What's the BEST wax

[BATMANs]

I washed my truck the 5th time without re-waxing with the Turle-wax and must say that I'm still impressed with how it keeps my white truck cleaner than before. I usually wash every week, but there is less dust on the truck that I'm almost tempted to skip every other week.

 

[jcbadcura]

try using their wax or detailer spray to help wipe off the excess wax.

pics of the bottle?

It's the synthetic paste, but here's a pic...

 

[BATMANs]

u have the old formula.

The new one is a few pages back on what it looks like.

Huge difference in longevity/durability, ability to keep the paint cleaner longer and shine.

 

[Ogs Rex]

You guys may have seen this vid before...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UK7DWeMZyFQ

This is the wax that he uses...

http://www.swissvax.us/merchant.mvc...x&Product_Code=SP10155500&Category_Code=WAXES

Is it the best? I am sure it has one of the higher carnuba wax contents...

But is it worth it? Well thats up to you to decide...

 

[tabasco]

Zaino for 11 years. Just detailed.

 

[1-Old-Man]

I have had a paying hobby for much of my adult life in that I paint motorcycles. I only do a few a year, half a dozen at the most and more like three or four most years. Most of the bikes I have painted are on the street but every paint job is of "show quality". I paint cars too, but bikes are my thing. I am slow and I am expensive (though to tell the truth I paint some bikes for free). As much as I enjoy painting, and I know this may sound odd, I actually enjoy cutting and buffing even more.

There is a whole lot of misunderstanding about just what the finishing process does, how it happens, and to be honest about it plain ignorance about the products that are available and how and when they should be used. Getting that perfect shine does not start with some 'compound', or a lump of clay, or even with a half dozen grades of sandpaper to even out the clear coat. If you want to get perfection in the end you have to start a lot deeper than the surface of the clear. The time to get your vehicle straight and flat is when you are straightening out the primer, after the vehicle has been sealed. If you don't start then everything else you do is just window dressing.

The thing to keep in mind throughout the finishing process is that you are always going from a courser finishing material to a finer one and the most important rule is that everything must be kept clean as you go.

Abrasives are graded and sanpapers are marked with their grades. A number is used that very roughly corresponds to abrasive particles per square inch. That means that papers with very low numbers (there is more than 1 grading scale) are very coarse and papers with high numbers are very fine. What is high and what is low? If you are preping bare metal by sanding it you would probably use paper between 36p and 80p grit. This is very rough paper and sanding with it will produce sparks and deep sanding scratches in the metal. This is where you start. The deep scratches provide "tooth" in the metal which will help the (epoxy) sealer adhere to it. Fillers are used directly on top of the sealer and panels are sanded to shape with progressively finer papers (180p up to about 240p) during this stage. Then its time for primer. The priming stage is the most important part of the painting process. Give plenty of time for your primer to dry between coats and it will reward you with a stronger and longer lasting job. After sufficient primer has been shot the car will be dusted with an indicator coat and then the block sanding begins. By now you should be up to 400p paper, which is a good finish sanding grade prior to a standard base coat. If you are going to use pearls or a fine metallic base you would want to go up to about 600p but when you start getting smoother than that you start to run into adhesion problems. After the primer has been blocked you need to seal it and then move immediately to your painting plan. You will end up by shooting the clear coat.

Most cars that are painted get the masking pulled off of them that day and then will be left to sit for a couple of days before calling the customer to pick it up. Most cars are never cut and buffed (sanded and buffed).

If you plan to cut and buff what you need to remember is that what you are doing is just continuing the sanding process that you last touched just before you shot the sealer on the vehicle. That was probably either 400p, 600p, or maybe 800p. Now you are looking at the clear coat, which if the painter was any good looks great right off the gun. There may, however, be some flaws in it. A fleck of dust, a moth that flew into the booth and then took a hike across the clear coat on the hood before drowning in his own tracks, a little spit of a bugger the gun blew out right up under the wheel well. Just about every paint job has it flaws. No problem, they can all be sanded out and buffed back to perfection.

So you restart the block sanding process. On top of fresh clear coat (give it at least 24 hours to dry and four or five days is even better) you can start sanding with 1000p grit. Use this paper to sand off about 80% of the surface, just a quick sanding to break the haze and maybe take out a few of the larger imperfections. From there you move up to something on the order of 1200p~1500p, which you will use to bring it up to about 90%+ of the surface having been sanded to a haze and all of the dust specks removed. The final ten percent should be finished with 2000p grit and by the time the surface is completely hazed from sanding all of the imperfections should have been sanded out and the entire surface should have been hit with the finest paper So in the sanding stages you have moved, progressively, from about 800p~1000p up to about 2000p grit paper. In my experience you don't get a better finish if you go higher in paper grades than this, so 2500 and 3000p are to my mind and in my experience just wasted theatrics. Now its time to start buffing.

Buffing compounds are the next extension of the sanding process. They are just different abrasives in finer grades that are suspended in liquid rather than glued to paper. Buffing compounds have grades too and many are multiple grade in that somewhat like 10w-40 oils have multiple viscosity they go through multiple stages of coarsness as they are used. The compound I use* has an initial grading that is roughly equal to 2400p grit sandpaper. I use it first with a medium pad for the initial buffing and then after washing it with lots of plain water I move up to a fine pad, but with the same compound. This takes the buffing to something roughly equal to 4000p grit. This gives a very good shine, but there will be swirl marks in the finish.

Swirl remover is a very very fine compound. It is used with the softest of buffing pads. When its used properly it will take out all of the swirls and leave a perfect finish.

There is no reason to go any farther than a swirl remover on your car. No wax is necessary. There is no reason to 'clay bar' your finish after swirl removing either, the dirt and crud will come later. Anything you do to the finish after the swirl remover is just maintenance but consider this. The entire process from bare metal (36p) to the perfect finish (4000p+) has been progressive. If you try to jump in somewhere in the middle with a step that is out of order you accomplish absolutely nothing. By that I mean that if your paint job is right off the gun and has never been color sanded then it won't do you any good at all to try and buff it with a swirl remover, or to clay bar it, or give it that most gentle of wipes with grand-maw's flannel undies if that's what you do. Its a process and you have to go through the whole process or your just wasting your time and materials.

PS: Wool buffing wheels are great for taking gouges out of boats, not so great for cars.

* 3M Perfect-It II.

 

[nsxspdfreak]

Thanks for the website! It has a lot of good information that I never knew

Great website. Thanks for posting.

 

[Sarahaw]

A black car is most prestigious but also one of the hardest to maintain. Any blemish, scratches or swirl mark is immediately conspicuous and they therefore require special care.
You can’t avoid your motty getting blemishes because they come from all kinds of elements. Be it the scorching sun with its UV, the rain and acid rain, dust, road tar, tree sap, and what have you, the defaced car finish really degrades your class and style.
You need to wax regularly, but you need to follow the right procedure for desirable results.
First give the car a thorough wash to remove dirt, grime, old wax and grease. My best wash for this is the Meguiar's G7164 Gold Class. Some dirt such as road tar, bugs and tree sap may have dried and baked into the auto finish. The car wash soap is not very effective at getting them off and you may want to use a bug and tar remover. This is an anti adhesive that softens the oil based spots for easy wiping.
Next, polish your car using an appropriate polish/conditioner to hide the swirl marks and spots. For light touches, Mothers 08100 California Gold is low cost and regular application increase paint’s depth and shine. If it is a deep mess, intensive conditioning is best done by PO83 Intensive Polish.
Apply a paint sealant and give it time cure, preferably one day.
This is now the best time to wax and the best wax for black cars with scratches should be liquid or wax, and shouldn’t dry fast to prevent spotting. It should also provide UV protection and safe to other vehicle surfaces such plastic trim or rubber besides the paint.
Set to wax your car in a shade to prevent evaporation of the waxing solution. Apply at least two layers of wax, giving each layer time to dry and cure.

 

[Hugh]

A black car is most prestigious

LOL! That's some funny shit. A black car is the most prestigious where? In your imagination perhaps. It's just a black car for God's sake. Instead of wasting hours buffing, claying, waxing, polishing and who knows what other bullshit just drive the damn thing through a LaserWash and drive it. It's a car, not a little fairy princess prepping for a pre-pubescent beauty pageant.

 

[docjohn]

Hugh man you crack me up with what you dredge up.....:biggrin:

 

[Hugh]

Hugh man you crack me up with what you dredge up.....:biggrin:

I was trying to figure out what you were talking about then I noticed the numbnuts' post that I was replying to was from May 2018. The only reason I even saw his post was because I got a new post notification email from Prime telling me that his post was just made to a thread that I was subscribed to. So I clicked, read and replied. Weird!

Here is the email I received:

[h=3]NSX Prime via sendgrid.info [/h] <tbody> </tbody>	Thu, Jan 3, 12:50 PM (12 hours ago) ​		​
to me <tbody> </tbody>

<tbody style="display: block;">
</tbody>

Dear Hugh,

Sarahaw has just replied to a thread you have subscribed to entitled - What's the BEST wax - in the NSX Detailing & Car Care forum of NSX Prime.

This thread is located at:
http://www.nsxprime.com/forum/<wbr>showthread.php/156608-What-s-t<wbr>he-BEST-wax?goto=newpost

Here is the message that has just been posted:
***************
A black car is most prestigious but also one of the hardest to maintain. Any blemish, scratches or swirl mark is immediately conspicuous and they therefore require special care.
You can’t avoid your motty getting blemishes because they come from all kinds of elements. Be it the scorching sun with its UV, the rain and acid rain, dust, road tar, tree sap, and what have you, the defaced car finish really degrades your class and style.
You need to wax regularly, but you need to follow the right procedure for desirable results.
First give the car a thorough wash to remove dirt, grime, old wax and grease. My best wash for this is the Meguiar's G7164 Gold Class (http://amzn.to/2FHlOxm). Some dirt such as road tar, bugs and tree sap may have dried and baked into the auto finish. The car wash soap is not very effective at getting them off and you may want to use a bug and tar remover. This is an anti adhesive that softens the oil based spots for easy wiping.
Next, polish your car using an appropriate polish/conditioner to hide the swirl marks and spots. For light touches, Mothers 08100 California Gold is low cost and regular application increase paint’s depth and shine. If it is a deep mess, intensive conditioning is best done by PO83 Intensive Polish.
Apply a paint sealant and give it time cure, preferably one day.
This is now the best time to wax and the best wax for black cars with scratches (https://motoringessentialsgui<wbr>de.com/best-wax-for-black-<wbr>cars-with-scratches/) should be liquid or wax, and shouldn’t dry fast to prevent spotting. It should also provide UV protection and safe to other vehicle surfaces such plastic trim or rubber besides the paint.
Set to wax your car in a shade to prevent evaporation of the waxing solution. Apply at least two layers of wax, giving each layer time to dry and cure.
***************


There may also be other replies, but you will not receive any more notifications until you visit the forum again.

All the best,
NSX Prime

 

[GBL1]

A black car is most prestigious .

Black cars are a big PITA to keep looking good...AND, you lose A LOT of detail in a beautiful car.

Look at a Red Ferrari LaFerrari (in person)...now look at a black one (in person)...you can now see how you lose LOTS of beautiful lines.

Change my mind.

 

[BATMANs]

black car blends in the ugly rubber mold and trim - which the NSX has too much of IMHO.

it also makes the entire car pop in terms of the silhouette.