Most liked posts in thread: What did you do with your MINI today?

Well I'm sold on the Toyo's! Fantastic tire. She feels all brand new again

 

Still chasing down that P2188 (system too rich at idle) intermittent code. Trying the olde Seafoam treatment, and cleaned the MAF. Just need to burn fuel and oil for a bit to see if it works.

 

I have a Volvo with almost 300,00 miles on it, I have always burned detergent gasoline in it. One injector started to fail under load. I decided to try the cheap fix on it before I started throwing money at the problem. I ran a couple of bottles of Techron through it and that solved the problem.

 

Had mine washed and waxed a couple of weeks ago. Wasn't allowed to drive it until today at the soonest. Yep, it's raining, and supposed to rain every day this week except Wednesday. I'm going to try to get down to the Sneed4Speed shop to get my side splitters installed along with some other work. Oh well, since I can drive the Suburban one handed I've been putting a lot of miles on it instead.

 

Have been experimenting with belt dechroming and tinting windows behind (only back windows allowed in Belgium}


So I need money to do it for real [emoji16]







Verzonden vanaf mijn iPad met Tapatalk Pro

 

Stay away from rotary polishers unless you have been trained to use them. They offer MAX cut but will very easily burn right through the clear coat and color coat down to the primer with a wool or foam pad.

Orbitals are older and are really only used for applications of wax or sealers and offer no real torque for cutting / polishing.

I would skip the two above for anyone starting out. I have a very strong Mikita rotary that I only use with a wool pad every one in a while for really bad small areas and deep scratches. I used to us it on every car that came out of a paint booth after I wet sanded the car to quickly correct new paint jobs. I did that for a few years when I was younger and was trained by an old Jedi rotary polishing master.

Times have changed and technology with paint, tools and polishing compounds have changed everything.

A good starter DA is the Griots one I provided a link to below. It is a great machine that runs smooth with excellent torque to keep pads spinning at low speeds. <— that’s a good thing. Low speed = less heat on the paint.

The older cheaper entry level Portal Cables XP machine tends to bog down and not spin as well. I still have the Griots in my bag with my twice as expensive Rupes machine which is a pro machine.

Below is a link to the Griots DA.

https://www.autogeek.net/new-griots-polisher.html

I like to only use 5 inch Rupes pads because the last and do not fall apart. I get from Esoteric website, link below.

Yellow for cutting / polishing and White for fine / finish polishing.

http://www.esotericcarcare.com/rupes-yellow-polishing-pad/

http://www.esotericcarcare.com/rupes-white-finishing-pad/

I have never needed a Blue or Green pad ever. The yellow pads are that good.

RUPES Pad color chart:

Blue = Compounding
Green = Light Compounding / Heavy Polishing
Yellow = Polishing (THE perfect one-step pad when teamed with Sonax Perfect Finish!)
White = Finishing

 

I stopped at the Griots exhibit at the Barrett-Jackson auction a few weeks back, and got a demonstration of that buffer with some of their polishing products. It is a nice polisher.

I have a Porter-Cable 7424 DA polisher. They are very similar, IMO.

Like Dave said, don't get a high-speed rotary polisher unless you don't mind some "learning experiences" that may not be pleasant. You can really mess up your paint if you don't use it just right.

CD

 

I bought my Griots random orbital from the guy doing a demo for them. It was used just for that one demo. I got it for pennies on the dollar.

I'm happy with it, pretty good quality.

 

Stayed indoors where it was toasty warm to watch kid outside brushing snow off her car.

 

She's now got a new coolant pump for the turbo, coolant pump pulley and a belt, so she's feeling good. In other news, I finally ordered this thing- http://www.detroittuned.com/light-in-sight/ since I woke up with a krick in my neck and hunching over to see what color the light was, was a tad painful this AM. I have to turn my body like Sasquatch to look at folks yapping in my direction. Someone tell Santa I need a hot tub.

 

I bought an engine dress up kit from Zteck and started installing it yesterday. Even I ran into a couple of minor problems, the company was super helpful in resolving them. It's too cold to finish today, but I will post pictures asa it's done. So far, it looks great. I go to a lot of local cruze-ins and car shows and can't wait to show it off.

 

This stuff is awesome for bugs and tar. It will not strip wax or coating off the car either.

Unlike most tar removers, Q²M Tar does not affect any exterior surfaces and is bodywork safe. It can be used on paint, glass, plastic trim, both painted and unpainted. As it is pH neutral, it can also be used to remove tar spots from bare polished lips.


http://www.esotericcarcare.com/gyeon-q2m-tar/

 

Just turned 70k on the Cooper with its remanufactured CVT...10k since the install and it runs like new! On to MOTD.

 

Have been adding touch up paint to some scratches and chips around the MINI for the past few days. It's insane how many chips and scrapes are on this car. It's also insane how bad the 1st owner was at removing stickers/decals. I always knew it was scratched where they had removed the dealer sticker, just never knew how bad till I started polishing on that spot. Once all the wax and dirt is out of the scratches they look horrible. Hoping a simple compound will get rid of them and level out the touch up paint. Happy Friday you MINI freaks!

 

You need to fill the scratches so they are level with the paint. Save you money on compound and buy some 1000 and 1500 dry wet sand paper. When you have them built up, you will need to wet sand the small touch up areas to remove the extra around the chips / repair. Don’t worry about sanding I am having you use a very fine grit paper. When the area is level you can buff out the sanding area with your polish.

If you want to talk about the process shoot me a PM and I can talk you through it.

 

Thanks to all day rain, she'll spend most of the time sitting right here.