ilogikal1

That is very low, but it's still enough to leave water marks. The good news is, if that's an accurate reading and if you do get a filter, it should last a long time. You can get calibration fluid for TDS meters for about £5 which are a certain known ppm, or you could try this (no idea if that actually works though!).

Well it took me three hours to wash all 4 wheels, foam, APC (three times. Bloody stubborn that FK wax!), wash the front end with one shampoo, wash the rest with another, apply the HydrO2 to one side, WetCoat to the other, just Bathe+ on the rear end and then dry. Admittedly that included a fair amount of fannying about with changing shampoos and replenishing the APC and whatnot (seriously, whose idea was it to do the Reload, BSD, C2 test on the same car?! ) and at least half an hour watching the water behaviour afterwards! To be honest I can't see any difference in finish or water behaviour between any of the different products (yet at least). But even Bathe+ was just so quick and easy to use it's unbelievable! And I've sealed the paint, the glass, the plastic trim and the wheels in minutes (once I stopped fannying about). Just need to see how durable they actually are now. Just to get back on topic for a moment though, I have an update on the bonnet test. When rinsing the bonnet after the snow foam (BH Auto Foam), BSD was still beading the best, Reload was still sheeting the best, C2 not far behind on the sheeting side of things. BSD was actually out-sheeted (I know that's not a word, but I'm running with it) by the FK wax, even on the horizontal sections of the wings. I then washed the bonnet & wings using G-Wash, mixed roughly 500:1, using a spray bottle and a foaming spray head as my "wash bucket" (and an actual bucket as usual for the rinse bucket), sprayed it into the bonnet then washed with a wet sponge (yeah, that's right I said sponge*. Deal with it.), rinsed out occasionally as usual and then the G-Wash mix sprayed onto the sponge before going back to the panel. The entire front end was washed using this method before being rinsed off with the pressure washer. At this point I noticed something odd. Now when rinsing after using G-Wash, C2 was sheeting better than before (about the same as when it was freshly applied), FK was still sheeting about the same but both Reload and BSD had lost almost all of their sheeting ability. I left the front end alone whilst I played with HydrO2, WetCoat and Bathe+ on the rest of the car and came back to it afterwards and then rinsed it down with the hose instead of the pressure washer. By this point, BSD's beading had returned but sheeting was still struggling and Reload was still not playing at all. Whilst it's of no surprise that it is compatible with C2, it seems odd that G-Wash, which is supposed to leave nothing behind, would adversely affect both Reload and BSD but not the wax. Anyway, I'll fire the hose at it again later and maybe even give it another wash (using 2 buckets and everything) with a different shampoo tomorrow to see if that changes anything. If not, I may reapply all three, or I may call it a day for now and re-start this test from scratch another time. It was clear that Reload was still working before using G-Wash, but I'm hoping that because BSD came back that Reload will too. I've run out of G-Wash now anyway so at least that won't cause an issue any more regardless. So, lessons learnt from today; G-Wash doesn't play well with Reload or BSD. BSD is terrible at sheeting. Spray-on-rinse-off products and hose are a nice way to keep me occupied for a good long while. I frickin' love spray-on-rinse-off products today! *and, if you've made it this far, by sponge I mean this.

The 99 and 900 (I think only some of them though) along with the Alfasud and most Citroens of a certain age had the handbrake applied on the front wheels. No idea why though. Curses, beaten to it.

I believe lithium grease is required, although WD40 do that too (clicky). I won't pretend to know where to apply it though.

There is one option not yet mentioned. Apply one of these to the roof until you fit Or you could contact Alex (or one of the guys currently breaking a Z) to see if they've got a set of rails you can modify, but let's be honest that's just the boring solution of the two.

Good to know, cheers.

Me. Well, almost - on the drive instead of in the garage (which is cheaper on my insurance). But really only because it's cheaper to have the other car (worth more) in the garage, and if that one is in the garage I've run out of spare garage otherwise I wouldn't. It baffles me why some people choose to fill their garage with a couple of hundred quids worth of tat and leave the couple of grands worth of car outside. Given the option, I would always park the car in the garage.

Technically WetCoat should be quicker than HydrO2. But only because it's pre-mixed. I'm not sure how thorough this initial test will be. I'm currently only planning to snow foam the car, APC everything except the front wings and bonnet (for the purposes of the above test) to strip the wax and then apply some variations of HydrO2, WetCoat and/or Bathe+ to the rest of the car rather than doing a full on cleanse first. The reason for this being I bought these products to get some protection onto my dad's caravan but if there's any chance of him maintaining that protection himself it needs to be quick and (virtually) effortless - to be honest I can't be a*sed to do a full on cleanse on a caravan either so this test is based with that in mind. That and the fact that pressure washers don't play nicely with caravans so I'll be test application with a hose only this time round - I'm aware of CarPro's advice/experience with HydrO2 in this context but not of how well the Gyeon products would work without a pressure washer. I will be able to do a proper, full on job on another car next week providing I have time though which might offer more insight, but I was only planning on using Bathe+ (and possibly WetCoat) on that one.

Okay, minor update because I noticed something with the dew on the car in the morning. The dew appears to settle on each product differently - that's BSD on the far side, Reload in the middle and C2 on the near side. From a distance it appears that the BSD section is still the wettest, Reload is the driest and C2 provides what I'm now going to term as "streaky beading". When it's dry there's no visible streaks at all, but introduce just the right amount of water and; So I might have to be more through when buffing next time I use C2v3! Now the difference between BSD and Reload was purely that the beading on the BSD section was much smaller and more numerous, the Reload panel was actually just as wet. Photobucket won't let me link directly to the full resolution picture which better demonstrates this but you might be able to make it out enough to get an idea. BSD close up; Reload close up; And you'll all be glad to know I've now also got Hydro2, Wetcoat & Bathe+ to play with this weekend (between the F1, napping and the football, obviously) and a new wax test/comparison will be in order once the next Waxybox arrives. Stay tuned for the next thrilling episode....

Not literally.

The wax is worth it. Assuming you actually use it of course.

The email about the not-so-secret guest wax, you mean?

Have a look on here. And just so you can pretend this answer came from Will; :scare:

Absolutely. Whilst it didn't last long at all it did convince me that when it is working it's invaluable, especially more so in the summer with the obscenely hard water around here.

I've just killed off my Aqua Gleam one - it filtered well but I wasn't impressed by how short it's lifespan actually was - I bought it August, used it maybe 8-10 times for the final rinse before waterspots started re-appearing. Tested it with a TDS meter and it went from 38ppm to 114ppm in one use, so when it fails it deteriorates quickly! Tap water was measured at 300-odd ppm though, but although it was filtering most of the impurities out it wasn't anywhere near enough to prevent waterspotting at all. The flow from the Aqua Gleam was fairly similar to tap pressure once it got going but it took a while to fill the filter, so I wouldn't use in on a pressure washer unless you've let it flow for a minute or before hand, but if you're using it to filter the wash water you'll be replacing it every other wash. It's worth considering that the Aqua Gleam isn't re-usable whereas both of the others are, but to be honest I wouldn't recommend the Aqua Gleam any more. It does work well, but it just isn't economical at all. I'm still debating between the Daqua and Raceglaze one next myself.

I moved some of the dirt around on mine yesterday. Then drove it today. It needs another wash now

Mine was absolutely useless too until I got Atkin to adjust it when they did a service. It's been fine for the year since then.

I usually would do on a flat panel - I did when I had several waxes on the roof for example - but Nissan kindly divided the bonnet up for me by design. It was very easy to control the spread of these three products so I didn't bother with tape this time.

As you may know, I like to "test" detailing products (read that as I have a lot of products and far too much free time). Well I'm going to stick them all in the one thread rather than starting a new one each time. I'm starting with pitting Sonax Xtreme BrilliantShine Detailer, CarPro Reload and G|Techniq C2v3 against each other. Prep. consisted of snow foaming with BH Auto Foam, a 2 bucket wash using Luxury Wax "High Foaming" Shampoo from the last Retro Waxybox (which, incidentally, is very much NOT high foaming in any way, shape or form) and then dried. As the car was wearing a coat of FK2685 (otherwise known as Pink Wax) which was barely 2 weeks old, I had to strip this off the chosen test panel. So the bonnet was attacked with HubiRestore on a black Hex Logic pad followed by a CarPro Eraser wipe down which... barely touched the wax, to my surprise. So out came the Tesco APC (at 1:1) which left me with nothing on the panel as was evident by the lack of beading or sheeting when rinsing. It was then dried again and each product was applied to the bare paint. Immediately after application looked like this; I've got a full size bottle of BSD which I've used before but the spray head on that is just woeful, so I opted for the Waxybox sample to see if that made any difference. It does. It's a LOT easier to use with the atomiser type spray head than it was with the standard spray head. Reload, as it arrived (from 'The Cube' in case you're interested) and used neat; C2v3 also applied neat; There's very little to separate them on looks. I struggled to get a streak-free finish from BSD in the normal bottle, but with the better spray head it was considerably easier to get a good finish. Both Reload and C2v3 were even easier still as BSD is a slightly thicker liquid to the other two, I'd say Reload just edged it but there's very little between the two. So onto the water behaviour then. BSD Reload C2 And here is a fresh coat of FK2685 on the left and BSD on the right Reload on the left, C2 on the right BSD on the left, Reload on the right Beading wise, BSD provided many more, much smaller beads whilst Reload and C2 were much more similar to each other providing fewer, taller beads. Sadly the battery in my camera decided to call it a day before I could get any of the sheeting, but (at least in my opinion) Reload sheeted the quickest, followed by BSD and the C2. So that just leaves durability. The intention is to avoid using anything that will top up the protection until each fails to get a fair idea of what durability I can expect to achieve from each product. I'll update this thread from time to time if anyone's interested. In the mean time, purely because I enjoy a good beading picture;

Yeah you can... Anyway, back on topic (briefly), I used to use the Z daily... right up until I started working from home. It's just not worth getting in the car for that commute any more. I will still drive the Z any time I can I can think of an excuse to though.

Thanks to CS for my discs and belts which arrived very promptly, and for taking time out from battling stuck bolts to answer my questions.

Fair enough. They tend to be used on hard paint as a rule as they can offer fairly quick correction, but I wouldn't use them on soft paint at all myself.

I'd say microfibre pads would be too aggressive myself, but if your technique is good this can be compensated for. Is there any reason why you'd want to go for microfibre over foam pads? You'd be better off with something like AF Tripple, followed by a decent wax to seal, for the short term if you're doing it by hand. With filling chips, you won't get a good result at all without polishing afterwards, although something like Chipex does reduce the need to wet sand.

I'll have you know there's only 12 different products on it (today)! And I'm in no way planning my next multi-product test(s) for the weekend. Nope, not me.

If I do that you'll see the swirl marks, stone chips and scratches! All cars usually look better from a distance don't worry. Speak for yourself.