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Hey guys!
Wife bought me a new truck and I find myself obsessing about keeping it sharp looking. I would like to share what I did and would like to hear what you think. This is a long post so I put the important points in bold, and I underlined the questions I have, thanks for reading!
The paint is "Ingot Silver Metallic", the vehicle is a 2011 F-150.
About a week ago I washed it using a non-Meguiars but car specific shampoo (not sure its okay to use other products names, rhymes with lane-hex), then used a non-meguiars spray on wax (rhymes with Girtle Hax). It looked great that night, pretty good the next day, and pretty much like it was gone by Thursday of last week. THEN I looked online and learned about Meguiars products, and bought the following on Friday...Scratch-X, Ultimate Polish, Ultimate paste wax, Ultimate Protectorant Spray.
FRIDAY- I found few scratches, and tried to fully repair them myself, suffice it to say that I screwed up royally and will need to go to a paint booth. (A whole nother horror story). Lets just say I learned a lot the hard way. I spent the rest of the weekend messing up my paint.
MONDAY- Went to a local paint and body shop and got the bad news, he will have to sand and blend my goofed up repair, 500$ I don't have right now lol. Anyway, my repair wasn't pretty but it was sound, as in dry and covering the metal, so I could wash and wax over it with no further damage. So about 5pm, when the truck was through with its work day, armed with my new found knowledge from the Meguiars vid's I got to work.
1. Washed car with car shampoo using a microfiber mitt, starting at the roof and working down (its hard to reach all the areas of a trucks roof by the way, even from the bed lol), and dried it with microfiber towel, after washing I used a brush to do the tires last using the same soap I used on the paint. I did this in my driveway, because I didn't want to get my garage all wet. It was the best choice I had, theres no shade around here. I kept the car wet the whole time and washed each section individually. Then a final rinse and drying. I pulled the car into the garage...
2. Inspection and Scratch-X, After my harrowing adventure over the weekend I wasn't going to try anything crazy, (lets just say because it looks easy and magical on you tube, doesn't mean wet sanding is something you should try the first time on a new vehicle) but I did find a few small scratches and the scratch-x got them out easily. Admittedly I didn't spend a long time on this step, the vehicle is brand spanking new, so the paint is in great shape. The paint felt smooth, very smooth, but my hand didn't really GLIDE across the the paint (could the resistance have the spray on wax I used maybe?), at any rate I didn't feel any rough spots at all, the resistance was uniform across the whole truck. I did see some road rash and rock dings, but they seemed too deep to use scratch-x on and I wasn't about to try anything more severe!!. It seemed I either had no defect at all or defects too deep for the products to fix. So I just left them. I live in North Central Texas, it rains dirt here, and for some reason we get a LOT of very small pebbles flying at vehicles around here!
3. Polish- I used the ultimate polish on the whole truck. It seemed a very similar process to waxing. I didn't let the product sit however, I wiped it on an entire panel (with a foam pad dedicated for that product only), wiped on the adjacent panel, then wiped it off in a circular pattern (with a microfiber cloth), off both panels. I continued in this manner until the entire vehicle was done. At this point my truck was better looking than it was when I drove it off the lot! I was very impressed, however it did not have the glassy look of the vehicles I see on the website and in the videos, I know some of that is because I didn't use a machine to polish, I don't feel comfortable with that. How much does color play into polishing results? My truck is a very light silver, will it just never get that mirrored effect like I see on the Maguires website? I them went inside and had a cold drink, the idea being to let any residual polish dry completely.
4. Wax My truck just BARELY fits into my garage, and I did not want to be up all night. So the sun was setting, it was about 7:30 when I put the wax on. The majority of the truck was in the garage and shaded, the tailgate was still in direct, but setting sunlight. I applied the wax with the included foam pad (now dedicated solely to that product). Upon review I put the wax on way thicker than I needed, by review I mean reading this forum and seeing photos. How big of a mistake is that? What if anything can I do to fix this (if it needs to be fixed)? Then I took a microfiber cloth and wiped the wax from the headlights, chrome, and door seals where I had accidentaly put some. What is the danger in putting the wax on rubber? Will it damage it?, or just leave residue? Was just wiping it off while it was still wet a good fix? I plan on buying some auto masking tape on my next waxing. At this point dinner was ready, so I went inside and ate and left the wax to dry. After about 20 minutes or so, I used a microfiber towel to wipe off the wax from each area, then with the supplied towel with the Ultimate wax, I buffed each area. My daughter came out and wanted to help so I showed her how to do it, and gave her two towels of her own to work with. I went behind her and buffed up a bit just to be sure. At this point my truck looked darn good! But it didn't look much better than after I polished. Don't get me wrong it was shiny as heck! But the wax didn't seem to really add any shine. The wax did however, add a little depth to the finish, I'm not sure how much "depth" you can really get in a metallic silver finish any thoughts?
5. Interior During a previous wash reigmen I used a competeting product (rhymes with Harbor Call) but then heard horror stories about it! Everyone raved about the Maguire's stuff (including the paint and body pro I went to earlier today) so I used it this time with no fears. I used a microfiber applicator pad (just a regular old auto zone one) and sprayed it with the protectorant. Then I wiped down everything inside that wasn't glass, clear plastic, or cloth, with a light coating. My observations were that it did not make the interior as shiny as the competing product, but I liked the result WAY more! Instead of a plastic-y, filmy, sort of on top of the material shine, the Maguires stuff created a subdued, natural looking kind of glow effect that I found much more pleasing to my eye. The chemical seemed to be soaking in to the materials instead of just sitting on top and looking shiny. This product and the polish are sort of tied for what seemed to make the biggest WOW impact on me. Finally I cleaned the windows with regular old windex and wiped the paint down one more time.
6. Other Questions Now that I've done all this what should I do to maintain it? Is it okay to just wash and dry it now about once a week, will that tear up my wax? Is it okay to put more wax on top of the old wax? Or should I just use the quick detailer and maybe buff it some more? Will buffing it more later, say a few days from now, make any difference in the shine? Or will it be too late by then? Is there a danger of putting TOO much wax on? Any tips on knowing when it's time to do the full waxing again? I didn't clay bar because my vehicle is new and the paint seemed very smooth and consistent, do you agree with that? This work took me about 4 hours 5:30-9:30 pm. I read on here that some people take much longer than that (almost as a bragging point, "I spent 36 hours detailing my car ect. ect.") Is the fact that it only took me 4 hours an indication that I did it wrong? Or that I did it poorly? I don't see and swirling or cobwebs or anything, it seems to be a consistent shine. I'm not trying to be curt or anything, I am just trying to learn.
Overall I was very pleased with my end product, which I suppose it the whole point! Hopefully I can stave off some of that road rash, which is pretty severe down here, with this waxing work. My truck looks better than it did in the dealers lot! However, it does not have that wonderful reflective, deep quality I see on the website and videos, to be fair though I haven't seen in the sulight yet. I noticed that every car on the website and videos seems to be a dark color. My truck is the antithesis of dark, it is a very light, and now, shiny silver. I noticed that the metal flakes especially seem to really glisten now, almost annoyingly so, even in sunset light!
I know that a post like is this is useless without photos so I will try to post some tomorrow, when it is light outside. I finished this work just tonight so again I haven't even seen it in the sunlight yet!
If you read all this thank you SO much for your time and attention. I welcome any advice or comments or answers to my questions.
Thanks for reading!,
Wife bought me a new truck and I find myself obsessing about keeping it sharp looking. I would like to share what I did and would like to hear what you think. This is a long post so I put the important points in bold, and I underlined the questions I have, thanks for reading!
The paint is "Ingot Silver Metallic", the vehicle is a 2011 F-150.
About a week ago I washed it using a non-Meguiars but car specific shampoo (not sure its okay to use other products names, rhymes with lane-hex), then used a non-meguiars spray on wax (rhymes with Girtle Hax). It looked great that night, pretty good the next day, and pretty much like it was gone by Thursday of last week. THEN I looked online and learned about Meguiars products, and bought the following on Friday...Scratch-X, Ultimate Polish, Ultimate paste wax, Ultimate Protectorant Spray.
FRIDAY- I found few scratches, and tried to fully repair them myself, suffice it to say that I screwed up royally and will need to go to a paint booth. (A whole nother horror story). Lets just say I learned a lot the hard way. I spent the rest of the weekend messing up my paint.
MONDAY- Went to a local paint and body shop and got the bad news, he will have to sand and blend my goofed up repair, 500$ I don't have right now lol. Anyway, my repair wasn't pretty but it was sound, as in dry and covering the metal, so I could wash and wax over it with no further damage. So about 5pm, when the truck was through with its work day, armed with my new found knowledge from the Meguiars vid's I got to work.
1. Washed car with car shampoo using a microfiber mitt, starting at the roof and working down (its hard to reach all the areas of a trucks roof by the way, even from the bed lol), and dried it with microfiber towel, after washing I used a brush to do the tires last using the same soap I used on the paint. I did this in my driveway, because I didn't want to get my garage all wet. It was the best choice I had, theres no shade around here. I kept the car wet the whole time and washed each section individually. Then a final rinse and drying. I pulled the car into the garage...
2. Inspection and Scratch-X, After my harrowing adventure over the weekend I wasn't going to try anything crazy, (lets just say because it looks easy and magical on you tube, doesn't mean wet sanding is something you should try the first time on a new vehicle) but I did find a few small scratches and the scratch-x got them out easily. Admittedly I didn't spend a long time on this step, the vehicle is brand spanking new, so the paint is in great shape. The paint felt smooth, very smooth, but my hand didn't really GLIDE across the the paint (could the resistance have the spray on wax I used maybe?), at any rate I didn't feel any rough spots at all, the resistance was uniform across the whole truck. I did see some road rash and rock dings, but they seemed too deep to use scratch-x on and I wasn't about to try anything more severe!!. It seemed I either had no defect at all or defects too deep for the products to fix. So I just left them. I live in North Central Texas, it rains dirt here, and for some reason we get a LOT of very small pebbles flying at vehicles around here!
3. Polish- I used the ultimate polish on the whole truck. It seemed a very similar process to waxing. I didn't let the product sit however, I wiped it on an entire panel (with a foam pad dedicated for that product only), wiped on the adjacent panel, then wiped it off in a circular pattern (with a microfiber cloth), off both panels. I continued in this manner until the entire vehicle was done. At this point my truck was better looking than it was when I drove it off the lot! I was very impressed, however it did not have the glassy look of the vehicles I see on the website and in the videos, I know some of that is because I didn't use a machine to polish, I don't feel comfortable with that. How much does color play into polishing results? My truck is a very light silver, will it just never get that mirrored effect like I see on the Maguires website? I them went inside and had a cold drink, the idea being to let any residual polish dry completely.
4. Wax My truck just BARELY fits into my garage, and I did not want to be up all night. So the sun was setting, it was about 7:30 when I put the wax on. The majority of the truck was in the garage and shaded, the tailgate was still in direct, but setting sunlight. I applied the wax with the included foam pad (now dedicated solely to that product). Upon review I put the wax on way thicker than I needed, by review I mean reading this forum and seeing photos. How big of a mistake is that? What if anything can I do to fix this (if it needs to be fixed)? Then I took a microfiber cloth and wiped the wax from the headlights, chrome, and door seals where I had accidentaly put some. What is the danger in putting the wax on rubber? Will it damage it?, or just leave residue? Was just wiping it off while it was still wet a good fix? I plan on buying some auto masking tape on my next waxing. At this point dinner was ready, so I went inside and ate and left the wax to dry. After about 20 minutes or so, I used a microfiber towel to wipe off the wax from each area, then with the supplied towel with the Ultimate wax, I buffed each area. My daughter came out and wanted to help so I showed her how to do it, and gave her two towels of her own to work with. I went behind her and buffed up a bit just to be sure. At this point my truck looked darn good! But it didn't look much better than after I polished. Don't get me wrong it was shiny as heck! But the wax didn't seem to really add any shine. The wax did however, add a little depth to the finish, I'm not sure how much "depth" you can really get in a metallic silver finish any thoughts?
5. Interior During a previous wash reigmen I used a competeting product (rhymes with Harbor Call) but then heard horror stories about it! Everyone raved about the Maguire's stuff (including the paint and body pro I went to earlier today) so I used it this time with no fears. I used a microfiber applicator pad (just a regular old auto zone one) and sprayed it with the protectorant. Then I wiped down everything inside that wasn't glass, clear plastic, or cloth, with a light coating. My observations were that it did not make the interior as shiny as the competing product, but I liked the result WAY more! Instead of a plastic-y, filmy, sort of on top of the material shine, the Maguires stuff created a subdued, natural looking kind of glow effect that I found much more pleasing to my eye. The chemical seemed to be soaking in to the materials instead of just sitting on top and looking shiny. This product and the polish are sort of tied for what seemed to make the biggest WOW impact on me. Finally I cleaned the windows with regular old windex and wiped the paint down one more time.
6. Other Questions Now that I've done all this what should I do to maintain it? Is it okay to just wash and dry it now about once a week, will that tear up my wax? Is it okay to put more wax on top of the old wax? Or should I just use the quick detailer and maybe buff it some more? Will buffing it more later, say a few days from now, make any difference in the shine? Or will it be too late by then? Is there a danger of putting TOO much wax on? Any tips on knowing when it's time to do the full waxing again? I didn't clay bar because my vehicle is new and the paint seemed very smooth and consistent, do you agree with that? This work took me about 4 hours 5:30-9:30 pm. I read on here that some people take much longer than that (almost as a bragging point, "I spent 36 hours detailing my car ect. ect.") Is the fact that it only took me 4 hours an indication that I did it wrong? Or that I did it poorly? I don't see and swirling or cobwebs or anything, it seems to be a consistent shine. I'm not trying to be curt or anything, I am just trying to learn.
Overall I was very pleased with my end product, which I suppose it the whole point! Hopefully I can stave off some of that road rash, which is pretty severe down here, with this waxing work. My truck looks better than it did in the dealers lot! However, it does not have that wonderful reflective, deep quality I see on the website and videos, to be fair though I haven't seen in the sulight yet. I noticed that every car on the website and videos seems to be a dark color. My truck is the antithesis of dark, it is a very light, and now, shiny silver. I noticed that the metal flakes especially seem to really glisten now, almost annoyingly so, even in sunset light!
I know that a post like is this is useless without photos so I will try to post some tomorrow, when it is light outside. I finished this work just tonight so again I haven't even seen it in the sunlight yet!
If you read all this thank you SO much for your time and attention. I welcome any advice or comments or answers to my questions.
Thanks for reading!,
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