Proud new MX5 owner here - have been resisting temptation for a while here,
but when the IRD generously returned a large chink of the money which I had
foolishly given them by mistake I set it aside for the day when the right car
came along. This happened on Fathers Day in the shape of a 1997 SR Ltd in
Sparkle Green - apparently only 316 were made in this colour, and I have never
seen another in New Zealand.
After an exhilirating drive back to Auckland from the car's previous home in
Hamilton, I set about making the car look as good as it could. It only has
37,000 kms on the clock and it feels as if they are genuine, but it had some
swirl marks on the bodywork and had been parked outside under pollen-bearing
trees for a couple of months, so it needed some TLC. The rear window was a
little fogged as well.
Having read the product review on this website about Meguiars Plastic Polish
#17 I set out to track it down. Repco and assorted other stockists of
Meguiars on the North Shore were not particularly helpful (mind you, it helped
when I learned that 'Meguiars' is pronounced 'McGuires' rather than rhyming
with 'Jaguar'. I knew that the Meguiar importer was LJ Smits and they were
supposed to have an outlet in Glenfield somewhere, but didn't know where. They
weren't in the phone book under that name, but fortunately I happened upon
them by chance at 243 Archers Road, Glenfield, and they were open on a
Saturday morning, too. Their head office phone number is 0-9-274 6871 if you
need a stockist in another area.
I told the guy at the counter (Ramesh, I think) what I wanted and he was most
helpful, then I showed him the car and asked his advice. He was extremely
helpful, perhaps spurred on by the fact that I was clearly going to be a good
customer. I ended up buying the following (don't laugh - just wince):
Gold Class Car Wash ($12.75)
Swirl Free Polish ($24.50)
Gold Class Liquid Wax ($27.97)
Plastic Cleaner # 17 ($13.63)
Vinyl/Rubber Cleaner ($16.33)
All prices are plus GST. Add to this the Meguiars Leather Cleaner and Leather
Conditioner I already had for my other car (about $40 from memory), and I
reckoned my new toy was ready to be thoroughly spoiled. The following process
took 8 hours over two days.
1. Gold Class Car Wask has to be applied with a sponge and I went over every
centimetre very carefully. It is pretty good at removing tar spots if you take
your time. It has to be rinsed off with a flow of water rather than a spray at
the end, and then wiped with cheesecloth or a soft chammy.
2. Once the car has dried out of the sun, use the swirl free polish. In
addition to the swirls, I also had some rub marks on both front wings where I
guess people had leant over the car carelessly. I did one panel at a time,
applying the polish and then taking it off with a clean cloth. It seemed to
work well in most areas, but I found later that the marks on the wings needed
more attention later. You also have to be careful if you have painted
mudflaps, as there were traces of the green paint on my cloth after using this
polish on them - perhaps the paint doesn't stick so well to that plastic.
3. I then attacked the rear window with the plastic cleaner. As well as
fogging, the window also had a couple of large scuff marks and a very small
crease. I found that the best way to treat it was to take one small area at a
time, as the cleaner rapidly builds up a layer of grime against the cloth and
if you don't work a bit at a time all you are doing is spreading the grime
back on to the next area. I was absolutely stunned by the transformation this
polish achieved. It takes time and effort, as the product review said, but it
was well worth it. The fogging was dramatically reduced, the scuff marks
disappeared completely and even the crease was rendered less obvious. Doing
the inside of the window is not a comfortable process, and I am conscious that
I should really do this again to get the full effect, but I am delighted by
what the cleaner has done so far.
4. Next area to tackle was the pollen, which had left a yellowish, slightly
sticky deposit all around the underside of the hood space and on some of the
hood itself, as well as the bars. I took the Vinyl/Rubber Cleaner to this
(this was the messiest part) and found that it actually came off very easily -
someone had previously recommended soap and water, but I had been loathe to
splash water around there. This Cleaner worked very well, and had the added
benefit of darkening the area and leaving a very slight shine. Having done all
the hard to reach bits, I then put the hood up and did the whole thing, and
was very pleased with the effect - with the muck removed and the cleaner, as
well as the newly see-through plastic window, the car which had looked pretty
good before was now starting to look immaculate.
5. Back to the bodywork, and I applied a coat of the Liquid Wax. It tells you
to apply this to the whole car and then polish it off with a clean cloth, but
despite doing this in the shade I found that the wax actually dried more
quickly than I wanted and polishing the later panels off was more work than I
expected (mind you, this was on the second afternoon!). Next time I will do a
couple of panels at a time. It proved worth it, though, as the bodywork came
up beautifully, has a good deep shine and even feels silky-smooth to the
touch!
6. Having vacuumed up all the bits from the ends of the cheesecloth, I then
cleaned and conditioned the leather parts of the seats - no drama here.
7. Finally, I used some chrome polish on the wheels, mirrors and exhaust
(can't remember the brand - I've had it around for ages) and some 'Black
Chrome' polish on the wipers (same thing), and black-walled the tyres. By that
time it was geting dark so I tucked it away on the garage with a dust cover
(Fathers Day present form the children) over it to protect it from the cat.
Since then, of course, we've had typical bloody Auckland weather and ther
hasn't been a period of sunshine long enough to do any more than take it out
for a half hour sprint. I have left it open in the garage for a bit as I have
heard from other people that if you clean a car internally and then leave it
locked up for a while you can get mould developing. As I'll be away for three
weeks shortly I didn't want that to happen after all my hard work.
So, but of a saga, and I doubt if I'll ever work so heard at cleaning a car
again, but it was worth it and the Meguiars products were superb. I have used
only a fraction of most of them (probably the vinyl/rubber cleaner took the
biggest hit) but I want to add some more coats of polish before doing some
cross-country trips next month and it's nice to know that the car can then be
restored to good condition with a lot less work. I still have the engine bay
to do, of course, but that may be another story...
Hope that answers your question about polish!
And no, I'm not reallyfanatical about cleaning cars - I'm just a proud new MX5 owner...
Simon
PS - got the car just in time, as we bought a house that afternoon. Had we
bought the house first, I could never have afforded the car!
