Hi, so i just recently got a 2000 sunfire. The car has been taken care of fairly well. The paint and body are pretty decent, no rust, except underneath the rockers (gotta undercoat those someday). The issue is , being as the car is ten years old, it shows its age. Pretty much the whole car is covered with fine scratches. I did just wax it tonight, with turtle wax ice quick wax, which helped with a lot of the scratches/haze, but alot of it is still there. What can i do. Would a higher quality wax help, or do i need to buy a buffer, and buff the whole car (i have no money right now, lol)

Also, water spots-how the hell do you get rid of them? I thought the detail spray would take them off, but it didnt. Didnt take off the fingerprints either. What do i need to use?

Just thought id mention, that ive never waxed or even seen a car waxed before, so yeah im a newbie.

buffers fix all



www.driftnamiperformance.com

Adam Cousins wrote:Just thought id mention, that ive never waxed or even seen a car waxed before, so yeah im a newbie.

I'm personally not going to recommend you buff it yourself. Maybe you can go buy a orbital buffer and try your hand at it but using a good buffer that is non-orbital I wouldn't suggest using it for your first time.. easily able to @!#$ up your paint job. Sears and Auto Zone should have some little orbital buffers/waxers if you want to try but i would suggest going to a body shop/detail shop first and talk to them. Some may do it really cheap or even free depending on the scratches and the shop.

Another note, undercoating the rockers is not fixing the rust. the only way to fix rust is to remove the old metal and put new in. You would simply be hiding it not fixing it
I'm going to assume you mean truck bed undercoating aerosol that you can get at any parts store, which I'm also going to tell you is NOT rust protection. They make special coatings for this application and those are not it.

Finger prints and water spots will probably be a task to remove. plus if the vehicle hasn't been waxed they are a little more difficult to remove. Odds are the car hasn't been waxed and those spots are baked into the clear. Maybe while at the detail shop they can run over it with their buffer and remove those as well. Fingerprints you will need some sort of wax and grease remover. Once you get all your water spots and fingerprints gone. Wax it.

I really hate giving this sort of advice online because I can hear the complaints when things get messed up from inexperience..

You know what... I'm just going to honestly suggest that you just take it to a detail shop. No offense to you or anyone who have never done this before but learning on something like this is not best suited for your car. Especially because your wanting it to look nice, if you mess it up it will really aggravate you because "you should of just left it alone because it looked better then".
$100 at most shops should probably get you covered.. you'll probably waste more in tools, time, and compounds. They know what they are doing and that is why they get paid to do it. They can remove all the water spots, scratches, fingerprints, and wax it for you and you not have to fear it getting worse. Then I'd suggest every 4-6 months take it back and let them wax it again. Doing that will probably cost around $50 if that and will help keep your paint looking nice.

^^ Good advice, its very easy to mess things up.. Plus if you were planning on waxing/buffing out side, you run the risk of dust being blown on the paint and scratching the paint even more..

what they said, i buff my own car, but thats because i'm one of those "detail shop" guys you bring cars to. but definately bring it in at least the first time and have them do it, then maybe watch them wax the car, get an idea of how it works and then just wax your car every few months, as well as wash it regularly.. then you should be fine



www.driftnamiperformance.com

thanks for the replies guys. if i want to get my car polished, i will have someone do it. As for waxing, its not hard, just tedious- if you can read the directions on the meguires bottle (i can), you can wax a car. But what about the water spots, is there anything that will remove them?

i know what will do it, but the name escapes me, i'll get back to you



www.driftnamiperformance.com

Stephen (manta z) wrote:

Finger prints and water spots will probably be a task to remove. plus if the vehicle hasn't been waxed they are a little more difficult to remove. Odds are the car hasn't been waxed and those spots are baked into the clear. Maybe while at the detail shop they can run over it with their buffer and remove those as well. Fingerprints you will need some sort of wax and grease remover. Once you get all your water spots and fingerprints gone. Wax it.


You know what... I'm just going to honestly suggest that you just take it to a detail shop. No offense to you or anyone who have never done this before but learning on something like this is not best suited for your car. Especially because your wanting it to look nice, if you mess it up it will really aggravate you because "you should of just left it alone because it looked better then".
$100 at most shops should probably get you covered.. you'll probably waste more in tools, time, and compounds. They know what they are doing and that is why they get paid to do it. They can remove all the water spots, scratches, fingerprints, and wax it for you and you not have to fear it getting worse. Then I'd suggest every 4-6 months take it back and let them wax it again. Doing that will probably cost around $50 if that and will help keep your paint looking nice.