Thanks for your support, let me know if there's anything else I can help with.

If the pad is picking up the color of the car then it could be for a couple reasons... the most common is it's a single stage paint, which would transfer the color onto a pad. If your car has a clear coat and you are seeing paint transfer onto a pad, then yes chances are you removed through the clear coat and are onto the paint layer, which isn't a good sign. It could also indicate that a certain panel may have been repainted or touched up and there may be a small amount of paint transfer. Also, if it's a black car and you hit black trim, it could be a transfer from the rubber or trim, not necessarily the paint. If the car is still dirty when you polish it can also change the pad to a duller / grayish color. Some products will stain a pad as well and it may not be paint transfer... those are pretty much all of the reason why you could see a pad change color.

If you're looking for a killer combination of polishes and pads to tackle nearly any type of imperfection, consider the following:

Megiuar's M105 - Orange pads - heavy cut for deeper swirls and scratches - here's a tutorial on using M105 with a PC.
Menzerna Power Finish - White pads - medium cut polish that will remove any marring left from the M105 step as well as remove lighter imperfections
Menzerna PO85RD - Black pads - our finest finishing polish to really enhance the gloss and depth of any paint job as well as remove any holograms that may have been left behind from the various polishing steps.

After polishing the paint, you'll want to protect the finish with a sealant or wax. I'd recommend using a sealant unless you plan on re-waxing on a monthly basis. A great sealant to go to is Blackfire Wet Diamond. If you want to boost it with a liquid wax after washes, Optimum Car Wax is a great option.

For your leather, if you're looking for a deep cleaning, consider the Leatherique Rejuvenator Oil and Prestine Clean combo. It's argued to be one of the best leather care combos on the market by many professionals. It has a unique applications process, so I'd recommend following this Leatherique tutorial for optimal results. It's also showing it on some beige leather to give you an idea of the type of results it delivers.

For your floor mats, consider going with Meguiar's All Purpose Cleaner. It's a great product used to clean carpet, vinyl, rubber, plastic and rubber surfaces very effectively, even diluted down 10:1 as the product recommends. Here's a write up to help show D101's effectiveness.

Let me know if there's anything else I can help you with.

George

 

^ thanks for the advice! as far as product what should I be using with those pads?

 

I listed and linked to the products that should be used followed by the appropriate pad in the post. Let me know if I'm missing something:

Meguiar's M105 (Compound) on orange pads
Menzerna Power Finish (Polish) on white pads
Menzerna PO85RD (Finishing Polish) on black pads

 

haha oh my god, I completely missed that, sorry! Thank you! haha

 

Any suggestions on what to use to restore rubber floor mats?

They're dried out, and I want the deep black back.

Not sure what product will do it without making the mats greasy/slippery. Thanks

 

this is starting to get REALLY repetitive... its like dejavu over and over and over again... ive seen floormat questions for like the past 2-3 pages (granted, I probably have asked questions that may have already been answered but still, GAH!)

So.. ill go ahead and copy/paste what he wrote on page 93 for the same question (minus the links)

"Something like Meguiar's APC+ does a good job cleaning and prepping rubber floor mats. It has a nice look left behind without looking dressed or feeling greasy. Some detailers will apply Meguiar's M40 after (or in general) to clean and condition rubber mats. Either of those should work for you."

 

Well considering the search function doesn't return the post number of a thread, and I'm not going to read through 95 pages to find an answer in an "ask" thread.... things will probably get repetitive.

 

click "search this thread" and type in "rubber floor mats".. and i got 8 posts, outta 95 pages (with my post being the most recent).. plus the last response was 2 pages ago... on page 93.

 

+1 Let's not drive poor George crazy asking the same question 3 times. He's been dishing out a ton of free advice and I have really, really appreciated it.

 

It's no worries, I'm here to help. I know it can be a pain to search through a lot of content. This is one reason we're building up our Ask-A-Pro section of our website to have a real organized database of Q&A's answered by some of the best pro's out there. It's easily searchable without weeding through a lot of BS.

Let me know what else I can help with and please do not be afraid to ask a question even if it's been asked before.

Have a great weekend.

George

 

Hey George I go the meguiars 105 and 205 compounds... i have a bad spot on my hood, can i just do the spot (about 5" area) or will I need to do the entire hood? Will the treated area standout from the rest of the car?

 

You could spot treat the area with the M105 but I'd go over the entire car with the M205 to ensure a uniform finish. Ideally, you always want to finish the car using the same finishing polish for optimal results.

Let me know if there's anything else I can help with.

George

 

Hi George I have a quick question about my PC 7424XP. When I turn the speed setting dial to any speed between 1 and 5, the dial has a distinct clicking sound and feel in many small increments. I assumed each click was a different intermediate speed setting.

However, between speeds 5 and 6 the dial doesn't click...it just turns smoothly. Is the dial supposed to function like that? Does this mean that there are no intermediate speed settings between 5 and 6?

Thanks for your contributions to this forum and for the great deals over at DetailedImage.

- Nick

 

Hey Nick, you nailed it. There's dial just goes from 5 to 6. When polishing to remove imperfections, I typically am either at the 5 or 6 speed.

Thanks for the kind words, if there's anything else I can help with, let me know.

George

 

Hi George,

I was hoping for your advice on this. I just got my wife's 2007 G35 Sedan detailed before a lease turn in. She has a light, but long, scratch on the front hood that the detailer said he would try to buff out.

Well, he started and then this happened:



I don't know if you can quite make it out - my iPhone camera isn't great - but I circled the area. It looks like the clearcoat, or maybe even some of the paint, rubbed off when he started buffing. He stopped as soon as it happened, of course. It's a grey car, and it looks like a nice little 1x3 inch "dull" spot in the paint now. It's noticeable pretty much from any angle you look at it.

Now, this guy is one I've used before, he seems to know what he's doing and he's highly rated on Yelp. So I'd like to believe this isn't a result of him being a cluebag. However, now I have this spot in addition to the scratch and if Infinti's lease inspector was going to give me grief before I'm gonna get it twice as bad now.

My detail guy's theory is that the scratch, or some other damage, was already there before we bought it, and the dealer did a hack job covering it up and that's why the clear coat/paint came off in that particular spot (it's worth noting he did buff and clean the rest of the car with no problems). I'd like to believe him - does that sound feasible?

Second, is there a way to fix this without repainting the entire hood? My detail guy says he knows a paint dude who could fix it, but I don't want to make an already bad problem worse. Is this something fixable from a touch-up point of view or am I looking at body shop work? I'm going to be honest, this is for a lease turn in, so my primary concern is that it passes, not how long it lasts. If it's true that the damage was already there and the dealer did their own cover up job then I will derive a certain amount of satisfaction doing the same thing back to them. The thing about that scratch is neither my wife or I have any idea how it got there - it's not something one of us did. Not that it couldn't have happened in a parking lot somewhere but it's something that just sort of appeared without us noticing, so maybe it was covered up?

Thanks for any advice!