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Diamondbrite - DIY application


jagseven
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I have very recently purchased a one-year-old car and was given as a present a Diamondbrite pack purchased from Ebay.

The pack includes a 2 stage sealant process, some shampoo and conserver. I understand this is only normally sold to dealers and not the general public.

The instructions for applying the diamondbrite seem straightforward enough, but are there any tips for applying this?

The car was supplied by a dealer and is therefore currently very shiny. Other than making sure the car is spotlessly clean before I start, what else should I do?

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Cheers Dan - I was only intending to treat the outside of the car. I have read some of your other posts and you certainly seem to know your stuff and I value your comments.

The Diamondbrite was a present and I cannot justify getting it treated professionally - my wife has already complained about me spending too much money on the car!

The options are therefore to simply not use the kit if it really is that difficult to correctly apply or do it with as much knowledge and care as possible, hence this post.

I am normally very good at regularly washing and waxing my car to keep it looking good, but it seems a shame to not use the kit now I've got it. Even if my application is not as good as a professional what is the worst I could do? Would it just not last as long or could I actually damage the paint work?

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Thanks Hotdog. Thats very nice of you to say so. Please stay in touch and let us know if you have any questions or problems (heavens forbid!) with the sealant.

Jag,

I really shouldn't give any advice about this at all. It's in our interest to put a stop to these products ending up on the black market.

But I'll give your situation some though and see if I can advise your best course of action. The problem is that you need a strong TFR to remove all the wax from your car just for starters... and that ain't the ind of thing you can buy from your local motor accessory shop. Then you have to prep the paintwork... It may need very little if it's a new car, but otherwise...

As i said, i'll think about it.

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Thanks Dave - I appreciate your position.

The one-year-old car was supplied by a dealer and was fully valeted about 2 weeks ago. The paintwork is like new with any dirt just falling off the car after a quick wash (I used Autoglym shampoo but I think plain water would have done). This is why I am thinking now is the time to use paint sealant. I accept the best results will only be achieved by professionals but I'm in the position of just having to decide whether I use the kit at all or stick with my usual wash and polish routine.

I certainly don't want to risk spoiling the paint on my new car! So any advice gratefully received (offline if you prefer).

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As I said, you need to remove the wax from the car. The only two ways I can think of for you to do this is to either take your car to a valeters and ask them to do it... or bath the car down with alcohol!

sealants contain polymers designed to bond with the paintwork and form a tough plastic coating. Car Wax is liquid once it gets hot, even a highest quality grade 1 carnauba wax has a fracture point of only about 165*F. But as most waxes only contain a small percentage of wax, the rest being silicones and oils... they melt and evaporate at pretty low tempratures. Think how hot your care gets in summer.

This is why you have to re-wax your car every few months.

If you apply a sealant over a wax, the sealant won't bond to the paint, and when the wax melts and evaporates, most of the sealant will fall off.

Any sealant which does bond will do so unevenly and leave swirl marks and patches. Over time, these areas will look worse and worse as unsealed areas will become oxidised while sealed areas won't. For this reason, sealants have to be applied with precision and care even once the wax is removed.

This is the reason that you can't buy this stuff retail.

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Having done some research on paint sealants it seems there are some systems designed for DIY application

eg. www.5starshine dot com

Interestingly one FAQ is as follows:

Do I have to remove the wax I have on my car before I apply 5 STAR SHINE?

No, our Step #1 one prepares the paint by removing any residual waxes that still exist on your paint.

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All I can say is that we have tried this product http://www.glare.com.sg and we thought it was pretty good... it's wonderful for coverig light scratches, but I'm afraid that I cannot vouch for their claims that it lasts for 18 months. I'm not saying that it doesn't, it's just that our testing didn't extend that far.

There is another product we also liked called Amazing Glaze http://www.amazingglaze.co.uk which seems to be a very good sealant. Again, you will have to take them at face value because we cannot confirm any of their claims, but they seem like a good company. Being a British company, they have to conform to British advertizing standards instead of American freedom of speach laws. (thats a hint about buying products online).

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Thanks for the links. I guess the problem with many of the claims is that it takes several years to test them!

The amazing glaze looks good but do you think it is still necessary to dewax the car before applying this stuff?

I suspect that's what you did when you tried it !

I also wonder if "tar remover" could be used as a dewaxing agent - I notice that most tar removers e.g. Autoglym's intensive tar remover claims to remove wax amongst other things.

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hmmm... I'm not going to recommend washing a whole car in tar and glue removers... I don't know what it might do to your rubbers, but you could be right, iff you use enough of it.

I might be worrying over nothing, but just to be sure, do you think you could make the link to 5starshine.com into a non-working link?

The reason I ask is that 5starshine run a link farm and although Yahoo says they have about 30,000 incomming links, they have a pagerank of zero. Linking to them might be detrimental to tyresmoke.com's search engine rankings. I could be wrong! but it's probably better to be safe than sorry, all the SEO experts say that linking to a bad neibourhood is bad for your SER.

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One more (American) site that I found interesting is Thedetailingbible.com. This gives lots of car cleaning tips and talks about dewaxing. The site seems to like 3M General Purpose Adhesive Cleaner for this job, although I'm not sure how readily available it is in the UK. Dan - maybe you've used this before and can comment on its effectiveness?

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[ QUOTE ]

I might be worrying over nothing, but just to be sure, do you think you could make the link to 5starshine.com into a non-working link?

The reason I ask is that 5starshine run a link farm and although Yahoo says they have about 30,000 incomming links, they have a pagerank of zero. Linking to them might be detrimental to tyresmoke.com's search engine rankings. I could be wrong! but it's probably better to be safe than sorry, all the SEO experts say that linking to a bad neibourhood is bad for your SER.

[/ QUOTE ]

Dont have a clue but have edited just incase, cheers for the heads up C_I 169144-ok.gif

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