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Old 03-16-2008, 05:09 AM
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bondo bondo is offline
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well written and useful tutorial but why use wax?
there is no gain from using wax over a compound but there are advantages to using compound instead of wax.

the main purpose of wax is to protect the finish from the elements.
rubbing compounds are what bring out the shine.
i use wax on a few of my cars aswell but not in the same manner.
my shine comes from alot of elbow grease,graduating grits of sandpaper and graduating abrasive compounds.
the elbow grease is the fuel.
the sandpaper levels the finish
the graduating abrasive compounds do the same thing as the sandpaper but at to a much finer degree.

for a stock Xmods paintjob,the best thing i've found to bring out a killer shine is mothers mag and wheel polish.
this is a high abrasive content compound though and seems to only work on metallic painjobs.
non-metallic paintjobs tend to rub through a little too easily for my taste.

the second best would be the tamiyafine polishing compound.

the third is 3M shine restore.
this is a light abrasive that contains carnuba so it's filling in the scratches and then basically polishing itslef.(noturday has my back on this one)

the wax that i use is turtle wax "ICE".
a bit expensive but you can put it on any finish and it wont leave white residue.
i like to use alot of flat black accents in my projects and a regular carnuba would shine the flats. the ICE actually gives a flat base the sheen of leather or vynil.
with any compound or wax you use on an Xmod though, you dont want to use too much otherwise you get the residue in the creases like you said.
think of it on scale.
if you used that size pad and that much wax on a 1:1 car it would be similar to waxing with20lbs of wax on a seven foot pad.
it doesnt matter how careful you are, you're going to get wax in the creases.
a little dab of wax will do almost an entire car.


i wish i had a camera to show example pics........
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