Volvo Paint

05SilverTRD

05SilverTRD

New member
I just purchased a Volvo S60. I have never owned a Euopean car before. I was curious if there are some differences in the paint from the American cars. It is dark grey and I want a swirl free, bright shine. I love to turn heads with a clean car. What are some good products for this? I don't have any kind of buffer now, I don't plan on getting one in the near future either. I would prefer to apply it by hand. Any help would be appreciated.
 
I have a '96 850 GLT in Pewter, which is a greyish sliver with flake. I can say that it is one of the best paint jobs of any vehicle I have owned since a '65 Galaxy 500 convertible (black). I don't know how the paints have changed on the Volvo since '96, but I'm sure they are different. Different good or different bad, I don't know.

Lots of good products out there will provide a good shine. Do some searching, everyone has their favorites. You'll have to buy a couple of different products to determine what can provide the look you like. The mantra that you will see repeated here, no matter the LSP, is prep is the key to a great final finish.

Maintaining a swirl free finish is up to you and your maintenance.
 
I ordered some AIO and UPP. I hope that I get some good results from them. The paint on this Volvo looks great. I can see a huge difference in the paint from my Avalanche to this Volvo. Pretty much swirl free from the dealer, which is unusual for me. I went into the Chevy dealer the other day and saw a red SSR in the showroom, swirls all over it. I wanted so bad to polish it for them.
 
I'm sure you'll be happy with that combo. I have used it myself on white paint with very nice results. There are many threads where this combo and results is discussed. There is an active thread right now in fact.
 
I did a 02 silver S60 a few weeks ago and the paint was really nice. I think the reason you are not seeing any swirls or as many is because of the color. Lighter colors are great for not showing the swirls.
What I did was after wash I used clay to remove the crud on the car and picked up a fair amount of stuff. Then I used PB P-w-C with a orbital, but by hand your new car should turn out great. I topped this one with Adams butter wax the finish was really wet looking!
The UPP should be a great step after AIO, the key I think to keeping a car as swirl free as possible is weekly or biweekly maintanance. Washing and drying the car the right way and using the proper tools.
If you are looking for good products Poorboys, Adams and Four Star are all great lines and I would buy a kit. That will give you enough for your car for sometime and takes the guessing game out of what to buy.
Hope this helps
 
My car is actually a charcoal color, pretty dark. I had apewter colored Silverado once, that was great. That truck looked clean when it was dirty. A great color to take care of. The dark color is much harder, but very rewarding when it is done.
 
Well for what it's worth I have the Black Sapphire Metallic 2004 S60 as my daily driver. It's my product tester as I do weekend warrior detailing for family, friends, co-workers and others. I have settled on Meguiars NXT on the black Volvo. I've used quite a few other combos including Klasse Twins, Souveran, EX, EX-P topped with UPP, #16, #26.

Strangely, I do not care about durability for my daily driver only looks. I do the Meguiar's NXT wax once a month to keep the best possible shine because after one month I find it's normally ready for a fresh coat to get back to optimum swirl free shine (which is what you where looking for in your original post). I use the booster NXT wax maybe once or twice during the month depending on the number of washes I do. My wash is QEW with the EO WAUD method. I also use final detail for removing dust between washes.

The NXT just has ended up as my favorite look and it's also very cheap, very quick and easy to apply and readily available to pick up at the local stores during a normal shopping trip.

Normally on customer cars I am using one of the above mentioned sealants and top with #16 for extra durabilty if the customer leaves the car overnight.
 
I used to use AIO+UPP+Souverän Paste Wax on our Ti Grey S60R, and I think it came out great. Then switched over to AIO+UPP+NXT+Victoria Concours/Red Wax, and I was pretty blown away with the look; especially, after couple coat of the VCW. Just recently, I replaced the AIO with Meguiar's ColorX, it looks just as good as using AIO...but sleeker than UPP.

You can easily get the most bang outta bucks with just UPP or NXT, with Ti Grey it's a bit difficult to get the depth under bright direct sunlight. But both UPP and NXT would give you awesome acrylic shine and slight depth yet still have the polymer based product's protection. But if you were to use some carnauba wax like VCW on the car, you'd still get the same acrylic shine (slightly less compares to NXT). However, with VCW, I noticed our car looked the best with some overcast....and I can easily take some few awesome photo shots of the car in the garage or underground parking garage.

I'll post some pictures tomorrow of what I did this weekend.

Oh, and I've always have good experience with Menzerna polishes to prep the car if the car gets a bit dull after few washes.
 
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