2 years with the right maintenance.
My polishes and compounds are all menzerna. I've tried several others. Maguires 101 foam compound followed up with their 205 finishing polish is pretty good.
My best combo I've found is Menzerna 400 compound on a orange or yellow lake country flat pad followed up with menzerna 3500 micro polish on a white lake country hybrid pad.
Keep in mind with any paint correction you want to take the least aggressive approach. Clear coat is VERY thin. Some jobs don't require a compound and for that I use menzerna 2500 on an orange pad. Usually this will not leave behind any imperfections that require a micro polish.
I start out with a typical 2 bucket wash. (Look it up on youtube).
From there I use iron-x to remove any ferrous materials.
Next I use pinnacle clay bars to continue to decontaminat the paint.
Then it's time to assess the condition of the paint. I have a paint thickness gauge that gives me a ballpark reading on how thick the total paint thickness is down to the metal.
As mentioned before you want to take the least aggressive approach. Don't just grab a compound and a wool pad and go to town. Foam pads on a porter cable DA with a polish would be pretty difficult to screw up for anyone interested in trying it out.
Once the car is fully corrected I'll use some carpro eraser to remove any left over oils from the polish before applying the ceramic coating.
True paint correction is not for everyone. It's takes a LONG time to perfect your process and fully correct a car. Trucks are a whole other nightmare. The shortest paint correction I've done was on a mini-cooper that was in pretty good condition and that took 1.5 days. One of the trucks I did took 4 days.
Here is some of my work.
