Quest to develop a suitable basic single step correction program – first time D151 user review plus a swirled 1997 C Class Full blown, multi-step paint correction projects are always the most interesting to do, write, and read about. The sense of gratification that a detailer gets as he stared at the fruits of his hard labor for the first time after applying his precious lsp to the refined surface, the transformative 50-50 shot he managed to take during the project, and of course the look on the owner's face as he hands them the keys is just priceless whether said detailer was doing it for financial rewards or not. Basically, these kind of jobs, and I’m sure you would agree with me, are our pride and joy, the projects that defines who we are as a detailer. Straight forward, single step, single day paint enhancement details however, to me at least, are often seen as the bane of my existence, tortuous projects; filled with moments in which I would stand close to a panel, observing the results of what I had just done, with a certain Mr. Mcknight’s voice singing Shoulda Woulda Coulda in my head, well you get the idea. I hazard a guess that most of you have experienced those rather frustrating moments as well. The thing is, often times, I would succumb to this nagging of my ego in an attempt to go the extra mile, only to end up doing not just an extra mile but more like an extra 5 miles and left feeling underappreciated and undervalued when the time comes to hand the end product back to the owner. A trip to the local electronic mall some time ago made me realize, that although at the time i might think that my life would be totally incomplete without the magnanimous Galaxy S2 sitting inside my jeans' pocket, not everyone needs the latest and baddest super smart phone, some people feels it totally adequate that a phone can simply make proper phone calls and probably send some text to the people that they care about from time to time. I realized (quite late, to be honest) that the same thing applies to detailing, not everyone would care nor have enough time to wash their car with the 2bm every time it has built up a layer of dust and, arguably, seeing the finish of a car that I’ve so painstakingly corrected in the past degrading rapidly as I see the car from time to time due to the failure of the owners to take proper care in maintaining the car is just as heartbreaking , probably even more than handing over the car with some of the RDS still intact. So in this light, lately I've been on a newfound quest to find a basic single step correction solution that would deliver optimum results for customers with less than stellar aspirations (and or budget) while at the same time still allowing me to finish the work with acceptable results without feeling under-appreciated in the end. Anyway, back to the subject, my previous one step regime was, as it had been for some years now, Scholl's s17. On merc paints it's able to do quite an impressive correction with more than decent gloss. But, the fact that it still needs to be followed up with lsp application , its tendency to leave quite a significant dust n sometimes residue on edges and gaps that might take some effort to remove , along with my tendency to go the extra mile on every panel by ending up doing more than a single pass on each section to get the results that I want, kinda gets me that familiar feeling at the end of a job that would mostly took me anywhere from 10-12 hours to complete along with the intensive post polish cleanup (which can take quite an effort with this particular polish), and lsp application. So I was looking for a one step polish that would allow me to work on a car in a shorter time, while still giving me acceptable and pleasing results. I also figured that I wouldn’t mind if this new method would not cut as well as the s17 (to a certain degree) as long as I would be able to skip the lsp application process. From my experience, I also found S17s residue to be easy to clean up , provided you clean them immediately and thoroughly; should you fail to miss anything, things get exponentially tougher, so if the new polish can also save me from having to spend a not so inconsiderable amount of time cleaning its residue, it would be another plus for me. Another thing that is quite obvious is that it has got to be economical. After doing a little research on the internet, I thought that Meguiars D151 would probably fit the bill. Its cheap, I can get a gallon of the stuff for a little over the price of a 32 oz bottle of M205. It’s an AIO, which means that not only it would save me a step but that I can also make further lsp application as an up sell which would give me more profit. If I read correctly, it’s supposed to have more cut than 205 and it’s also powered by SMAT technology which would allow me to tailor the cut (to some extent) if situations call for it by altering my technique. It is also applicable by hand so it should be handy for those hard to reach areas. Mind you, I do not expect it to cut as good as my previous 1 step polish, the s17. As long as it would leave the surface acceptable to my eyes it should be good enough. Long story short, a little over a week ago my first 32 oz package of d151 arrived at my doorstep, and luckily enough, I didn’t have to wait long to find a test mule to try it out. The car was a smarag black (a slightly bluer black than Mercedes’ blue black , go figure) 1997 c class. It is a daily driver and sees regular car washes at least three times a week. I had to do the car at his place in the northern outskirts of the city, this lead to some pretty interesting things as I will show you later, but the most important thing was that I didn’t have any cameras with me at the day so I had to make do with my phone camera, which is not very good, as you will see in some sun shots I took, so my apologies for the far from ideal pics. At approximately 6 a.m. I washed the car with ONR, applied Megs body solvent to the panels, and then rewash the car. It was then followed by a thorough claying of the car’s panels. Next was the inspection, I checked the condition of the paint under the gratuitous sunlight that morning along with my fenix led. Sure enough the regular car wash visits had taken a toll on the car’s finish. Visually , some areas of the car showed evidences of poor resprays, this is evident on areas like the front driver side fender here there was a poorly blended respray line. Some other areas such as parts of the passenger side fenders and doors also showed evident of respray and the rear bumper had a very poor quality repair on one spot. Thorough paint thickness measurement were carried out using a PTG on all areas of the car served to reaffirm my initial findings. Another thing to note is that the areas of the car that seemed to be in its original paint is rather thin readings varied between low 70s to high 90s on most of these panels. Some low areas even showed readings in the 60 micron range. Some pictures of the paint inspection A repainted section of the driver’s side front fender Some measurements taken from some panels of the car with thin readings on average An example of the visibly poorly blended resprayed areas After the pre polishing prep was completed I went on to try my newly acquired d151 on the hood. It was around 8 at the time , the sun was shining brightly but unfortunately my phone’s camera is not up to the job of showing the paint’s defects under sun light. First I tried d151 on my DeWalt rotary with an Uber green polishing pad. Because it is a SMAT product I made sure to thoroughly prime the pad first, then I apply four drops of the product to the primed pad and a hit a small section on the hood. After a number of attempts, with different styles of polishing I finally decided to work the product the way I’d work Megs 205, i.e. I spread the product very quickly at the lowest speed setting. Then I hit it hard and hit it quick by bumping the speed of the rotary to 1500 RPM and started working the product with firm pressure for the first couple of passes, I kept my arm speed relatively slow, then I eased on the pressure and dropped the rpm to 1200 for a pass or two and dropping it further to the lowest speed setting on my machine (1000) with even lighter pressure (I tried to hold the heft of the DeWalt with my arm) on the final few passes until the paint was almost clear of residue, and I found that I was able to wipe off the remaining residue fairly easily. With this method I found that the combo managed to take out some of the lighter swirls, deeper swirls still remained , and the gloss of the paint has been improved. I tried to lightly wipe the area the back of my fingers to check for the slickness of the “wax” layer that d151 supposed to leave, and I was rather impressed with the slickness I found. To see whether this one step polish would be able to take out even more defects I tried doing a similar set on an adjacent section , but this time with the uber yellow cutting pad. I repeated the exact same method I did on the previous section. This , as expected resulted in a better correction, more of the deeper swirls were taken out, it didn’t leave any noticeable marring, but I found out as the sun moved higher, that this set had left noticeable holograms on the paint. So at this point, I decided that the whole car would just get d151 on Uber green, and I would just accept the level of correction achieved as this was supposed to be strictly single step affair. By single step I mean that each section will only get one set (a single complete buffing cycle) with the chosen polish-pad combo on the DeWalt rotary. I repeated the d151+uber green sets on other sections of the hood (I kept my sections small) until I’ve covered half of the hood. At this point the sun was shining from the east and I tried to take some 50-50 shots of the before-after areas of the hood. Here are the pictures that I managed to get, again I am sorry for bot taking any proper camera with me, this was taken with my phone’s camera The before side A rather sorry attempt at a 50-50 sunshot The after side Since the results were not good enough to show the real condition of the paint, I repeated taking pictures of the same area a bit later. And here are the pics, still far from ideal but I think it managed to convey the state of the sections better than before. Befores Afters , notice how the light source looked less diffused in these pictures. In reality the swirls were causing this so the reduction in the size of the concentrated light is due to the reduced swirls. Here are some videos that I hope would be able to show the extent of correction achieved better Next I went on to repeat the uber green + d151 combo on the right side of the car . here are some more less than ideal before after pics using my Fenix LED, Before after These are pictures of the right side of the car after being hit by a single set of d151+uber green on the rotary. Notice my warzone special makeshift shed for the day. It is far from perfect, and I managed to get myself slapped by multiple times when the wind hits, but in this weather the shed helped me a lot as without it I’d be toasted by the sun as I worked on the car. Mind you I had to “optimize” the position of the car numerous times to sort of allow the shed to cover the area I was working on from the sun. to anticipate swirls inflicted by the thing rubbing the roof of the car, I did the roof later that day when the sun was not directly above me. It is worth pointing out that under this very ot and humid conditions d151 showed no problem at all. The following are pics of the left side of the car before I gave it the d151 treatment There’s definitely gloss here, but there’s no depth nor clarity in the reflections The left side after Pics of the corrected trunk lid along with my Menzerna bottles doing one of their main jobs lately, Here is the area of the rear bumper that had seen a less than stellar repair job, the resprayed area as well as some resprayed areas on other panels of the car were a single step paint job, as was evident by color transfer on my pads. Some pics of the finished panels taken later on that afternoon Pics I took later that evening after a coat of 915 The ugly poorly blended respray is still there Final thoughts on D151 To be honest this project started out as more than trying D151 for the first time, it is part of my quest to find a more efficient (time, effort and cost wise) single step paint correction “system”. In that regard, although some might not see this as an exact apple to apple comparison, for me it is inevitable not to pit Meguiar’s AIO to the polish that I’ve been using for years on single step jobs, which is Scholl’s S17. So here it goes. a. Plug n playability As the sun shines brighter that day I noticed some hollogramming was present on some areas of the panels where I had done my d151-Uber Green pad sets. Not on all of them, some, but, to be safe, as this was my first time with the polish , I decided to go over the panels of the car with a quick set of d151 on Uber Blue finishing pad on the da. I did that to all the panels of the car, as a follow up to the d151+Uber green combo on the rotary. I’m not sure if the da finishing step improved the finish , at the time, I couldn’t really tell the difference, but sure enough it tackled the hologram problem. The holograms were probably due to my lack of experience with the product though, but on the surface of it, this seems to be one point for my old one step polish the s17 as that one, will not leave any hologram with a green pad on the rotary on Mercedes paintjobs that I’ve had experience with. To be fair though, diminishing abrasive products is almost always more plug and play in nature than their SMAT counterparts so im very much looking forward to trying d151 on other projects and paint types to try and get more air time with it before dropping the final verdict. b. Dusting and residue removal In terms of dust and residue it left , d151 is a lot better than the original formula s17 that I have had experience with. It doesn’t dust nearly as much and the dust it left on the car’s crevices are easier to wipe off and a lot more forgiving to clean up afterwards when there were spots that I missed to clean, so that’s one point to D151. Residue removal on the polished panels, however, is equally easy with both polishes. c. Correction ability In terms of correction ability with the same pad and machine, thus far I’ve noticed that S17 , as expected, is able to achieve better correction and in result clarity, in an equally short time; so corrections wise, score goes to S17. Being an AIO I must admit that I was surprised at the gloss and slickness it left the finish with, compared to S17 I guess there’s little to choose between the sans the leftover defects, but due to the fact that D151 already left a layer of protection, I had to say it’s a draw in this aspect. d. Final verdict I also have to point out that on upcoming projects, I will experiment with D151 further by trying to use in on the da (in hopes to avoid the hologramming problem altogether) while using Meguiar’s own mf pad. D151 might not initially designed to be used with the mf pad, but since it is a SMAT product I figure it’s worth trying. Hopefully with proper technique on the da with the mf pad, I’d be able to achieve higher correction capability withut leaving any holograms or hazing. But that stlll have to be proven, until now, from what my experience with it, I do not see D151 as the “magic liquid” for all single step jobs. It does a very good job in correcting the paint compared to other AIOs I’ve tried, it is also pleasant to use, it doesn’t cause the pad to be grabby nor squeaky on this paint even though I was almost literally working under direct sun, dusting and residue is not a problem so that’s probably one thing, aside from the fact that it also applies lsp, that will allow it to gain points against my old single step polish the s17. It does however correct quite considerably less even on the uber yellow pad compared to s17 on the same pad. In my experience, s17 on that pad is able to leave a hologram free finish, almost all the time, while d151, at least with my current skills with it, couldn’t. It managed to leave holograms on some panels that I hit with the green pad. In regards to time spent, I think , if I skip the “experimenting” stage, I would be able to finish this car in around 7-8 hours, which is an improvement to my usual single step regime which could take me between 9-12 hours on a C-Class. So here is my final verdict, I will not leave the s17 altogether, but I will now have 2 types of single stage paint correction program. “Basic” single step paint correction will use D151 , while s17 will be used on “advanced” single step corrections, which will take me roughly 30-40% longer to complete. I hope you enjoyed this post, thank you so much for viewing. Please keep in mind that everything that I wrote in this post is based on my own first time experience with the product and the resulting personal opinions of said experience. Regards, Bob
