A touch of paint restoration, advice needed please!

[Bobberoo99]

Morning lads and lasses, I have an ageing Mk2 Focus and feel that the paint is, well frankly, rubbish, I don't want to go all detailing crazy as the car is a little tatty, I would just like to give it back a little of its shine!!
I've bought a clay bar set (T-Cut one with clay bar, lube, wax and micro fibre cloth), what I was wondering was should I go wash the car, clay bar it, G3 compound and then wax? OR............
Any help would be gratefully accepted as I have NEVER done this before!!!

[mon the fish]

If you're not going to go to the effort of machine polishing, personally I would:
- wash
- de-tar (easy - spray on, wipe off)
- clay
- polish (G3, Lime Prime or equivalent)
- glaze (e.g. Poorboys Black Hole, Prima Amigo - this will fill and help hide any swirls left)
- wax/sealant (2 coats always makes a difference I find)

Won't be 100% but will make a nice difference. Give up half a day to do it and the car should look good for a year

[Bobberoo99]

mon the fish said:

If you're not going to go to the effort of machine polishing, personally I would:
- wash
- de-tar (easy - spray on, wipe off)
- clay
- polish (G3, Lime Prime or equivalent)
- glaze (e.g. Poorboys Black Hole, Prima Amigo - this will fill and help hide any swirls left)
- wax/sealant (2 coats always makes a difference I find)

Won't be 100% but will make a nice difference. Give up half a day to do it and the car should look good for a year

Thanks Mon, not really looking for showroom just want to try and bring back some of it's shine, the bonnet/roof seem to be quite pitted. Can you explain why the glaze part, surely the G3 should take the worst of it out?

[mon the fish]

Bobberoo99 said:

Thanks Mon, not really looking for showroom just want to try and bring back some of it's shine, the bonnet/roof seem to be quite pitted. Can you explain why the glaze part, surely the G3 should take the worst of it out?

It will, but the glaze will fill what's left (you need to machine to remove all scratches/swirls) and fool the eye into seeing a much better and shiny surface.

Some detailers get snooty about glaze because they'd prefer to machine, but they do a job

[Bobberoo99]

Thanks again Mon, I think i'll do the whole car with clay then G3 and finally polish see how it comes up, as I said it's a 107k mk2 Focus, I just think she deserves a bit of TLC!!