chrw

Finally Zaino'd the 99CL today. Wow! That stuff works great! My car was quite dirty to begin with so I had to wash it a couple times first. Then the claying--it was actually much easier than I thought it would be! Did the whole car with only 1 of the clay bars that you get, but I made 3 pieces outta the one bar. Very easy, just time consuming, took me about an hour to clay the whole car. The only big trouble spots were on the panels right behind the rear wheels. The clay picked up tons of stuff. There were some other places as well, but the clay picked up everything very easily. I'm amazed how much junk was on the car after washing it! The finish was silky smooth after that. Then washed with Z7, and already I could tell everything was extremely clean. Dried with a towel, and applied some touch up paint to a couple tiny places that needed it. Applied Z1, knowing it had to go on thin. My first time I did pretty good, probably used 2 ounces. Then put Z2 on, and boy is this stuff hard to put on thin! I'm sure experience helps. I have the gold color CL ("Oh excuse me Mr. Parts guy at the dealership having a bad day and too busy to help me--Titanium Metallic is the official name.") so it's very difficult to see everything being applied. Waited 2 hours (pretty humid here), went out and wiped it off with a towel. Had to put some elbow grease into it (does that mean I put Z1/Z2 on too thick? Probably...), but it shined up very nicely. Took a step back and WOW! With only 1 coat of Z2 it looks fantastic. Ran my hand along the hood, smooth as silk baby! No roughness anywhere, just perfect. I'll have to see about putting on a few more coats of Z2 over the next few weeks. I know light colored cars don't reflect Zaino as nicely as darker colored cars, but still it's amazing. It totally looks new, and like an executive luxury car or something.

One thing I will no longer use: a chamois. Towels are way better IMHO. Things seemed to go much easier with a towel, I knew I wasn't scratching anything like a chamois could. But doing the car today I noticed I had no swirl marks, so that's good news. Well no swirl marks that I can see at least.

Anyways, for anyone considering Zaino I'm highly recommending it after using it for the first time. It did take several hours, but this was the first time so there was more work involved. Now I'll just have to see how well it stands up to the elements.

Sorry 'bout the long post, I'm just so happy how amazing my car turned out! I've never had a car this totally clean, and a finish so amazingly smooth.

jps_RENAMED

congrats! the first time is way more time consuming and labor intensive than maintaining the look, so now its a piece of cake.

Homer2

Hey Chris . . . glad to hear about your great results.

first thing that come to mind after reading your post -

2 ounces ! ! ! ! of Z1

yikes, no wonder it took some elbow grease to remove . . . you should be able to get it down to less than 1 to do any 2 door car out there.
practice will make that happen.


secret words - if you can see it, it's too thick



regards

dennis

chrw

I just need practice!! Zaino is very different than other waxes where you are used to putting the product on thicker (to see that white haze right), so I'm sure it takes a bit of practice to get Zaino applied right. I guess a common newbie problem is that you normally can't see it when you apply it (especially on a light colored car), so how do you know you applied it correctly! You really have to methodically go panel by panel on the car.
Maybe next time I'll shine a very bright light on the section I'm working on or something.

Now that I have checked the bottles, it looks like I used 1.5 ounces each of Z1 and Z2. I'll do better next time.

IWuvMyCL-S

Question for you: How long did you wait between applying the touch up paint and applying Z1? I'm planning on finally doing Zaino this spring, and wonder how long the touch up paint needs to dry.

Thanks!

chrw

It only needs a couple minutes, I think I let it dry for about 10 mins while I was getting ready to apply Z1.