Bought a Light - Depressed

courtdale

courtdale

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Walking through Lowe's this weekend and decided to check out the lights since I hadn't bought one for detailing yet. 500 watt halogen shop light for $13, can't beat that so I grabbed it. What a mistake.

I was pretty pleased with how the car looked after my first correction, I knew I left room for improvement, but to the untrained eye, it looked pretty damn good from 10 ft. away. Well, once I hit it with the light, how much I REALLY missed jumped out and smacked me in the face. WOW is all I can say, pretty disheartening.

My only hope is that now with the light I'll be able to better monitor my progress while working because right now, it almost looks like I did nothing. The hood is disgusting...
 
You know if your car looks good to you, don't be disheartened. You're not going to carry that halogen light around with you and set it up everywhere you stop, are you?
 
What fun would it be to get it perfect on your first correction? I learn something new here every day. Then I try it out on my car or truck. Enjoy the learning curve.
 
your car finish is still better looking than 95% of the cars out there so take heart.

The defects we see go unnoticed by most people.
 
Some good advice above. Your car looks awesome to you from a short distance away. Granted if you put lots of light on it and get right next to the paint there will be issues. As Setec pointed out no one carries a set of halogens (ok, some of you may :)) around.


I remember a gemologist telling me this a long time ago. He said that a lot of jewelry stores will put a diamond under extreme magnification and show you the flaws and thus they can/will charge more for those with less flaws. In some cases he said it might be worth it (investor quality) but for virtually everyone out there none of the more obvious flaws under magnification were not even close to being visible to the naked eye. He was surprised how many lemmings bought a really expensive diamond because it looked better under a microscope, again the analogy is how many people carry a microscope around with them to inspect diamonds.
 
Don't get too disappointed. You will always see more wrong with your own car than anyone else. I see defects on my truck that no one else even notices.

It takes time to develop a technique that works well for you. Of everyone got perfect results on their first try we wouldn't need a place like this. As you get more experience you'll notice how much your work improves.
 
take a tip from old bud. i too thought i was pretty good at getting a car right until i put ours under the halogens. being a perfectionist i decided to take one panel at a time and work it until i was satisfied and had 95% of the micro maring removed. sometimes i would go over the same panel 5-6 times. at the end of about 50 hours over the period of a month i had an 07 black 500e mb that would make mike phillips or bobby g drool. now the real challenge is to keep the finish at this level.

i used a pc xp with mez sip lc pads and topped it off with ultima wipe on/walk away sealant. the car looks as if it just rolled out of the factory.

hope this helps.

budinsc

ps be patient!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
budinsc said:
take a tip from old bud. i too thought i was pretty good at getting a car right until i put ours under the halogens. being a perfectionist i decided to take one panel at a time and work it until i was satisfied and had 95% of the micro maring removed. sometimes i would go over the same panel 5-6 times. at the end of about 50 hours over the period of a month i had an 07 black 500e mb that would make mike phillips or bobby g drool. now the real challenge is to keep the finish at this level.
Click to expand...

This is more than likely where I'm headed. I will try to wait for the weather/heat to break a little, but then will be spending hours on each panel until I am completely satisfied. I understand that we are the only one's that notice these things, but after spending the amount of time and sweat spent on jobs like these, I expect results from myself.

My biggest fear then will become overdoing it.
 
Don't overthin your clear. Part of this is understanding the limitations of a daily driver, that will continue to see the elements, be washed, etc. Even if you get it perfect, it will never stay that way, no matter how careful you are. IMO the best approach is to get it very good, use careful wash practices, be vigilant for bird poop etc, and then periodically polish it back to very good. If you are going to turn the thing in in a couple of years, maybe you can take a lot of paint off now and be ok, but I tend to keep my cars a long time and I don't really want to have the paint fail when it's 10 years old because I had to chase every last defect.

To each his own...I had severe DISO on a leftover I bought, and if I had polished every swirl out I'm sure the clear would have failed already, I'm worried about a spot that the flake looks different in as it is...

EDIT: Sorry, maybe I'm on low blood sugar because I didn't eat lunch yet...maybe I've been a bit too sour on the topic...with the advent of things like Opti-Coat 2.0, it may be quite reasonable to remove a lot of clear in search of "perfection", and then restore a lot of protection with the OC 2.0, then repeat the process in the future.
 
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Setec Astronomy said:
Don't overthin your clear. Part of this is understanding the limitations of a daily driver,

EDIT: Sorry, maybe I'm on low blood sugar because I didn't eat lunch yet...maybe I've been a bit too sour on the topic...with the advent of things like Opti-Coat 2.0, it may be quite reasonable to remove a lot of clear in search of "perfection", and then restore a lot of protection with the OC 2.0, then repeat the process in the future.
Click to expand...

I understand , and you summed up my intentions in your edit. I want to get this car as close to perfection as possible once, and then do what I can to maintain. When I spend 3 days on the whole routine, and then seal/wax, and discover what I "sealed" after the fact, it's not pretty.
 
Cool. Been a lot of "sanded through the clear" threads lately, makes you want to caution people.
 
To me this is a good example of how the sun really doesn't show as much as some people think.
In my experience and opinion, halogens and LED (at the proper angles) are far better at showing flaws than sunlight.
 
panthercz said:
To me this is a good example of how the sun really doesn't show as much as some people think.
In my experience and opinion, halogens and LED (at the proper angles) are far better at showing flaws than sunlight.
Click to expand...

The sun is pretty good, IMO, you just can't adjust the angle of the sun to keep from burning a hole in your brain while you're trying to see the swirls.
 
Don't be too hard on yourself. Look at it this way, when you worked on your paint without proper lighting you were essentially "flying blind".

It's hard to correct what you can't see.

Now armed with proper lighting you will be able to see the defects better thus, enabling yourself to achieve a higher level of perfection.:xyxthumbs::hungry::buffing:
 
courtdale said:
Walking through Lowe's this weekend and decided to check out the lights since I hadn't bought one for detailing yet. 500 watt halogen shop light for $13, can't beat that so I grabbed it. What a mistake.

I was pretty pleased with how the car looked after my first correction, I knew I left room for improvement, but to the untrained eye, it looked pretty damn good from 10 ft. away. Well, once I hit it with the light, how much I REALLY missed jumped out and smacked me in the face. WOW is all I can say, pretty disheartening.

My only hope is that now with the light I'll be able to better monitor my progress while working because right now, it almost looks like I did nothing. The hood is disgusting...
Click to expand...

I know EXACTLY what you mean. I had this old girlfriend who I thought was pretty...and then I got glasses!!!
 
Bump for my above funny response...nobody saw it!!
 
courtdale said:
Walking through Lowe's this weekend and decided to check out the lights since I hadn't bought one for detailing yet. 500 watt halogen shop light for $13, can't beat that so I grabbed it. What a mistake.

I was pretty pleased with how the car looked after my first correction, I knew I left room for improvement, but to the untrained eye, it looked pretty damn good from 10 ft. away. Well, once I hit it with the light, how much I REALLY missed jumped out and smacked me in the face. WOW is all I can say, pretty disheartening.

My only hope is that now with the light I'll be able to better monitor my progress while working because right now, it almost looks like I did nothing. The hood is disgusting...
Click to expand...

This is why you always hear Mike say "It ain't braggin' if you can back it up". I'm not saying you're bragging by any means, instead it's about making sure you're getting the correction you're after by fully inspecting your results. Mike also likes to say to use at least two different types of light. I normally use LED and good ole sunlight. I also have halogen lights but they're a pain to setup. I don't have a garage.

Don't feel too bad, I'm sure it's happened to many of us (including myself). It's a long learning process so just keep a good attitude and eventually you'll be polishing like a pro.



richy said:
Bump for my above funny response...nobody saw it!!
Click to expand...

I caught that! :poke: Could you also be referring to beer goggles? Those dramatically distort your vision.
 
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