hey guys, my paint is about a year old, it looks decent for what it is(best maaco) well on certain angles the reflection is very very limited, you can see it but not clearly and not very bright. The thing I dont get is that the paint looks very "wet" yet on certain angles, the reflection sucks.

I have mcguires gold class, but that doesn't help much.. I was looking to get a complete pinnacle, and Porter cable kit from autogeek, would that do the trick?

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the real tip of the fender, is what i am talking about.





I would like the cheapest options, please no "ice" products, I know some of you know your shine, help a brotha out!

 

I would give zaino a try. I tried it thanks to these fine folks on this site and all i can say is it was amazing. I had very high expectations and it still amazed me. Great stuff.

 

With all due respect, Zaino is not going to fix a budget paint job. In fact, not a heck of a lot will unless maybe you're willing to wet sand and then cut and buff with a rotary buffer, a wool pad and a heavy cut cleaner. You would then need to follow that with a finer polish on a foam pad. Of course, you'd need to learn how to do all this in the first place, or find a really good detailer to do it for you, but for a really good pro wetsand, cut and buff you'd pay almost as much as you did for that Maaco paint job.

slowfast, I understand you're looking for the most cost effective way to get the best possible results. I put a budget paint job on our '92 RS a couple of years ago, and while it looks pretty darn good from 20 feet, it's just never going to look as good as a decent factory paint job, even with the issues most factory jobs have.

Here's what I would recommend: Get the porter cable 7424 but skip the Pinnacle products. It's good stuff but you can do far better for a whole lot less money. Go to autodetailingsolutions.com and order the buffer, a Meguiar's W8006 polishing pad and a bottle of Meguiar's M80 Speed Glaze. Get a Smooth Surface Clay Kit while you're at it. Wash and clay the car, then use the M80 on the W8006 pad, working it into a 2' x 2' area using the speed setting of 5 on the machine. Apply just enough pressure on the machine to almost make the pad stop spinning (don't worry, you will not burn through the paint with this machine - it does not have the high torque direct drive setup of a rotary). Move the machine slowly over the paint, moving from side to side, then up and down. Overlap your passes by 50% and take your time! Work the product until it becomes almost clear, then wipe it off and evaluate the area in bright sunlight. You will see a tremendous reduction in the number of swirl marks, and they may even be completely gone. If not, try a second application of the M80. When your satisfied with this first area, move on to the next section, repeating this until you've done the entire car. Do NOT let the M80 dry as it will be a bugger to remove. This product does not just fill them in, it polishes them out; it contains diminishing abrasives that finish very fine and leave a smooth, glossy surface. Once you've gone over the entire car you can apply the wax. Meguiar's Gold Class is actually really good stuff and even does a decent job of filling very fine swirls. Apply a very thin coat and allow it to haze over (maybe 20-30 minutes) then wait an hour or so and apply a second coat.

Keep in mind that you will never make this budget paint job look perfect. If there was some magic potion you could pour out of a bottle and wipe on/wipe off to give you a perfect finish, nobody would ever spend $5,000 and up on a paint job. They'd pay Maaco $900 and buy the magic bottle.

 

The problem with Maaco is in most of their paint jobs they mix the clear into the paint (no matter what they say during the sales pitch) instead of putting it on after the paint. The final results bear this out. I ran into this problem when I first painted my '86 in 2000. When wet sanding while I was getting rid of the orange peel I was also sanding the paint. It will just be very hard to get that "total" wet look out of most Maaco jobs. At least compared to to a custom job that has clear on top.

But with all of that said follow Mike in Orange's instructions and you will see improvements.