Winter Prep Ford Explorer Day 2

Compound, polish, and more polish.

Never have so few worked so hard and had so little to show for the effort. Churchill said it about the Nazis after The Battle Of The Bulge, and it holds true for me as well. I just spent eight hours polishing out the paint on my car, and I ain’t even half done yet. It blows my mind that some people choose car detailing as a full-time career; it’s really hard fucking work and once you hit middle age your body will be broken. I am middle-aged and my body is pre-broken anyway, so it doesn’t matter.

Right now I’m totally shot; I’ll have to update the post later. Pictures and even video to follow.

I’m in pain. And I’m hungry.

Short Update: Here are some pics from today to hold you over until I get time to do a proper write-up.

Short update 2: A quick video clip of me cleaning the gunk out of polishing pads.

Products used today:

  • Harbor Freight dual action polisher. If there’s a sale and you have a coupon, you can pick this up for about $50 dollars. It’s an absolute steal even at full price and quality seems to be more than good enough for the amateur enthusiast/masochist.
  • Flex 3401 dual action polisher. This one is not cheap (but Marianne only wants the best). It’s powerful (due to forced rotation), hard to handle (due to forced rotation) and extremely heavy; I’d estimate about 68 lbs. That’s why my back hurts.
  • Various buffing/polishing pads from Lake Country and CarPro.
  • CarPro Fixer heavy compound. This gets the job done rather well, but is a total bitch to work with; it takes more muscle and time to remove the residue from the paint than the actual compounding, so I switched to…
  • Menzerna FG 400 with a fairly aggressive pad for the first step. I also used a very fast-cutting CarPro Flash Pad that also finishes nicely for spot corrections where I found deeper scratches.
  • CarPro Reflect with a medium fine polishing pad.
  • Menzerna SF 4500 with a very soft foam pad to finish off and bring out the gloss.
  • Of course the job isn’t done until the clean-up is done, so I washed the pads with a Grit Guard Universal Pad Washer. Pretty expensive for a hobbyist with only two cars to take care of, but, again, Marianne is a snob and wants all the fancy toys. Marianne also shot a video of me laboring with the pad washer. I’ll try to get it uploaded so you can see it in action. It’s a time saver for sure.
  • Buncha general purpose short nap microfiber towels from all over the place.
  • CarPro Eraser and isopropyl alcohol to help remove polish residue.

I think I could have done a decent enough job with two steps, or even one given that the paint was nice to begin with, but taking the easy way out is for girlie men. John Wayne said that.

Oh yeah, I tried to take some before-and-after close-ups of the paint to show the difference, but my camera just won’t pick up such small details in the light silver paint with lots of metallic, but trust me, it’s smoooth.

I think this will have to suffice as today’s entry. As always, no links are monetized. This blog had 36 unique visits yesterday, so I might want to rethink that policy. I could be leaving some serious beer money on the table. EDIT: I rethought that policy. Any and all links on OGNDY can now potentially be a source of beer money for me. Happy clicking!

It’s past midnight. Do you know where your children are?