Me? Skeptical? Nah ...
I'd seen all the ads for Zymol. (If you've had your head under a rock
somewhere, Zymol is this line of all natural, organically produced,
ecologically sound car care products, the pinnacle of which is a $1500
container of wax with a lifetime refill policy. They made their name by
doing special formulations for Pebble Beach winners.) I thought it was
a lot of guff, expensive stuff made by some enterprising souls with a
penchant for identifying people with more money than sense.
Then there was a "wax-off" article in British Car a few months ago, and
Zymol came out on top, especially on the heavily oxidized car. Having a
heavily oxidized car myself, I thought twice ... and called them up and
paid $100 for a bunch of little bottles and a container of wax.
The key to the system for paint is this stuff called HD-Cleanse -- the
wax is just wax, heavy on the Carnauba, encases whatever is under it
and doesn't do any cleaning or polishing.
The HD-Cleanse does miracles to oxidized paint. It took a little more
than an entire bottle, but the green GT6+ now looks like it has
metallic green paint on it (which is a good thing, because it does),
and reflects light well enough that I can distinguish my face in the bonnet.
Yah, I could have done this with polishing compound, a lot faster and
cheaper too. But here's the neat thing -- after a while, the paint
stopped coming off. It all washed out of the towels. And my hands
aren't green today. Those are all
significantly different than my past experiences with compounding a car, and
make me believe that this stuff does exactly what it says -- removes the dead
paint and reveals what good paint may be left underneath it.
I'll be curious to see how long the shine lasts.
I got tired of rubbing and buffing after a few hours (the car was severaly
oxidized) so it's not a perfect job. But now it looks like it needs to be
polished and waxed, instead of like it needs to be stripped and painted.
Not bad.
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