Soooo, I've been compounding my car for last few days using Meguiars M105 and microfiber pad. I've always been a fan of Meguiars because of the plenty amount of usage guides on their products online. For those that know of Meguiars M105, one thing that everyone would hate is the speed in which the compound flashes dry and is rendered useless and even harder if not impossible to buff off.

After a few rounds of tinkering with the methodology and combined with some elements from Kevin Brown method, here are some tips on how to manage the flashing:

1) Prime pad with M105, always keep it moist.
2) When in doubt, add more M105 to make sure the flashing doesnt happen too quickly.
3) Quick clean your pad by turning on your DA and rubbing a damp microfiber cloth on the pad. This helps to keep the pad clean before the next run.
4) Run less passes. M105 is already quite abrasive when combined with microfiber pad, 2-3 short passes and many defects will quickly disappear.
5) Use a damp microfiber cloth to wipe the surface after compounding to remove the residue first round before using a dry microfiber towel to remove the rest.

So far this technique has given my consistent results with minimal headache on handling M105. Happy detailing!

Mmm, u could try Meguiars Ultimate Compound. There are also brands like Menzerna that are worth to try, but probably wont beat price like Osren.

For DIY coating, u could try https://www.carpro-us.com/protection/new-cq...l-kit-w-reload/. It is sold also by Cquartz Malaysia, just that they dont display in their website.

Alternatively, u can contact Osren also, they also have coating products.

This post has been edited by blurcase: Jun 22 2018, 01:25 PM

Interesting argument against applying waxes on top of coating.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmkQHfPlkik

Yes, somehow even with increased liquid on pad, reduced passes and slower machine speed, there is a tendency that M105 will become very close to gummed up very quickly, making buffing off quite hard. After compounding, the finger swipe test will tell u how dry is the residue. If your finger can swipe it off, then the damp MF + dry MF will clean it all up just fine. There can be instances where the finger swipe cant remove anything, means M105 flashed dry dy, and even damp MF cloth will find it not as easy to remove.

Once my M105 finish, I may either try out M101 (which I currently have in my arsenal collecting dust, lol), or D300. How is D300 working for u?

As a person that was both a former detailing shop owner and also applied coating to new cars before, polishing is almost mandatory.

Please understand, even brand new cars are often not kept in clean and covered conditions. To build a car warehouse to store hundreds if not thousands of new cars waiting for buyers would cost alot of money, so most car warehouses are just big empty plots of land in industrial areas.

A few days before u collect your car, your salesman will bring your car to a cheap car wash and basic AIO polish to give it a like new look so that u wont complain of receiving a dirty car. However, give it a month, then wash your car clean and take a torchlight (or use the night streetlamp) and inspect your car, and u will see all the imperfections. This is because often the initial polish also contains fillers to mask the milder imperfections just enough to send off the new car, but fillers will wash off with time.

Just to allay your fears regarding polishing will strip clearcoat, watch this video:

https://youtu.be/cHEpqYGuUHI

The amount of clearcoat taken off during each stage of polishing is actually not as much as u might think. While it is true that eventually too much polishing can strip the entire clearcoat off, but that requires many rounds to do so. In retrospect, as douglas_tong mentioned, coating is a semi-permanent protection layer. As a detailer, we would prefer the clearcoat to look as perfect as we can do first before applying such expensive product to protect it.

With regards to claying, unfortunately most of the time that is not an advertised service because it brings no value that the common person can appreciate. As douglas_tong also mentioned, claying can also cause marring of your clearcoat, so even by cleaning invisible contaminants, customers that dont know any better would plainly think claying is worse for the paint instead of better.

Just sharing my 2 sen.

Hahaha, no need la, I have just 1/4 of the gallon bottle left, and next few days I will be detailing my parents daily driver (which sits under sun and rain). It will probably finish quite soon.

How is D300 cutting performance? Good? Doesnt flash dry as fast as M105 I hope?

Oooh, yes I have heard of DK from an ex-colleague before and reviews were actually very good. When u do try please let me know your results.

Yes.

http://detailingkingdom.com/store/

2 types of compound (1 for hard clearcoat, 1 for soft clearcoat), 1 polish, sounds simple enough.

No worries. Sorry if my statement sounded imposing, that is not my intention. We are all here to share info and learn from each other on the joys of detailing.

Anyone living near Great Eastern Mall, Homefix is having sale of Meguiars consumer products. Attached is pic of their sale products.



This post has been edited by blurcase: Jun 24 2018, 04:09 PM

Wow, flawless! Great work! Looks like Meguiars D300 also will be in my radar now, hehehe...

Agreed, when products close to finish only start scouting for new stuff. Else if get hooked to new stuff before current ones finish, end up old stuff gets canned.

Mmm, no picture posted. But I will share how I personally assess the existence of wax/sealant so that u can try:

1) Water hydrophobicity: on the day u first wax, spray a light mist of water and see how the water droplets "bubble" up. Maybe take a mental note or picture to be your reference. As time goes on, compare the "bubbling" of the droplets, as it will naturally be flatter over time. That is an indication that the wax is fading.

2) Panel touch: use your clean and dry finger to glide on a few of the car body panels. If it squeaks like like your clean plates, then there is high possibility that the protection has faded.

Hope this helps.

Great work! That was the same set of products I used when I first started into machine detailing! Very impressed with your results! Keep it up!

Based on my experience using a few different types of tyre shines over the years, I have not found one that can actually last for months. Some of them can last weeks at best.

However, also in my experience, I begin to notice that a tyre shine can last slightly longer if u wash your tyre well. I say this because in the past I only use normal car wash soap to wash my tyres and when I wipe them dry, my towel still turns black, which means car wash soap did little to remove the grime from the tyre itself. After I started using Superclean Degreaser (alkaline based cleaner) and brush the tyre, can really see the dirt coming out brown in colour. Once rinsed off can really see the original tyre semi-shine like from tyre shop. From there I apply tyre shine again, and it does last abit longer than usual.

Agreed agreed.

I did some checks on the product and other reviews:

https://www.amazon.com/Turtle-Wax-T-12KT-Bl...iews/B00IOBSXQ0

It seems to be mostly a hit with some misses. Majority of users do report it to last much longer than most other tyre shine products. I believe the major point based on both ChrisFix and Amazon reviews is the tyres must first be cleaned very well. This goes back to my earlier point about thorough cleaning of tyres and not just using car wash soap.

One major con to this product that many agree is that this product can stain almost anything else it touches if u are not careful during application, so handle with care.

Sooo, I finally finished detailing my Civic yesterday. Had to rush because the next car to detail was my parents daily driver while they are going away. Dont have much pics to show cuz I forgot to take proper before and after shots.

Few learning points in this session:

1) I start to hate cars that have concave body panels, lol. Civic has plenty of concave panels, and that makes it hard to keep the DA pad spinning properly.
2) I made a mistake of moving the DA machine too close to the masking tape lines. When cleaning after completed, I kept running the risk of reintroducing scratches when rubbing off the excess compound/polish residue.
3) I did not polish my windows this round, but will be polishing my parents daily driver windows because their watermarks way worse than mine.
4) I did not do enough inspection after each panel polished due to time constrain, perhaps will go more detail next round.







After final polishing completed, I used a diluted dish wash soap mix in spray bottle to give it a quick clean to wash off all the polishing oils residue. Then I applied Carpro Reload on all coloured panels, and Carpro PERL on all the trims. Overall it was a fun (and some parts frustrating) learning experience detailing my own daily driver.

Just sharing something new I learned with regards to microfiber towels. As we regularly use and wash them, they tend to start building lint between the fibers no matter how we care for them (wash independently from other cloths, put inside laundry bag, etc). So I decided to try using a lint roller to remove some of the lint from my cloths.



This by no means can remove all the lint 100%. However it can remove alot of the lint to the point when I use them to dry wipe a window, it doesnt drop as much lint. Also, I think lint rolling your towel also helps to reopen some of the microscopically twisted and embedded fibers, so the towel feels smoother and slightly softer now. So for anyone interested, feel free to try this.

This post has been edited by blurcase: Jun 26 2018, 05:41 PM

I think coating application really depends on your budget and what u choose. Considering that ur apartment parking lot is uncovered, u may run the risk of have alot of watermarks, even more so with coating applied.

My suggestion is wash your car regularly, especially if it is your daily driver. Perhaps a protection option that is convenient to u would be spray wax or spray sealant. Consider keeping a gallon bottle of clean water and a spray bottle of diluted car wash soap in your trunk as well as some microfiber towels. If u catch any contaminants like bird poo or very dirty windscreens, at least u can rectify them quickly.

Hope this helps.

Lol, I have Rupes Nano iBrid running on 2” pads, even then some of parts like the boot can be a slight challenge.

But yes, it definitely was fun. Tomorrow start on my parents daily driver full of watermarks SUV.

This post has been edited by blurcase: Jun 26 2018, 10:13 PM

I have used the hot steam method and conventional way (minus vacuuming) before in my old detailing shop days. I would say steam is generally safe on cushions and carpets, but to err on side of caution the plastic parts should be cleaned using some APC and simple brush instead. While generally most plastics in the car are made to withstand heat to a certain extent, we must remember that steam is made when water is being boiled 100 celcius and above.

Depending on who u send to, if they are professional and careful they should know where to use steam and where to just clean with conventional methods.

If u plan to DIY, then my suggestion is to go with conventional method of brush and APC or dish soap. Oh and plent of microfiber towels to wipe of soapy residue.

Hahaha, no need lor, my iBrid can do 12mm throw just as good as duetto, and I got option of 1”/2” pads and even rotary conversion if I want.

Here are some videos showing how to use ONR.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7LiR1l9ZVk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4tOlMA2yXw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNOrxWHr32Y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCFQhcTB5vg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pwki2c21pBw

U technically dont need a special place to wash your car using the ONR method, u can do it on your own car park so long as u dont mind the sun. If u dont want to carry 2 buckets, worst case u just need 1 bucket and a plastic bag, with plenty of microfiber towels (at least 8-12) for the wash part and preferably 1-2 big microfiber towels for the drying part. Any time a microfiber towel has become fully dirty, just chuck it into the plastic bag and bring back later to apartment to wash. It is almost like wiping your car, but instead of using 1 towel and bucket with water, u are using a more advanced tech ONR to clean your car and minimize the dirt scratching your car as u wipe them off.

Referring back to my earlier post, if u dont prefer to prepare a spray bottle of diluted car wash soap for emergency cleaning, u can also prepare a diluted ONR in spray bottle instead. That way u have more use and value for your ONR.

Hope this helps.

Mmm, for that u have to refer back to the coating provider, as I think different providers may cover warranty slightly differently.

I always buy from fellow LYN member Waregem. Havent found anyone cheaper than him, and havent seen it on retail shelves also.

Sooo, my parents went back hometown and I had opportunity to detail their daily driver. Since they bought it 2nd hand last year, I personally felt it was an eyesore because when the 2nd hand car dealer sold the car, part of their prep work was to ask a bangla in their shop to give a quick AIO polish. Knowing their work style, I had expected all the swirls to appear within 2 weeks after we brought it home. True enough all the swirls from poor polishing came out. As this car was parked outside most of the time, it also took a battering from the sun and rain, which as expected it would catch a ton of water spots. My objectives were simple enough, firstly to get rid of the water spots, secondly removing alot of scratches from the door handle area as per mum's complaint.

I had only 3 days to work on this car full time. After alot of hard work this was the results I came out with. To be fair the pictures probably only look nicer from afar. Just a few points to note:

1) Up close looks under specific lighting, I found that my technique and methods using my regular Meguiars M105+mf cutting pad and M205+black finishing pad didnt seem to give it the best finish. There were still small specks of water spots that could be seen after compounding, and to top it off I noticed random spider web marks after polishing. However I had to stick to my plan of 1 round compound + 1 round polish, as I also needed to polish the windshield that had watermarks as well and time was short.

2) I didnt realize that the entire time I left any of the doors open, the light in the car lit up, draining the battery. End up battery died, and I had to jumpstart it from an awkward position. Thankfully the jumper cable was just nice length.

3) The windshield polishing was another nightmare. I had Pinnacle Glass Work glass polish, Carpro Ceriglass, and Carpro Spotless. I have to say Carpro Spotless is very disappointing on the side mirrors because it pretty much did nothing to remove the watermarks. My Pinnacle Glass Work has been with me for a long time, maybe too long, seems like the product doesnt work very well anymore. Carpro Ceriglass was okay, but it didnt manage to remove the deeper watermarks on the windshield. Overall I just did my best with Carpro Ceriglass, but now learning from it I need to look for another product set that does a better job in removing watermarks.

4) I decided to work based on section instead of process. So, I started first day compounding, polishing and sealing the front and top of the car (most tiring due to climbing up and down). 2nd day did driver side doors and and boot area, 3rd day did passenger side doors, then when all complete went for the windshields. This seem to make things faster as day by day a section of the car is complete without going over it again the following day.

Anyways, here are some before and after shots.

https://www.11street.my/productdetail/303-3...lastic-41105356