ready for the best shine help

[ccapital83]

ive tried so many polishes out there everything from mothers, mag, 3m, zaino, duragloss, zymol etc etc etc. So far the best for feel and ease of use was nxt 2.0 but im looking for the best in shine. i thought polishes would do that for me but they dont. my paints in really good shape. its ready for a wax but im looking for a wax that will really pop i love the wet reflective look. any product reccomendation for that? i appretiate it.

[Murr1525]

Re: ready for the best shine help

Really need to start from the begining.

Have you clayed the paint, used a paint cleaner ever?

[Spidey]

Re: ready for the best shine help

paint cleaners does wonders.. it cleans and adds a nice gloss/ oils to the paint as well... usually i just go from the cleaner straight to wax (yellow tech.) although my next wax i am going to try to nxt, then yellow tech

[ccapital83]

Re: ready for the best shine help

its been buffed clayed cleaner wax and polished atleast 50 times with either zaino or duragloss. sorry

[Spidey]

Re: ready for the best shine help

pics... you may just have unrealistic expectations

[Spidey]

Re: ready for the best shine help

and if that is your car in yoru avatar.. beign silver.. you won't be able to do the paint any justice with all the products you put on your car... black>silver any day of the week... but as a black car owner.. there are prices to pay to have such a glossy finish.

[ccapital83]

Re: ready for the best shine help

i have a good picture how do i get it up there?

[ccapital83]

Re: ready for the best shine help

yeah thats it in my profile what do you mean i wont be able to do it justice? maybe less polish and more wax?

[Chris Thompson]

Re: ready for the best shine help

Lighter colors, like silver, are hard to produce that POP that you are looking for. I think one of the main reasons is that they simply aren't as reflective as darker colors. Adding more wax than what you are already using won't necessarily make your paint shinier. Look for swirls. Once you have clayed it and it looks like your paint is very swirled, that is going to steal a lot of your thunder. If it's not too bad and just has a few, go over it with a light polish and maybe even consider using a glaze. After you have completed all of this and the wax still is not giving you what you want, then maybe you are asking too much from such a light paint.

[Michael Stoops]

Re: ready for the best shine help

Gloss and reflectivity come from a flat surface, which is why the guys here are suggesting use of a paint cleaner to remove defects below the surface such as fine swirl, embedded dirt, etc.

In Meguiar's usage, a "polish" is a product that contains no abrasives and offers no protection. Some other companies use that word very differently than we do, but we've been using it this way since 1901 - long before the founders of most of those other companies were even born. Zaino, for example, has long used the word "polish" for their products that many others would consider to be a synthetic sealant. We arent' saying that's right, wrong or otherwise - we're just trying to help you understand what's really going on with some of the products you might have used.

As Chris Thompson points out, silver is a very difficult color to obtain a deep, wet look from. It will never show those characteristics to the level that black, red, dark blue and other darker colors will. It's just the nature of the color. But that doesn't mean you can't have the brightest, shiniest silver car in the neighborhood. Or the state.

But the vast majority of your shine, gloss, depth, etc comes from the prep stages, not the wax. After claying you need to look carefully at the paint under pretty bright light. Silver does a good job of hiding swirls, but you can still see them if you can withstand the sun in your eyes for a brief period. Although this past weekend at Barrett-Jackson in Las Vegas we saw a silver Porsche with swirls so bad that they practically jumped up and slapped us on the face! Even in direct sunlight it didn't take a trained eye to find them, they were so bad. This type of defect seriously detracts from the overall appearance of the finish and needs to be properly addressed.

Are you working by hand or with a D/A buffer? Hand work on clear coat silver can be very difficult to achieve what you're after. You may need a fairly aggressive product like Ultimate Compound to remove the defects, but then follow with M205 Ultra Finishing Polish to really bring a high level of clarity to the finish. M205 is fantastic stuff, and worked with a D/A or rotary buffer it can do some pretty amazing things to any color car. But don't bust out a rotary buffer unless you seriously know what you're doing with it. A D/A is far, far safer for a novice to use. After doing those couple of steps your paint should shine like it never has before, and you still haven't waxed it yet.

Now follow this up with a couple thin coats of NXT Tech Wax 2.0 and you should have an incredibly bright, crisp, glowing shine on that silver car.

[Michael Stoops]

Re: ready for the best shine help

As a quick follow up to the above, have a look at the detail job Marc did on this Infiniti G37S Coupe. From even a short distance the car doesn't look bad in the image where it's all taped up and ready to go. But looking closer it's full of swirls, cobwebs, etc.

When finished the finish looks about as wet as you'll see on a medium silver car like this. Your car is a lighter silver so it's going to show perhaps a bit less depth than this while a very dark gray car will show potentially a bit more. None will ever look like black though.

[ccapital83]

Re: ready for the best shine help

my cars close to that infinity right now its just a little deeper than mine but i can get it to shine and reflect like that after a thin layer or pure carnuba. maybe ill try 205 then carnuba. can 205 by hand work?

[Michael Stoops]

Re: ready for the best shine help

You car isn't shining like that after a thin layer of carnauba because that Infiniti was treated to some properly machine applied M105 and M205. Hand application of M205 alone is not going to achieve that look, especially on silver.

Unfortunately there are no real shortcuts here, and the more discerning your eye becomes, and the more demanding you become, the more work is required to achieve the results you desire! It's sort of a vicious cycle - the better you get at this the better you want to get. And the law of diminishing returns eventually takes over and you need to do a disproportionate amount of work to achieve that last little bit of perfection.

Here's an example of what we mean: there are plenty of pro detailers, several on this forum, who will spend 20 hours taking a car from what you see in so many "before" images to what you see in the "after" images. These guys are hugely talented, highly respected, and many make a very nice living doing this. And then there are guys like Tim McNair of Grand Prix Concours Prep (we Tweeted about his concours prep seminar during Pebble Beach back in August) who will spend another 20 hours or more taking a car from those "after" images to a true concours finish.

The point is, how far you want to take your finish, and how skilled you are, is going to determine how much time, effort, energy and money is needed to get there. You absolutely can get your car to shine like the Infiniti we linked to, but it's not going to come particularly easy.

[ccapital83]

Re: ready for the best shine help

maybe i should try 205?

[Michael Stoops]

Re: ready for the best shine help

You can use M205 by hand, yes, but it may not give you the same result as Marc got on that Infiniti by machine.