My Mercedes isn't black. It's much lamer than that. I believe it was referred to as Buick Beige or something on here once?
Now I'm back to not wanting to use my polisher, though. By hand I know I can do a good job. I literally "polished" the paint right off a chunk of my bumper on my Sienna, so I definitely don't have the right touch with it.
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Is this your black Mercedes? Not to be that guy, but actually correcting paint is hard enough, black is next level challenging. I say actually because it’s reasonably easy to hide and fill the swirls, as lots of products contain plenty of fillers just for the purpose. Just be prepared to want to rip your hair out chasing swirls and halos. Taking a machine to your black luxury car is not something to be taken lightly.
I have a Sportwagen that is black. I clay barred, polished and waxed it a few months ago and got a super sweet finish considering I think this car lived outside the first four years of its life.
Spoiler!
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anyone in Deep SW have a hydraulic press? need to replace wheel bearing in kids 2001 civic. going to pick and pull to get a whole spindle so I can replace bearing then do her car in one shot.
Not sure if i'll be successful hammering out the bearing, Maybe I can use hydraulic jack to press it out if it's braced on something?
Okay, just finished ceramic coating my car with the cquartz uk stuff zamler recommended. Took about five hours including prep. Wow, that's a big undertaking. Whatever they charge at a shop for that is not enough. I don't know if I'd do it again.
Just washing the car at a wand wash was $28 because I did such a thorough job. I have an attachment for my drill I use along with wheel cleaner, but I did that at the car wash so probably wasted like $5 using that and no car wash resources. It was important to get the wheels perfect, though, because I did ceramic coat them, too.
In my garage I clay barred, then polished by hand (chickened out on using my power polisher), then did the ceramic coat. Last thing was some final spray and buff to seal in the ceramic coat or something? Not exactly sure what that was but in the ceramic coat kit it said to use it so I did.
Gotta say, this better be worth it because it's way more work than my typical annual wax. I took a before and after shot in my garage and they look virtually the same, probably owing to the really good wash I gave it before starting. I guess the real benefit is in staying cleaner longer between washes. Once the coating cures, I'll take it outside and hopefully get some better pics that will show off the work that went into it.
I also picked up some tire shine gel and application sponge from carzilla. That stuff is way better than anything else I've ever had. Also did my glass with RainX. Summer floor mats are back in, too.
I don't know if CQuartz has changed recently but I believe that you should have waited at least 24 hours to allow the ceramic coating to cure before applying anything on top of it.
anyone in Deep SW have a hydraulic press? need to replace wheel bearing in kids 2001 civic. going to pick and pull to get a whole spindle so I can replace bearing then do her car in one shot.
Not sure if i'll be successful hammering out the bearing, Maybe I can use hydraulic jack to press it out if it's braced on something?
Unfortunately I'm too far away to offer assistance, but before I got mine I would just swing by a shop and usually they would do it for $20 beer money.
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You should wait 1 week before touching the paint with anything. Yes doing a full correction and coating is many hours of work, hard work.
After about a decade of doing this to my cars, I pay shops to do it now. I will say a lot of the ceramic coatings available today are a lot easier to apply than the old days of Opti Coat Pro but it's the prep that's the back breaker for me.
After about a decade of doing this to my cars, I pay shops to do it now. I will say a lot of the ceramic coatings available today are a lot easier to apply than the old days of Opti Coat Pro but it's the prep that's the back breaker for me.
I don't blame you. I have all the tools and products to do it myself but won't do it again next time my cars are going to a shop.
My views on the new Z are very conflicted. On the one hand from certain angles I look at it and think "damn, wow, that's a cool car that has done 'retro' styling right."
And then from other angles I think "Huh, that's pretty obviously just a reskinned 370Z, a car that was already pretty desperately long in the tooth..."
Yeah, that was the one thing that really put me off the design. Everything else I didn't like was better once I saw it in these videos, but the grill is really not a high point of the design.
