Newbie does Audi A6, 56k warning

[OpticalSerenity]

This is my personal car. As you can see in the photos, prior to me owning her, she was neglected.



The process I used is:



1) Wash with Meg's NXT, microfiber mit, waffle weave mf towels for drying



2) Clay with Mother's Detailing Clay and Showroom Shine as lubricant



3) Wash with Meg's NXT



4) Meg's #82, PC with LC CCS pad



5) Klasse AIO, PC with LC CCS white pad



6) P21S wax, PC with LC CCS black pad



It didn't totally do the job. It got late so I skipped the Klasse Sealent Glaze, and either I need to switch to Meg's #83, or even better menzerna stuff.



Give me tips, please.



The car:

Right Fender, swirl marks:

Taped up after clay:

Door handle:

More Swirls:

And more:

AND AFTER:



Side marker light:

Fender, minus most of the swirls:

Another:

Need to get these next time:

Wheel Cap:

Xenon projector:

 

[Fobia]

very nice. are after pics with halogen on paint?



and QQ : are bath towels bad to dry your car with?

 

[OpticalSerenity]

I'll put the halogen on the paint and take some new pictures, for comparison sake.



I only dry my car with microfiber or waffle weave microfiber. I prefer the WW MF.



I save the terry cloth towels for wheels, leather cleaning, etc.

 

[Scottwax]

You are definitely going to have to bump it up to at least #83 to remove swirls effectively on an Audi. The paint is like a rock!



Kind of hard to tell how much improvement you got without the same lighting.

 

[Crazy Quattro]

^agreed.



Do you really need to tape off the car when using a PC?

 

[OpticalSerenity]

taping off the car just makes it easier to clean up. Usually i don't, but the white residue is really evident on the dark blue.



Here are some more pictures, after the detail, with halogen:

 

[Accumulator]

..Do you really need to tape off the car when using a PC?

I always tape the aluminum trim on our Audis. For some unfathomable reason the clear anodizing is prone to failure (clouding) and I'd to whatever possible to delay that. FWIW new replacement pieces from Audi fail even quicker than the OE pieces!

are bath towels bad to dry your car with?

Depends on the towels, but many (even 100% cotton ones) aren't as paint-friendly as you might think. I'd at least CD test 'em.



OpticalSerenity- That's a good job. If you want to take it to the next level it won't be easy. A lot of what follows probably isn't what you want to hear, but here goes anyhow



Note that I curently have two Audis (had a *scad* of other ones, maybe a dozen or so) and only one of them can look good enough for sealant. On your color (Ming blue, right? Very pretty!) there's no way I'd try for that level of perfection; I'd use an "also fills" polish and then put a carnauba on top of it instead. I'd save the Klasse twins for the wheels and the aluminum trim (and AIO is good for the black plastic grill too).



Scratches behind door handles are a pet peeve of mine, I threatened to take my business elsewhere when my Audi dealer's guy put a few in one of my cars. What a PIA they are on that hard paint! I spent a lot of time fixing it and I don't mean just half an hour



For areas like that where you have to work by hand I do most of the work with 1Z Ultra/Extra polish and terry. Then I switch to a milder polish (usually the old 3M PI-III RC 05933) and MF, then a final polish before the LSP. You need something that'll really *cut* by hand, and the 1Z Ultra is the most aggressive stuff I've tried yet that'll still break down OK.



The #82 is way too mild for an Audi. Even #80 usually is (even on marring that's less severe than yours) and the AIO will strip off the stuff that #80 leaves behind which makes marring "come back" (voice of experience, many was I disappointed!). I wouldn't be surprised if your car looked a *little* better marring-wise before you did the AIO for this reason (the #82 leaves some "trade secret oils" behind).



Noting that I have a lot of products on the shelf, if that were mine, and I had to make due without the rotaries, I wouldn't hesitate with regard to product selection: 1z Ultra/Extra on the worst marring, then 1Z Paint Polish on the whole thing, then *maybe* 1Z MetallicPolishWax for a final polish, then a heavy carnauba like Collinite.



FWIW I do the same basic thing on my wife's A8 only I top with #16 (which she likes better than the Collinite).



You could certainly go with the P21S for your wax, but a) it won't last all that long and b) it doesn't give the same degree of protection and "self cleaning" so you'll have to be more careful about your maintenance.



Again, sorry that the above is, basically, advice saying to "blow off what you're doing and buy different products" but Audis are kinda a special case due to the hardness of the clear. I've tried a lot of things on them over the years, and the list of stuff that works in a user-friendly manner is pretty short. Heh heh, I finally broke down and bought a rotary over marring on my S8 from when they did the deer-incident repairs...