I never thought I would be one of the "elders" with more QD on hand that could choke a donkey...you know who you are, Boss, Gip and Rock.

I have somehow accumulated more QD than I knew I had and fell under the spell and trap that can be the confusing for most OCD'ers....if you are not there you will cross that line and sooner than you thought.

Over the past few years I felt like I knew and understood most QD's and used them properly. Well, as time goes on and you learn more and more and mostly from mistakes. I have learned yet another lesson. While the ol OCD adage remains constant, "you never stop learning". I did learn a few things over the past few months. After thinking I had most of the answers.


We all know that "not all QD's" are the same, we all have our fav's and mine being Megs 34. I love 34 b/c it allows me to go just a tad over dusty and still make a surface look good. In addition, 34 is a great lube for clay albeit expensive for most QD's.

Why am I ranting? It's because over the past two years I have piled up several brands of QD...call it a side detailing OCD.

Presently I own:
PB Spary and Wipe (2 Gallons)
Megs 34 (3 Gallons)
Megs Last Touch (2 Gallons)
Megs UQD ( 3 bottles)
Xtream Final Detail (2 gallons)
Optimum, ONR, (equal to 10 gallons)
Optimum Instant Detailer Gloss Enhancer, (equal to 2 gallons)
PB QD+ (1 gallon)

What I have learned is not all QD's are the same yet they have the QD name thus it can be confusing.

My findings:

I have used most of my QD's incorrectly. No matter how experienced you think you are on this board, sometimes you think you know all the answers and the reality is, it's a great possibility you are getting results out of pure luck. If you get bad results, it's because you are using the product incorrectly. (speaking only about QD's as this time)

Why do you care? Simple. For a very long time, I have been buying #34 as my go to....the reason, it's probably one of the best real QD's around, IMHO and I didn't like the results I got from to the other QD's. Lets say I have held #34 as the benhmarck for QD's.

That being said, if you want to add some great pop after a wash, I would recommend using the Optimum IDGH or PB QD+. Both are amazing.

Why I didn't like PB S&W when I first got it....it seemed to streak. Which brings up the question, why do QD's streak? Experience has taught me, 4 things:

1. Surface is too hot to use product.
2. Using the product outside it's capability
3. Too much product is used.
4. MF is saturated or too wet with product, change MF's

None of this may make sense to those reading and I am sorry but I think its important to note that a QD can and is very different than say a Gloss Enhancer They cannot be used interchangeably and shouldn't be in the same category. They are different products and thus it is up to the user to understand which is which and to use when appropriate.

My personal findings are this and I may be WAY off base here.

Megs 34, a great all around QD, use on light to moderate dusting.
PB Spray and Wipe-touted as a water less wash...hardly, use on VERY light dusting and or after a wash.
Megs UQD, use after a wash, use sparingly.
Megs Last Touch-don't use if moderately dusty,better for clay due to cost
Xtream Final Detail, use like Megs 34 with some added pop, great QD
Optimum, IDGH, use only after a fresh wash to add lots of pop. Do not let MF get too wet with product
PB QD+-same as Optimum, use on a cool surface.

Again, sorry to rant but I wanted to share some recent experience with a number of different products that I thought I knew how to use.

Happy detailing.

 

I didn't purposely quote just that part, just didn't want to post another page.

That info is quite informative. I've only used #34 and XFD (as you well know,) and recently, UQD. I really liked both #34 and XFD in the uses you suggested, and UQD was fairly useless other than for some added "pop."

Anyway, good write-up.

 

yeah right, and there is no way you could have read and translated what I said to make sense in the time you posted.....

For that B&W, you should have borrowed my WD........

 

My mind works in strange ways and for some reason I understand a lot of what you say....

I didn't know it was silver til I got home, haha.. .Brother said it was gray...

 

Two things that I know I do and I'm trying to improve on is using to much product. Like applying wax a little goes a long way. The other continuing to use a MF that has become saturated instead of switching it out for a new one. Both of these thing cause streaking and make removal of the QD hard.

Your not to bad of yet RR, you know your really OCD about QD when you buy it 5 gallons at a time.

 

RR,
You keep right on ranting because we keep right on learning. Most of the rest of us (mere mortals) don't have the time or sample size to adequately test the number of products and techiniqes you do. Thank you for continuing to share your experience with us so that we can learn to. Have a great holiday weekend too!

 

Nice post RR!

Anyhow, as time goes on, I think you will find yourself QD'ing a "dusty" vehicle less and less. Unfortunately, no matter how good the product, tools, and process, QD'ing a dusty/lightly dirty vehicle simply imparts to much marring, both superficial, (in the LSP) and even more substantial marring into the paint finish.

I still like the gloss enhancing QD's on a clean vehicle though, and I agree on the Optimum QD... great stuff! As a matter of fact, the only two QD's that I really need are ONR diluted to QD strength as my cleaning QD, and the Optimum ID for all the other times.

 

Great post! I learned a ton from that, thanks for letting us in on that little morsal.

 

Good post JP.

 

I understood every bit of it... I also just printed it... Thanks!!!

BTW-- check email.

 

He's really bad about that

 

what?

Email or PM? My PM's aren't working, hell I am just happy to get topic notices again.

Ryan I have nothing from you....

 

Boss this has been my struggle....I do tend to QD too often and I have to polish and correct often as a result. Product build up and micro LSP marring drive me crazy.

 

did you check the priakos.com one? Send me an email and I will reply to it with the content originally sent...

Yeah... I would have PM'd you, but they arent working right now... Wonder what's up?

 

I understand completely! The fact that you notice the marring puts you a step ahead of a lot of folks.

In case you are interested, here are two process that work for me... (still not perfect results, but much better)

For extremely light dust, I use my ONR diluted to QD strength (6 to 8 ounces to a gallon of distilled water). I also use about 3 large, soft WW towels per vehicle (two to lift the dust/dirt, and one to dry).

I spray a panel liberally with the ONR... more liberally than normally recommended. Then, I very, very gently wipe the panel with one WW towel. I try and "lift" the dust/dirt rather than wiping the panel.

Then, I very lightly mist on a bit more ONR and use another clean WW towel to gently wipe the area dry. Having a light mist of the ONR on the paint surface keeps it lubricated and picks up any remaining dust/dirt. Wiping dry paint with ANY dry towel is where the trouble starts. I think a lot of folks "over wipe" their QD's.

Then I repeat the process on another panel, but flip the "dirty" WW to a clean section before the "lifting" process. If the "drying" WW towel has dirt on the section used to dry, I filp that to a clean section too.
---------------------------------------------------------
For slightly dustier/dirtier paint, I prefer the ONR wash method. Although, I use two buckets... both with one ounce of ONR to two gallons of water. The second bucket is my rinse bucket. Having the ONR in the rinse bucket keeps from diluting the wash mix.

Then I use the same drying method as described in the first process. Instead of misting on a little more ONR, I will go over the panel again with the ONR wash solution.

Now, both of the processes take more time than the typical QD'ing, and of course, it still requires a good gloss enhancing QD for a little extra POP. However, those processes save me a lot of polishing time... not that I mind polishing, I just hate seeing a lot of swirls between polishing sessions. Plus that fact that I understand that paint can only take so much polishing.

Anyhow, you are probably using processes that are similar. I just thought I would mention them to see if something a little different might help.