Hello everyone, Ive just finished a 2 stage polish on my summer vehicle a 1990 VW Corrado which still has its original paint on it. The original paint is a single stage red, Ive done the IPA wipedown, and just put a coat of power lock on to the car to let it cure for a few hours, probably overnight. I have been using zymol rouge on the car(red wax meant for single stage red paint), Im wondering if its okay to put a pure carnuba on top of the power lock? I also have autoglym HD which Ive had some great results with on top of the power lock on one of my other cars. thanks in advance!
I have a client with the exact same car, and ALL we put is the Rouge. This car is stored for winter I'm assuming, so protection and insulation is mostly obsolete. So far in my experience, the rouge seems to be enough. A quick re-application every 7-8 weeks if needed is applied just to spruce up and you should be fine.
Thats great to hear that another member has experience with rouge and the same car Do you think it would be okay to put the rouge on top of the power lock without any problems?
The car isn't mine. So I don't know how well the owner is going to take care of it, but he brought it to me for a paint correction and to gain knowledge about what waxes would be good to maintain it. I told him the best would be Zymol Rouge. Since the whole idea behind Rouge is the fact that it has dyes to maintain and keep red single stage paints rich and red, I don't think it will work any good on top of a sealant. However, you could try the other way around, that might work and preserve its effect even longer. I couldn't tell you since I have my client come back to have his wax topped up every 7-8 weeks (gotta make money knowmesayin?) It wouldn't hurt to give it a try though. Try doing one fender with Rouge over the PL, and the other with PL over the Rouge. And leave the hood with just Rouge and compare. Here is a picture of the one I did, sorry for the slight fuzziness of the picture.
Put a coat of power lock on the car late last night and just buffed it off, that is a really nice VR6 in flash red. The paint is phenomenal shape! Is it original? The paint on my car is still the original paint, the driver's door has faded because the previous owner(original owner), who owned the car for the first 7-8 years of its life didnt wax the car. When I first got the car, I was into detailing, not as much as I am now, so I would do the mother's 3 step to it once in while to get rid of the oxidation. This is the first time that I have ever used my PC(Im new to the whole polishing thing), with the lake county pads, meguiars m105/m205/ultimate compound/3m ultra fine machine polish. It took me two days, at eight hours a day, I did the whole foaming the car with a mix of detailer's pride foam, with 2 ounces of dawn, and a few ounces of optimum power clean to strip all the old rouge off of the car. I let it dwell for 5 minutes on a nice over cast day(no sun). Then I wash the car with the two bucket wash method, left the car wet, pulled it inside the garage and proceeded to clay bar the car, not much grime came off of the paint during this process. Then I washed it again and dried with a waffle weave microfibre, and proceeded to masking the entire car off to prepare for the polishing phase. Once that was all done, I did the IPA wipedown twice, I used a kwazer filled with water and alcohol. I applied the first coat of power lock on the car, late last night and now I want to top it with an LSP. I guess since I jumped the gun on the power lock, I will give the autoglym HD a try on top of it, since I had such great results with it on my imola yellow audi a3. The paint looked wet right after and continues to look wet after a nice hand wash. Since the Corrado is my summer car, this coat of wax should be good till next year when I strip it off again and prep it for that season. I will post pictures of the car once the rims arrive.Thanks to everyone who chimmed in on this thread, Im really glad I joinend this forum, I did a lot of reading before even thinking about buying my PC, and even after I bought it, I continued to read and the end result isnt perfect, but overall not bad for a first timer.
Yes, this was original paint with the exception of the larger aftermarket rear wing which had a clear coat on it. The owner was having issues with keeping the paint bright because he was using the turtle wax "zymol" cleaner wax available at Canadian Tire and not protecting the paint properly afterwards. It took me a good 14 hours of work to give it a nice 1.5 step polish and then I waxed it with Rouge. Here's a 50/50 so you get an idea of how easily this paint oxidizes. I'd like to see your end results if you don't mind. I'm curious to see the difference between a specifically designed wax and a "general purpose" sealant on a SS paint. Your process seems perfect though. Just take your time and try not to remove too much paint as I noticed this type of paint (on this car at least) comes off very quickly compared to a CC paint.
Im done now, I put a coat of autoglym HD on the car, let it cure for a solid 45 minutes and proceeded to wipe it off, no difficulty encountered. The gloss is definitely better than ever before in all the years that I have owned this car. I will take some photos tomorrow and try to post them here. Im not really sure of how to do that, but will try to figure it out. Thanks for posting the photos of the before and after on your customer's Corrado. My paint wasnt that badly oxidized, when I had started the correction initially, but it did have a lot of swirls, water marks, and other small defects in the paint. You are right, my pads all turned red in no time. I also learned that SS paint is very soft and is very resilient to polishing(not too many times), but in general, I probably wont be polishing it again any time soon. Thanks again for the photos and the advice.
Here is a photo of the end result, this was the first time I ever used my PC with the m105/m205, 3rd stage was with 3m ultrafina on a black pad. Sealed with powerlock and topped with autoglym HD. This is 21 year old paint, Ive had this car for about 15 years now and have tried my best to look after it. This is a cellphone photo on an overcast day. I think it tunned out pretty good, next time, I will try the Zymol rouge wax topped with power lock.
Looks fantastic! Congrats. FYI, rule of thumb is to apply sealants first and top with waxes. Reason being that a wax will properly bond to a sealant but a sealant will not properly bond to a wax. That doesn't mean you will come out one morning and find all your sealant on the garage floor, but durability will suffer. Nice Corrado. Borrowed a friends VR6 for a few days once. Awesome.
