I found a new favorite Meguiar's product....

I have a 1989 Ford Probe GL 5-speed that I drive as a beater. I paid $400 for it. It had 150,000ish miles when I bought it, and now it's got 190,000 miles on it. It has been washed perhaps three times (MAYBE four) in the 2 1/2 years I've owned it. I've hit two deer and a porcupine in it. I am very bad about maintaining the exterior, because it was pretty faded and oxidized when I bought it. I tried very half-heartedly to shine it up when I bought it, but really didn't give it a whole lot of effort.

Well, today, I got a bug to get the paint cleaned up. I just bought a winter tire/wheel package, and the wheels are bright silver, and I didn't really want the wheels to stand out like crazy, so I figured I'd give it a go with some polish and see where I got. I was thinking about taking it to get a Maaco special, but didn't really want to spend even $200 on it.

This is the day I brought it home.






So we start with this


and this

Some in progress pics...

Two hours and a lot of elbow grease later, we have this...








And the new wheels mocked up

I will polish a bit more and wax tomorrow if my arm doesn't fall off tonight. Overall I'm very impressed with this product.

The paint on my car didn't come from the factory with a clear coat, and shined up very well, regardless. It doesn't have any flaking, and just a few areas of minor cracking. The paint is, however, still almost 24 years old, and original, so it has some ugliness. Chipping, a few dents (ok, more than a few!), and some areas that I just couldn't get shiny. The driver headlight cover is a slightly different color because the first deer I hit bent the factory cover all up, so I replaced it with a less dinged-up one from a junkyard and painted it with a random can of red spray paint that I had in the garage. I put an HID kit in it, and the buckets are a bit deeper than stock, so the lights don't sit as flush as they should.

Overall, I'm very happy with how this turned out. My car is actually RED now, instead of being faded red/pink.

Its amazing how single stage paint likes wax and red seems to fade the worse of all colors. It was worth the work, it looks good!

Holy balls, it's like night and day. Good work!

If you like that stuff you should try the 3m line. I use the #1 bottle for the cutting with a wool pad and the #2 for buffing. I absolutely love the 3m line, it works very quick and the results are impossible to duplicate.

I started with the same compound you are currently using and yes it works, but I guarantee you will love the 3m more, trust me.

Also, are you doing it all by hand or machine?

I did this by hand. I have a ROP, but it's cheap and doesn't do a whole lot when I need to be fairly aggressive. I will definitely give the 3M stuff a try - where do you get it?

Get it at Oreilly's. It is $50qt, but well worth it.