Detailed my car today. Started at 8am and finished at 4:30pm. Used 3m compounds / polish 1200 grit sand paper for wet sanding. my process was:
1. wash
2.clay bar
3. compound
4. wash
5. wet sand
6. swirl remover
7. compound
8. wash
9. polish
10. glaze
11. wax


here are the pics:

before:






after:





















Please ignore the fact that I have 350gt badge and mt fuji. I'm in the process of rebadging the full thing to skyline but didnt have time today. So it looks wierd right now being half oem and half JDM >_<

wheel decals will also be put on tomorrow.
Too manny mods, not enough hours in the day







Thanks for looking.

~Jeff

 

good job It must be nice to not have any noticeable rock chips / door dings

 

You still have some pretty bad holograms, use another lighter polish to remove them. I don't even use glazes because all they do is hide the mistakes.

 

looks clean

 

Your not fooling me with those pics! need the sun in afters like they were in the before's

I am sure you did a good job though!

 

glassy! nice job - most I ever spent on a good detail is 4 hrs..thats with claybar and everything..

 

Very nice... good god, man...

 

Good job jeff, looks much better.

There is still some serious hologramming as shown in this picture though, so as darkstar mentioned it would be worth your while to go over it again with a lighter polish to remove the marks.

 

^ yup I went over it again after I saw that. I re washed the car to get a bunch of left over polish residue off and it cleaned up 90% of the holograming. then I just went over it with Meguiars color X (because it has a built in wax and I didnt feel like re waxing it) and it cleaned up 100% of the holograms. Good lookin out fellas! thanks for the feedback.

 

Go to a local drug store and buy Isopropyl Alcohol in the first aid section, put it in a spray bottle and then spray it on the paint and wipe off with a microfiber. Do this a couple of times, it will remove any fillers in the paint. Inspect it in full sun. Meguiar's ColorX has a good amount of fillers in it, so those holograms are probably gonna come back in a couple weeks.

 

i would seal it after all that hard work, or real wax at least!

 

Thanks for the advice guys. Thats why I like this forum, great feedback. I just got some Isopropyl Alcohol. Ill let ya know how it works out

 

I'm not a detailer, so I don't know the details (pun intended), but are you able to do the wipe down with pure iso? I always thought it had to be a 50/50 iso/water mix.

 

^ yeah I heard 70% iso, then mix that 50/50 with water

 

Sometimes the IPA(Isopropyl alcohol) straight can streak, but if you do a really fine mist with a sprayer it generally doesn't, depending on how absorbent the microfiber is. I prefer it as strong as possible to make sure I am removing all fillers. I use 70% btw, because that's all I can find.

BTW OP, I'm not trying to knock on your work, I'm only trying to help. Holograms can be a huge PITA, I struggled with them when I started detailing, the car would look PERFECT and then they would show up a couple weeks later and just make the car look like **** again. IPA makes sure this doesn't happen.

There should be nothing but reflection where the sun hits, if there's anything that means there may be some slight holograms. It should look like this: