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The weather here in Dallas has been either raing or threatening to rain for most of the last 3 weeks now. I've been stocking up on products and waiting to get on my cars with them. In the past 3 weeks, I've hosed them both off at the car wash just to get the **** off, but haven't done much else.
Well, yesterday, the chance of rain dropped to under 10% and the chance of the fallout from the trees around my building making a total mess of my wife's CRV were near 100% so I gambled and spent 5 hours on her truck yesterday. It was a learning experience for sure!
I have been reading over the forums here for the past few weeks and some of the tips I found most helpful learned here that I employed were:
1. Break your clay bars into 2-3 pieces when you open them. I had to work in smaller sections, but I dropped the bar at least 3 times. Most of the drops were early on until I got the hang of using it.
2. You can never have enough towels on hand. I thought I had enough, but I listened to the voice in my head that told me to get extra towels when I popped into O'Reily's for some NXT 2.0 wax. Turns out I would have been way short on towels had I not listened to the voice. Dropping a towel makes is pretty dirty and didn't want to grind the grit into the paint.
3. A slow wipe makes clean up/application a lot easier. I found this to be true when cleaning up the QD during the clay process as well as when I dried after both washes.
Thanks to all of you for sharing those tips with me. They were most helpful!
I also learned that cleaner wax is wonderful thing! My original plan was to use the NXT 2.0, but even after claying the truck, there were still visual contaminants on the paint and I was affraid I was going to have to use some abrasive cleaners to get the paint cleaned up. Instead, I decided to go ahead and use the cleaner wax that came in the clay kit. Man that stuff is AWESOME!!! It removed the rest of the stuff the clay couldn't get up.
When I was finally done, I was amazed at how beautiful the truck was. I did not know that a white vehicle could sparkle and shine like that! When my wife saw it, she was impressed and commented that the truck looked brand new. I know the only problems with the paint now are a few door dings and other defects that detailing can't fix. Of course, it seems like when the car is so clean, those little boogers really show up!
Of course, it did end up raining last night, so some of what I did was lost. At least I saw what's possible. I'm not too upset because the wife's truck was practice before I move on to MY car
. As soon as the forecast is clear, it's on!
Well, yesterday, the chance of rain dropped to under 10% and the chance of the fallout from the trees around my building making a total mess of my wife's CRV were near 100% so I gambled and spent 5 hours on her truck yesterday. It was a learning experience for sure!
I have been reading over the forums here for the past few weeks and some of the tips I found most helpful learned here that I employed were:
1. Break your clay bars into 2-3 pieces when you open them. I had to work in smaller sections, but I dropped the bar at least 3 times. Most of the drops were early on until I got the hang of using it.
2. You can never have enough towels on hand. I thought I had enough, but I listened to the voice in my head that told me to get extra towels when I popped into O'Reily's for some NXT 2.0 wax. Turns out I would have been way short on towels had I not listened to the voice. Dropping a towel makes is pretty dirty and didn't want to grind the grit into the paint.
3. A slow wipe makes clean up/application a lot easier. I found this to be true when cleaning up the QD during the clay process as well as when I dried after both washes.
Thanks to all of you for sharing those tips with me. They were most helpful!
I also learned that cleaner wax is wonderful thing! My original plan was to use the NXT 2.0, but even after claying the truck, there were still visual contaminants on the paint and I was affraid I was going to have to use some abrasive cleaners to get the paint cleaned up. Instead, I decided to go ahead and use the cleaner wax that came in the clay kit. Man that stuff is AWESOME!!! It removed the rest of the stuff the clay couldn't get up.
When I was finally done, I was amazed at how beautiful the truck was. I did not know that a white vehicle could sparkle and shine like that! When my wife saw it, she was impressed and commented that the truck looked brand new. I know the only problems with the paint now are a few door dings and other defects that detailing can't fix. Of course, it seems like when the car is so clean, those little boogers really show up!
Of course, it did end up raining last night, so some of what I did was lost. At least I saw what's possible. I'm not too upset because the wife's truck was practice before I move on to MY car
. As soon as the forecast is clear, it's on!
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