Paint Protection. Should I get it or just use a GOOD Polish

[panhead]

Ive been told if you dont regularly leave your car in the sun/weather you dont need paint protection and a good quality polish/wax will do fine,just what ive been told,havent actually bothered to do it yet.....
My wagon lives in the shed,comes out once a week and never gets parked anywhere.....

What you've been told is correct.

A good wax offers a very hard protective layer/barrier.




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[Forg]

Ive been told if you dont regularly leave your car in the sun/weather you dont need paint protection and a good quality polish/wax will do fine,just what ive been told,havent actually bothered to do it yet.....
My wagon lives in the shed,comes out once a week and never gets parked anywhere.....

If you wax your car about every 2-3 months & give it a "polish" (by which I mean the absolutely least abrasive stuff) about once a year as prep for one of your waxings, you don't need paint protection at all.

Paint protection is for when you can afford to spend what's probably a disproportionately high amount of money on not having to do all that.

 

[lmoengnr]

Paint protection is for when you can afford to spend what's probably a disproportionately high amount of money on not having to do all that.

Or, you don't have enough garage space for all of your garage queens...

 

[panhead]

If you wax your car about every 2-3 months & give it a "polish" (by which I mean the absolutely least abrasive stuff) about once a year as prep for one of your waxings, you don't need paint protection at all.

Paint protection is for when you can afford to spend what's probably a disproportionately high amount of money on not having to do all that.

If your car is only driven on sunny weekend days then a good wax will last years before it needs a light polish and reapplying.

A good tub of solid wax will also last a lot longer than the liquid stuff.





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[Dayvo]

Autoglym makes some good products but their Super Resin also isn't a true polish, it removes some contaminants and hazing but not swirls..

Yeah the super resin polish has a lot of fillers that hide some paint imperfections.

 

[Forg]

If your car is only driven on sunny weekend days then a good wax will last years before it needs a light polish and reapplying.

I used to think this, unless Mothers isn't as good as I thought it was.
The Volvo lives in a garage & sees sunlight maybe every 3 weekends; once ervery 18 months is as long as I reckon I can stretch it, and I've got the pretty awful paint-defects in the roof to prove it.

But yes, my comment about every 3 months or so was in context of a daily driver.

Or, you don't have enough garage space for all of your garage queens...

Well yeah, but with a parked-outside car you could still do the time-intensive quarterly maintenance for less money & get as good a result in terms of longevity & shine.

 

[panhead]

unless Mothers isn't as good as I thought it was.

Some of their stuff is very average, what particular product are you using.

If it's a liquid polish it's possibly full of fillers then a few blasts of water could be washing it away exposing the marks again.

Same goes for liquid waxes, they don't last.

A good wax has a high carnauba content and it's the carnauba that is the hard protective coating which also gives the product a longer life, a liquid will usually have a very low carnauba content and therefore not last.

Mothers like Meguiars have a business model which involves having you constantly purchasing their product, longevity isn't in their equation.

What they offer as a trade off to their short lifespan is easy use, easy on, easy off.

They sell a lot of product to mainstream car owners and they need to as they have enormous marketing and advertising budgets.

Mothers do make a very good metal polish which gives you a mirror finish on polished rims, I use it on a few of my cars and find if I need to do a repair with some wet and dry, it does as good a job at bring back the shine as anything else out there. I use it as a final finish.




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[VFSV6FORME]

Well the Caprice V arrived home yesterday and from the dealer to home it was pissing down with rain so when I got home I had the clean the car under and over than park it in the garage (yes the Very first time any car has been in the Garage with wet feet on a tiled floor) so I chamoised it and look at the black paint at day and night with the Florescent lights on. Now the roof, 4 doors, the boot and the rear quarters are ok, The front two guards mostly are ok except for two small unexplained dot on the passengers side where these dots are a lighter black (blacks not as Black, about 2MM or less) but the Bonnet is the worst panel on the car as it also had small dots around 2 or 3 MM of a lighter blacks and when I comes to the Front bumper also is the same, few painted repaired stone chips and the rear is fair with a minor scratch.
Now I'm a fussy owner I find defect were most wont find anything but what i will do is I will sit down and watch the V8's on the weekend and think what is best for the car, a average car with some scratches, with a around 20 odd paint repairs that are hard to see but you can close your eyes and feel them you know they are there and those unexplained dots that could have come by tree sap or other. I also notice about 25 very small raised ORANGE dots around 1.5mm round on the front Bumper, two guards, the Bonnet, and the very first 300mm of the roof but the rest of the car was OK with them.
It look like the car was parked under a tree and the tree dropped sap or other on the front of the car. Now with these orange raised dots I put my Finger nail under them and they flick then off (Made a sound, CLICK!!) but when I had a really close look I can Just slightly see a lighter black underneath.

This is typical car for its age and was looked after but luckily has NO doors/front guard/rear quarter car park dints on it. Pheew!! Maybe its to big to park it in a shopping centre. LOL.

 

[VFSV6FORME]

Arghhh! regarding those two small not so black dots on the front top passenger guard. I might test using Turtle Wax on them just to see what happens. I will take photo before and after.

 

[panhead]

Put the light on the panels and look across them to see how much swirling has occurred, a black car unless it has just been polished or has been miraculously looked after will have swirls that need correcting before any protective layer is applied.

When looking for imperfections and contaminants, place your hand in a soft plastic bag and gently run your hand over the panels, the plastic bag will highlight any problems that you may not initially see.




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