Thursday, September 22, 2011

Shine all the way

After the excellent detailing by Ultimate Detailerz, I was on the look out for a suitable wax for supplementing the detailing process.

Its been more than 2 months after I got the detailing done and though I have never done a single water wash after that (thanks to Jopasu and ONR) I could feel the friction when I lightly rub a cloth over the body.

After having my experiences with F1 and Turtle wax and couple of lesser known local brand waxes, I wanted to try some thing better this time. After initial searches, I was almost decided on getting Collinite 845 - it is generally considered as one of the best and most durable wax out there. While trawling the net during my search for the wax, I came across many detailing forums and I spent a lot of time reading lot of posts and got introduced to engineered waxes.

After some more reading and lot more trawling, I came to the conclusion that there is no harm in trying an engineered wax - now the choices where between Meguiars NXT 2.0 and Mothers FX SynWax. The opinions were quite divided on some forums - depending on whether the Forum favored Mothers or Meguiars - but the consensus was that both were more or less equal. Most people were prefering NXT 2.0 for Black color cars and FX for other dark metallic colors. After comparing the results of cars and trucks which were detailed by NXT, FX SynWax and Collinite 845, and after going over all the reviews and posts made by people who have actually used them, I could not find much of a difference to ditch the synthetic wax to get Collinite. For dark colors, FX Synwax was giving really good gloss and reflections and I could see lot of flake popping too.

I was not interested in long lasting wax - I take it as an excuse to lavish some TLC over Jai, so a wax which lasts 1~2 months was good enough for me - I was looking for better reflections and lesser elbow grease. All these and the fact that it is readily available off the shelf tilted the scale towards FX SynWax.

Ordered my bottle of FX from automall using there online store (carpolish.in) on Monday night and the wait started. I so badly wante dto wax the car on Friday afternoon and even took a half day leave (who really want to work after a sumptuous Onam sadhya ) but they took their sweet time to courier me the box. I think i will give 7 out of 10 for the service by automall - I had to repeatedly follow up about the shipping, and I did not get the tracking number as promised by them and though they were available on mobile, my sms and e-mails (using the contact us forum) did not generate any replies. Next time, if I need anything from them, I will go and pick it up from their shop.

I got the wax on saturday (5 days for a order to realize - I stay in same city as the seller :Frustrati )

Sunday morning, I started with my usual dusting with Jopasu, followed by a round of quick cleaning using ONR. After this, I started waxing my car with FX - took me only about an hour to wax my whole car and it was really easy on - easy off, with a great shine to boot. I took some old soft cotton cloth and made a jugaad applicator pad and applied the liquid wax with circular motions and allowed it to dry to haze. After few minutes, I buffed the panels using 3M yellow MF and voila. It was as simple as that. Did one section at a time, and it was much much easier to apply that the F1 or Turtle - the wax have some good cleaning power and the reflections are crisp and vivid. Many people are of the opinion that you need to give some time for the synthetic waxes to bring out the shine, so I am all game to wait and see if I get more of it.

I need to get some tire form and some products for taking care of the plastics - the research is on.

Let the pictures do the talking now: