Small Scratches in paint - Turtle Wax ICE etc

[St33lsinger]

Originally Posted by Junkman2008

A lot of the opinions in this thread are pretty normal as they show the various levels of expertise within the post. It also shows the varying level of acceptance as to what is acceptable when talking "perfect paint".

Perfect paint on a daily driver is hard to maintain but it is every bit of possible. Once you get it perfect, it may only stay that way until you drive it again, however, fixing it is usually a very easy thing to do. It should never take a repeated effort of the amount of work that you had to do to get your paint scratch free. Once should be all it takes, and from that point you should use quality equipment and products (these things are NOT found at Costco, Auto Zone, Pep Boys and the like).

The one thing that I always advise people to do is to take a spotlight look at the paint of someone who is giving you advice. A lot of the pictures that I see from folks who claim that their paint is perfect (although they use stuff like Turtle Wax and Costco towels), are always long shots from 10' or better. I can hid all kinds of damage in a shot like that. Here's a perfect example.

The paint on this car looks flawless:




But look what shows up when you put some light on the subject...




Here's another. This Camaro looks sweet.




Add some light and UGH!




So if I want to convince someone that some paint is flawless, I do a before shot...




... and then come back with an extreme close up of the repair (ignore the rain drops in the picture...).




If I was a noob at this and wanted to takes someone's advice on paint care, this is what I would look for in their paint. It must pass my super up close, all up in your "grill" look. If it looks flawless after all the light I put on it, then I would definitely want to hear what they had to say. Most of the time, I get guys with paint like this who claim it is flawless:




Imagine what he thought of this once I actually made it flawless:




One man's flawless can be another man's... where's the BARF smiley?

WOW point taken LOL

[Junkman2008]

Originally Posted by Steelsinger

ex-Navy here..we NEVER NEVER did that LOL. However we used kool-aid...no sugar added. Cleans stainless steel really good though.

As a Marine, I can vouch for this too. We used the same Kool-Aid to strip wax off the floors. Stuff did wonders. To think, we drank that stuff like water!

[y2k king]

i use tw ice on the car and the bike...i just make sure nobody gets close to them with a spotlight.

[mojojojo7176]

Hey JunkMan, how long does it typically take to do a whole car from start to finish ?