using this and cheap walmart cotton towel.


washing and waxing took total of an hour. here's the result.

 

Looks great. Even the wipers liked it!

Mike

 

 

you challenge the zealots of Zaino at your peril!

 

Looks good, Can't believe you finished in an hour. Usually when I wash and wax it takes no less then 4 hours to get through it all the way I want it.

 

the car wasn't dirty at all, so the wet wash didn't take long. the polisher is liquid, easy to remove.

 

That explaines it, nothing else like driving a freshly waxed TL.

 

How soon should you wax your TL? I've had mine for a little over two months, haven't waxed it yet tho.

 

You can start anytime - after two months, I would give it a good polish first, or use a cleaner/wax. Clearcoats need to be protected even more than old finishes - once the clear is compromised, the finish is in deep trouble.

Good choices for you would be the Zymol cleaner/wax, Meguiar's #6. etc. An excellent cleaner wax is Klasse's All-in-One - it is an effective cleaner, and uses acrylics to give shine and durability. Zaino also uses acrylics.

If your car is black, stick with the carnaubas, as they do seem to give a better depth of color, and silicones tend to give black finishes a "silvery" sheen. And I am a Zaino fan. Another option is to use Zaino or Klasse, then do the "top coat" with carnauba. Griot's Garage makes a really nice liquid carnauba, P21 has a good one, and Zymol Carbon, for all its hype, is still a great product to use, and I find one container lasts a very long time, as it goes on thin. Stay alway from the silly "designer" waxes from Zymol - you are getting into the "religion of waxology" there, IMO. When a guy tells me he paid $200 for a container of car wax, I find it hard to keep from bursting out in a raucous laugh.

 

My blue 2004 TL was built the first of June. I took the car on June 30. Called the body shop at Chevy Chase Acura in Washington, D.C. and they said I could wax anytime.
So I cleaned with MacGuires and waxed with Griots "Best In Show" wax. Everybody who sees the car outside in the sun comments on the color and the wax job. I love both products and a wash, cleaning and wax took less than two hours.

 

Thanks Road Rage, I'll go do that this weekend. I have a SSM, so don't think I gotta worry too much about that "silvery" sheen

 

Just got Klasse AIO, Sealent glaze, and p21s wax.

Fist the AIO, then the Glaze and top it off with p21s.

can't wait.

 

Looks nice...I use Zaino and love it. With my old car, a NBP TL-S, I used Pinnacle Sovereign Carnuba wax with good results..but the '04 Anthracite seems to work better with the Zaino stuff. The carnuba wax does seem to give better depth of shine with dark colors..but Zaino should work just fine with your color.

 

On a fairly new TL, do you need to use a cleaner wax such as Zymol? I thought cleaner waxes were for when the car has swirls and small scratches in the clear coat. Also, what do you thnk of Meguiar's NXT wax for a SSM TL?

Thanks
Mike

 

I finally tried Zaino, and am now a believer. The first time (at 6 months) took less than 5 hours, including wash, partial claybar, rewash (dawn) and 3 coats of Z2. It is like glass and zero - nada- swirl marks. The best thing is the gloss enhancer- car gets some light dirt and dust and in 5 minutes it is clean and shiny as ever.

 

No, cleaner/waxes do just that - they clean. Any car, even one without scratches or swirls, will have embedded dirt and various pollutants, including sulfurs from fuel, coating the car. Unless one cleans (either a polish or by clay), one is waxing the grime back into the clear. On a Zaino'd car with regular Z-12 applications between waxes, the dirt seldomly embeds, since the surface is well protected by the acrylic polymers.

NXT is a good product - all their products are good. SSM is not wax critical, as blacks and reds are.

I have found that on cars I baby (like the S2000), which sits in a garage with a cover on it, that frequency of cleaning/polishing as opposed to just waxing (with wax or wax-like stuff) is perhaps once a year.

For the TL, which gets exposed to all the elements and sits in the sun or rain all the time, cleaning/polishing and waxing are needed every 3 months. Cleaner/waxes are the easiest, because it is one step. I almost always use a good polish (Meguiar's#5 or Pinnacle) with my Porter Cable orbital and a mild "cutting" pad from Meguiar's professional products. Then a top coat of whatever "wax" I plan to use. I have Zaino'd the TL, but if I get lazier later on, I will use either the Zymol cleaner/wax, or Klasse AIO. The Outback gets one of those, and every time I think the paint is beyond hope, a few hours with the orbital and those good cleaner/waxes has it looking great again. Subie paint in 1997 was very resilient.

Cleaner waxes do leave white residue behind - the cleaning is both chemical and mechanical, using fine abrasives that will not scratch. Meguiar's uses diamotaceous earth, and Zymol uses walnut or almond shell powders. After I am done, I use a detailing mist to get most of the white off, and a soft brush (NOT a toothbrush) to get in the small nooks.

 

oh man, i want my car back and looking like that... thatsa peeeetty car. soonest they said is the 23rd that it can come back from the body shop...

 

The car looks great!

May I ask how you dealt with cleaning the grill? You can't wax that, can you?

I'm not very experienced with detailing and I want to make sure I don't do something I'll regret later by doing something wrong.

 

Moving to Wash & Wax

 

Please Please Please lose the cotton towel and get some Micro Fiber Towels - Cotton will scratch your paint -