shepsevo3 pics

Mr London wrote: Hi all Slightly confused.  Am I reading this right that the car in question has been cut back / polished to provide the truly stunning finish - and not repainted??!?! Regards

The car was re-painted nearly a year ago (March). I finally got the car back in August, went to the SW meet in Wales where the car was stunning. From then on, it went down hill. I polished and polished the car, and put alot of swirl marks in the paintwork. The more I polished, the worse it got.

Car was taken back to the bodyshop a couple of months ago. They said there was a problem with the top coat, and put me in contact with the paint manufacturer, who at the end of the day would probably have repainted the car, The b/shop buffed and polished the car and it returned like new again, untill 2 days later when I saw the car in direct sunlight and it looked awfull. I never touched the car from the its return from the b/shop and got very, very depressed to say the least.

On the verge of calling the paint manufacturer and have them strip, repaint and refit the car again (depressing prospect) and wondering if I should cut my losses and sell up, I spoke to John after reading some of his posts about detailling. The rest is history, and the pics speak for themselves. Whatever I seemed to do to the paint to sort the scratches, etc, just seemed to make things alot worse. Johns Microfibre cloths never marked the paint atal, no matter how hard you pressed on them.

The rest, John has explained. I would have really liked John to have spent even more time on the car, and take it to another level, as he says he could. His Evo2 is still in another league, and just shows what can be done with alot of hard work and persistance.

Another thing with the "waxes" being talked about on here, I found that dust sticks to it, whereas the dust which has settled on my car since John did his stuff, can be blown off with ease (breath) Now thats good.

That is a really extraordinary finish. Imagine turning up to view this 16year old car as a purchase!

The car detailing arena is perplexing to me and raises as many questions for which I can find no answers - a bit like the pros and cons of semi synthetic engine oil verses synthetic...........!!!!

What dissapoints me with the polishing mularky is how little time the wax lasts verses the effort required to apply. To completely Zymol my M3 (not a large car) thats wash, clay, cleanse and wax is a full and hard days graft and does not include the shuts/engine bay!

With a weekly wash it will need a rewax in shall we say 6 weeks?, you can tell its fading by the little black tar bits that you notice no longer wash off like after the first wash (following a wax).

However back to the Zaino products I havent absorbed it all (so apologies for possible incorrections) but I think I noticed 'abrasive' - surely not good for cars without new paint? and 'synthetic' wax which I understand is a car painters nightmare as the silicone penetrates the paint right through to the metal and makes it very difficult to apply new paint (should it become necessary).

I would love to hear John Drakes (Zymol) opinion on what has been done to at least help those like me who flounder against the tide of options. I'll send him an email and ask if he would care to comment.... 

Richard von Bat wrote: That is a really extraordinary finish. Imagine turning up to view this 16year old car as a purchase! The car detailing arena is perplexing to me and raises as many questions for which I can find no answers - a bit like the pros and cons of semi synthetic engine oil verses synthetic...........!!!! What dissapoints me with the polishing mularky is how little time the wax lasts verses the effort required to apply. To completely Zymol my M3 (not a large car) thats wash, clay, cleanse and wax is a full and hard days graft and does not include the shuts/engine bay! With a weekly wash it will need a rewax in shall we say 6 weeks?, you can tell its fading by the little black tar bits that you notice no longer wash off like after the first wash (following a wax). However back to the Zaino products I havent absorbed it all (so apologies for possible incorrections) but I think I noticed 'abrasive' - surely not good for cars without new paint? and 'synthetic' wax which I understand is a car painters nightmare as the silicone penetrates the paint right through to the metal and makes it very difficult to apply new paint (should it become necessary). I would love to hear John Drakes (Zymol) opinion on what has been done to at least help those like me who flounder against the tide of options. I'll send him an email and ask if he would care to comment....

you raise some good points

to which some have been answered in the thread as a whole

firstly you are quite correct in saying zymol deteriorates quite quickly imho i would say that 6 weeks is very generous

i have seen WAXES lose their impact in 36 hours.iam not implying that is the case with zymol.zymol is a quality product without a doubt but the nature of wax is that it is not resiliant to the elements which will explain why your wax needs rapplying so frequently

carnuba wax is loved by many many car enthusiasts and many of these will wax their car weekly and therefore the loss of impact in 6 weeks like you say is not an issue

you then go on to talk about abrasives not being good to car finishes

i have stated earlier in th thread that zaino only make1 abrasive product which is zpc

this has only been available for a short time

zaino is primarily a sealant system that is applied to a surface that has been prepped to the owners level of finish

zaino relaesed zpc after a long time developing it as they felt they had a product that was far better than 99 percent of the swirl mark removers that were on the market and were being used before application of their other products

i use zpc.its very very good.if it wasnt i would continue to use 3M smr which is also very good and probably was the best until zpc came along.i still use 3M smr and always will because i have a lot of experience with it and i know what it will do and what it wont

abrasives on paint are nothing to be scared of i can assure you.

your car paint has a great deal of abrasives on it before it was delivered to the dealer and even more after by the 17 year old "valeter" who helped with the pdi!!

the abrasives iam talking about are incredibly fine.

no one would flinch at using a spot of t cut or some autoglym restoring polish or even zymol HD cleanse

barring the zymol the t cut and the autoglym are 20 times more abrasive than anything i would put on mine or anybody elses car

the word abrasive conjours up the image of massive amounts of paint being gouged off to eventually getting to a new layer of paint under the old tatty one almost like a snake shedding its skin

this is not the case at all.the fineness of the top abrasives i use and the speed with lack of heat build up the porter cable creates thru the way it operates along with the correct grade and high quality of the finishing pad used means that the edges of the swirl marks are very very gradually worked down until there is no longer a mark because the laquer/paint is now level

swirls/marring are simply very very light marks in the finish

another point you make is that you are worried about the synthetic qualities of zaino creating non paintable panels

i agree with you about silicone.i hate the stuff .its adetailers nightmare .you are assuming synthetic means it automatically consists of or contains silicone.it does not. the two do not mean the same.

zaino contains zero silicone in any of its products

they are very very largely water based

john

coates wrote:   stunning results-but whats wrong with a £6 bottle of turtlewax and an oily rag?

The sunlight will show you whats wrong with that, Mine looked great out of the sun, but horrific in the sun. Now it looks great in both. Try it! BTW, your's does look great in the pic

SHEPSM3 wrote: Richard von Bat wrote: That is a really extraordinary finish. Imagine turning up to view this 16year old car as a purchase! Are you saying you would walk away from such a car?

No,. I think he just means that any buyer would be gobsmacked and think that they were buying a brand new car!