haris300
New member
- Apr 1, 2014
- 999
- 0
Hi everyone. As promised in my last thread, here is a quick review of the new McKee's 37 compound, polish, and coatings with a couple of extra bonuses.
The car I worked on is a local Miata club member's 2001 Special Edition Mazda Miata equipped with a turbocharger and lots of suspension goodies to make things a little more fun.
The British Racing Green paint was pretty neglected but nothing I couldn't handle. A few parts like the spoiler had some less than acceptable body work performed on them, but for the most part the car was still in decent condition. The weather was absolutely perfect this weekend so I knew I was in for a fun little project.
Prep Wash:
I started off cleaning the wheels with McKee's Foaming Wheel Cleaner Gel. This stuff is powerful to say the least. It does have a strong odor like most other heavy duty wheel cleaners.
Wheel condition:
I decided to did a little test and allowed the product to dwell for a bit before rinsing off with no agitation from a brush.
Big difference for just a spray and rinse!
I then used the wheel cleaner with a brush and cleaned the tire with McKee's 37 Tire and Rubber Rejuvenator.
I then loaded up my foam gun with McKee's 37 Xtreme Foam Formula and got to work on the paint with my mitt. This had the same familiar mint smell present in Detailer's Pro Xtreme Foam Formula.
I ended up using McKee's 37 Road Kill Bug Remover for the dead bugs on the front and finished up with a mechanical decontamination with my Nanoskin medium mitt and McKee's 37 Universal Clay Lubricant.
Already looking much better right?
Correction:
After drying and bringing the car in the garage under proper lighting, I inspected the paint condition. Not as good looking as it was outside in the shade :laughing:
This was a great opportunity top try out my new Rupes LHR15 Mark II
. I'll try to do a dedicated review on this tool soon. I will say though that this thing is fantastic to use on curved/vertical panels now.
I also got to try out my new Arctic White towels for removing polish.
After some testing with different pads, I decided on using McKee's 37 Fast Compound with Meguiar's Microfiber Cutting Discs for the initial correction stage.
This pad and product combo was a quick defect killer. The compound dusts like you would expect Wolfgang Uber Compound or FG400. Nothing crazy. Good work time. No complaints about wipe off either.
I also used the compound with my Flex PE8 and some cutting pads with great success in the tighter spots.
Headlights and glass were also taken care of at this stage.
Some slight hazing left from the aggressive first step was then easily eliminated in the second polishing step.
Final polishing was done with McKee's 37 Fast Polish with Meguiar's Foam Polishing Discs and Buff and Shine black 3 inch Grip Pads.
More correction results:
I got a majority of the imperfections out with the exception of a few rids and body work defects. I'm hoping for the owner to bring the car back sometime without the spoiler or a new spoiler with proper paint.
Coating:
I then wiped the paint down with BLACKFIRE Crystal Coat Paint Prep. This step can be done with the recommended McKee's Coating Prep Polish but I've had good success with the BLACKFIRE prep for various coatings and didn't see a need for a third polishing step.
After a second wipe down, I got to applying the McKee's 37 Paint Coating. This stuff is ridiculously easy to use. Almost too easy.
I used a Lake Country coating applicator doing small sections at a time. Application is very straight forward. You simply mist the applicator 5 or 6 times, apply in a criss cross pattern like any other coating, and level it with the applicator until the coating starts to disappear. Once applied, you can wipe away with a clean towel and move on to the next spot.
Don't get me wrong though, it is slightly grabby like other coatings when it's going on but smooths out as you level it with the applicator. Not to the point where it makes application difficult.
I noticed the paint felt very slick, not sticky, after wiping with a towel.
I checked for high/missed spots and moved onto to coating the glass and wheels with the McKee's 37 Glass Coating and Wheel Coating.
Application for these two was also a breeze. Very easy on easy off formulas.
Tires were coated with a single coat of McKee's 37 Tire Coating rather than a tire dressing since the owner is not a fan of shiny tires. Keep in mind that this product can still be followed up with multiple coats for additional sheen. The tires were about to be changed anyways as they had pretty much no tread left from spirited driving
Final results:
Final thoughts. I was satisfied with the results from using McKee's 37 products once again. They performed as claimed and did not give me any issues. Very easy to use.
Well that's all I've got, thanks for reading
The car I worked on is a local Miata club member's 2001 Special Edition Mazda Miata equipped with a turbocharger and lots of suspension goodies to make things a little more fun.
The British Racing Green paint was pretty neglected but nothing I couldn't handle. A few parts like the spoiler had some less than acceptable body work performed on them, but for the most part the car was still in decent condition. The weather was absolutely perfect this weekend so I knew I was in for a fun little project.
Prep Wash:
I started off cleaning the wheels with McKee's Foaming Wheel Cleaner Gel. This stuff is powerful to say the least. It does have a strong odor like most other heavy duty wheel cleaners.
Wheel condition:
I decided to did a little test and allowed the product to dwell for a bit before rinsing off with no agitation from a brush.
Big difference for just a spray and rinse!
I then used the wheel cleaner with a brush and cleaned the tire with McKee's 37 Tire and Rubber Rejuvenator.
I then loaded up my foam gun with McKee's 37 Xtreme Foam Formula and got to work on the paint with my mitt. This had the same familiar mint smell present in Detailer's Pro Xtreme Foam Formula.
I ended up using McKee's 37 Road Kill Bug Remover for the dead bugs on the front and finished up with a mechanical decontamination with my Nanoskin medium mitt and McKee's 37 Universal Clay Lubricant.
Already looking much better right?
Correction:
After drying and bringing the car in the garage under proper lighting, I inspected the paint condition. Not as good looking as it was outside in the shade :laughing:
This was a great opportunity top try out my new Rupes LHR15 Mark II
. I'll try to do a dedicated review on this tool soon. I will say though that this thing is fantastic to use on curved/vertical panels now.
I also got to try out my new Arctic White towels for removing polish.
After some testing with different pads, I decided on using McKee's 37 Fast Compound with Meguiar's Microfiber Cutting Discs for the initial correction stage.
This pad and product combo was a quick defect killer. The compound dusts like you would expect Wolfgang Uber Compound or FG400. Nothing crazy. Good work time. No complaints about wipe off either.
I also used the compound with my Flex PE8 and some cutting pads with great success in the tighter spots.
Headlights and glass were also taken care of at this stage.
Some slight hazing left from the aggressive first step was then easily eliminated in the second polishing step.
Final polishing was done with McKee's 37 Fast Polish with Meguiar's Foam Polishing Discs and Buff and Shine black 3 inch Grip Pads.
More correction results:
I got a majority of the imperfections out with the exception of a few rids and body work defects. I'm hoping for the owner to bring the car back sometime without the spoiler or a new spoiler with proper paint.
Coating:
I then wiped the paint down with BLACKFIRE Crystal Coat Paint Prep. This step can be done with the recommended McKee's Coating Prep Polish but I've had good success with the BLACKFIRE prep for various coatings and didn't see a need for a third polishing step.
After a second wipe down, I got to applying the McKee's 37 Paint Coating. This stuff is ridiculously easy to use. Almost too easy.
I used a Lake Country coating applicator doing small sections at a time. Application is very straight forward. You simply mist the applicator 5 or 6 times, apply in a criss cross pattern like any other coating, and level it with the applicator until the coating starts to disappear. Once applied, you can wipe away with a clean towel and move on to the next spot.
Don't get me wrong though, it is slightly grabby like other coatings when it's going on but smooths out as you level it with the applicator. Not to the point where it makes application difficult.
I noticed the paint felt very slick, not sticky, after wiping with a towel.
I checked for high/missed spots and moved onto to coating the glass and wheels with the McKee's 37 Glass Coating and Wheel Coating.
Application for these two was also a breeze. Very easy on easy off formulas.
Tires were coated with a single coat of McKee's 37 Tire Coating rather than a tire dressing since the owner is not a fan of shiny tires. Keep in mind that this product can still be followed up with multiple coats for additional sheen. The tires were about to be changed anyways as they had pretty much no tread left from spirited driving
Final results:
Final thoughts. I was satisfied with the results from using McKee's 37 products once again. They performed as claimed and did not give me any issues. Very easy to use.
Well that's all I've got, thanks for reading
icture:
