I love fixing cosmetic stuff on my car. It's a 2001 Ford Explorer, and to me it's the world.
I spray painted the rims myself and I wish I would have taken more pictures and shown a step by step process because I was so happy with the way they came out so I decided to make a little blog with stuff I do to my car because why not?
So late at night I saw this infomercial about this stuff that will renew (Wipe New) the trim on your car. I was interested, but there's no way I was going to call one of those late night infomercial things and pay $1,000 for 30 months or whatever "deal" they had going.
A few days later I saw the same product in Walmart. It was $20 so I thought why not give it a try.
The process was fairly easy, except if you use this I must stress that it is not like armorall, though it seems like it is. You want to do quick swift wipes and not go back and forth. Use the product sparingly because they give you very little. I also recommend watching videos of people doing it to their cars because it helped me kind of know how to use it effectively. Be sure to read all of the instructions. It might save you from a mistake, and remember it needs 24 hours to cure and you should apply it and let it cure in the shade. I did mine at about 5pm when it was cloudy outside since I have no where to put my car in a shady spot.
I took pictures of my results and I must say I'm pretty happy...so far. Time will tell if it actually lasts as long as it's suppose to.
Sorry if the photos aren't the best quality, it was getting dark out so I kind of took them fast.
Plastic Trim Before & After:
In addition to the wipes and the product itself, it gives you this little sand paper piece to help restore your headlights. You're suppose to sand them down with water until the water isn't milky looking anymore when you spray and sand. After that you dry, then apply the product. I wasn't that pleased with the results, but you can see a difference. I don't know if my headlights are just too bad off or if I needed to sand more.
Headlights Before & After:
The next 2 things I want to do is restore my headlights, and get the hard water spots off of my car.
For the headlights, I have already tried restoration products, as well as the toothpaste method with no results.
I have really bad water spots on the passenger side of my car (from it being parked by a sprinkler...there's no where I can park by my house that doesn't hit my car with a sprinkler and I didn't know/think that it would get permanently spotted until it was too late ). I have already used a clay bar and the spots still remain. At this point I feel like the only way to get rid of them is to repaint it, but I won't use my money to do that since it will just get hit by sprinklers again and evil people that swing open their doors and other elements that end up scratching your car/ruining the paint.
If anyone has any tips/suggestions/etc with water spots/headlight restoration, I would greatly appreciate it!
I spray painted the rims myself and I wish I would have taken more pictures and shown a step by step process because I was so happy with the way they came out so I decided to make a little blog with stuff I do to my car because why not?
So late at night I saw this infomercial about this stuff that will renew (Wipe New) the trim on your car. I was interested, but there's no way I was going to call one of those late night infomercial things and pay $1,000 for 30 months or whatever "deal" they had going.
A few days later I saw the same product in Walmart. It was $20 so I thought why not give it a try.
The process was fairly easy, except if you use this I must stress that it is not like armorall, though it seems like it is. You want to do quick swift wipes and not go back and forth. Use the product sparingly because they give you very little. I also recommend watching videos of people doing it to their cars because it helped me kind of know how to use it effectively. Be sure to read all of the instructions. It might save you from a mistake, and remember it needs 24 hours to cure and you should apply it and let it cure in the shade. I did mine at about 5pm when it was cloudy outside since I have no where to put my car in a shady spot.
I took pictures of my results and I must say I'm pretty happy...so far. Time will tell if it actually lasts as long as it's suppose to.
Sorry if the photos aren't the best quality, it was getting dark out so I kind of took them fast.
Plastic Trim Before & After:
Spoiler
In addition to the wipes and the product itself, it gives you this little sand paper piece to help restore your headlights. You're suppose to sand them down with water until the water isn't milky looking anymore when you spray and sand. After that you dry, then apply the product. I wasn't that pleased with the results, but you can see a difference. I don't know if my headlights are just too bad off or if I needed to sand more.
Headlights Before & After:
Spoiler
The next 2 things I want to do is restore my headlights, and get the hard water spots off of my car.
For the headlights, I have already tried restoration products, as well as the toothpaste method with no results.
I have really bad water spots on the passenger side of my car (from it being parked by a sprinkler...there's no where I can park by my house that doesn't hit my car with a sprinkler and I didn't know/think that it would get permanently spotted until it was too late ). I have already used a clay bar and the spots still remain. At this point I feel like the only way to get rid of them is to repaint it, but I won't use my money to do that since it will just get hit by sprinklers again and evil people that swing open their doors and other elements that end up scratching your car/ruining the paint.
If anyone has any tips/suggestions/etc with water spots/headlight restoration, I would greatly appreciate it!
Nothing I love more than seeing a chick get into modifying/restoring their own car Great job on the touch ups, Harlow!
What product did you use to restore the trim/headlights? There is a specific one (that I can't remember the name of at the moment) that's supposed to be really great at getting rid of the cloudy crap from the headlight lenses. If I remember it I'll let you know. You may be able to get it where you are. This has inspired me to possibly do a blog of my own modifications on my old cars