{"id":2895,"date":"2010-09-06T15:24:10","date_gmt":"2010-09-06T19:24:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.detailedimage.com\/Ask-a-Pro\/?p=2895"},"modified":"2016-11-16T12:36:15","modified_gmt":"2016-11-16T17:36:15","slug":"optimum-poli-seal-to-the-rescue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.detailedimage.com\/Ask-a-Pro\/optimum-poli-seal-to-the-rescue\/","title":{"rendered":"Optimum Poli-Seal to the Rescue!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Just as Forrest Gump (and his Momma) found life to be like a box of chocolates (you never know what you&#8217;re gonna get), so too is detailing!<\/p>\n<p>We think we&#8217;ve experienced each kind of paint in all conditions and know exactly what products and processes to use, and then one comes along that just leaves you scratching your head a bit. You go back through your detailing journal just to find out what you used the last time you worked on the same make\/model\/color of car, and figure that the process will go much quicker this time. Well my friends, I&#8217;m here to tell you that even for those of us with a lot of experience at this, it doesn&#8217;t always work out so smoothly.<\/p>\n<p>When a product and\/or process isn&#8217;t working out like it &#8220;should&#8221;, that&#8217;s when you need to know what techniques or products to try next to achieve the desired results. If you have just one pad and polish in your arsenal, then you&#8217;ll be stuck! Even if you have a lot of different resources available, you still may end up spending a lot of time testing to get the right one, or you end up with an odd combination that just happens to work in that particular situation.<\/p>\n<p>I always keep <a href=\"https:\/\/www.detailedimage.com\/Optimum-OPT-M36\/Poli-Seal-P292\/32-oz-S1\/\" target=\"_blank\">Optimum Poli-Seal <\/a>in my arsenal because it suits a lot of needs. Normally this is my go-to product when somebody wants a quick polish to bring out some gloss and add some protection. If you work it longer, it even has some decent correction capability on softer paints. I won&#8217;t go into a full review of the product because David Bibiloni has already done that (David&#8217;s full article <a href=\"https:\/\/www.detailedimage.com\/Ask-a-Pro\/optimum-poli-seal-review\/\" target=\"_blank\">HERE<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>Now the other day I had a 1985 Ferrari Testarossa that needed a bit of TLC, and I wanted to clean it up a bit for a car show. The paint had a bad case of oxidation along with plenty of swirls&#8230;what it really needed was a full restorative detail. Well that wasn&#8217;t on the menu so I wanted to get the paint looking as good as I could for the customer with a quick one-step polish. I knew that if I just took care of the oxidation problem, it would make a world of difference. I tried out two different polishes&#8230;one was an abrasive polish, and the other a chemical polish. The abrasive polish was a little easier to work with in this particular instance, so I proceeded to finish the car off. As you&#8217;ll see from the 50\/50 shot below, there was a significant difference in the looks of the paint after one quick pass.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" src=\"https:\/\/farm5.static.flickr.com\/4091\/4964218465_39b0c5077e_b.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"740\" height=\"505\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I finished polishing the car, and when I pulled it outside I noticed that there was a very uneven finish on it. Hmmm&#8230;not happy! Most people wouldn&#8217;t have noticed it, but I&#8217;m obsessive-compulsive enough to realize that I would have to do the entire car all over again before I could call it finished. I thought that it may just be an uneven distribution of product&#8230;perhaps from the reaction with the oxidation, but I quickly found out that this was not the case. I started grabbing different products and pads, and using a variety of speeds and techniques&#8230;nothing! After getting a bit frustrated with it, I decided just to let the car sit overnight and come back in the morning to see what it would take. It was Friday night, I had family coming into town the next day\u00a0and didn&#8217;t want to work on a Saturday, but I needed to get this car finished correctly for the show.<\/p>\n<p>The next morning I got to the shop and grabbed for the Optimum Poli-Seal and a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.detailedimage.com\/Lake-Country-M7\/Blue-Fine-Finishing-Pad-P61\/65-S1\/\" target=\"_blank\">blue pad<\/a>. Given the fact that it&#8217;s a combination paint cleaner \/ polish \/ sealant, I thought it might have a fighting chance with this challenging paint. I pulled the car outside and did my work in the morning light so I could see better and to save a lot of trips in and out of the shop. After I worked the hood with very light pressure on speed 5 of my <a href=\"https:\/\/www.detailedimage.com\/Porter-Cable-M17\/7424XP-Random-Orbital-Buffer-P331\/\" target=\"_blank\">PC 7424XP<\/a>, I wiped it down, held my breath, and smiled when I saw the finish. Finally! I proceeded to use the same process on the entire car (which only takes about 30-45 minutes), it turned out fantastic, and the owner was very happy with how it looked at the show the next day.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve had other instances (especially on very soft cars) where the finishing process wasn&#8217;t going as planned, and I broke out the Poli-Seal to give me the finish that I was looking for. It&#8217;s a very versatile product that serves a lot of purposes, but in more than one case the purpose that it served was that of a life saver!<\/p>\n<p>Optimum Poli-Seal is definitely one that I would recommend having in your detailing arsenal!<\/p>\n<p>Here are a few quick shots of this 25 year old beauty after a &#8220;quick&#8221; one-step polish:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" src=\"https:\/\/farm5.static.flickr.com\/4086\/4964218775_2df039ab68_b.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"740\" height=\"505\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" src=\"https:\/\/farm5.static.flickr.com\/4154\/4964821848_7de791c9ce_b.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"740\" height=\"505\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" src=\"https:\/\/farm5.static.flickr.com\/4106\/4964219235_84101503a1_b.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"740\" height=\"505\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" src=\"https:\/\/farm5.static.flickr.com\/4130\/4964822140_48a78b6554_b.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"740\" height=\"505\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Detailing sometimes can be a struggle because the normal products and procedures aren&#8217;t working as they normally do. See how Todd used Optimum Poli-Seal to save the day in such an instance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":21394,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[63,33],"tags":[144,212,209,207,544,206],"class_list":{"0":"post-2895","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-general-detailing","8":"category-polishes","9":"tag-before-and-after-pictures","10":"tag-ferrari","11":"tag-one-step","12":"tag-optimum-poli-seal","13":"tag-oxidation","14":"tag-porter-cable-7424xp"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.detailedimage.com\/Ask-a-Pro\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/4964218465_39b0c5077e_b.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1kPO7-KH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.detailedimage.com\/Ask-a-Pro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.detailedimage.com\/Ask-a-Pro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.detailedimage.com\/Ask-a-Pro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.detailedimage.com\/Ask-a-Pro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.detailedimage.com\/Ask-a-Pro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2895"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.detailedimage.com\/Ask-a-Pro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2895\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2905,"href":"https:\/\/www.detailedimage.com\/Ask-a-Pro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2895\/revisions\/2905"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.detailedimage.com\/Ask-a-Pro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.detailedimage.com\/Ask-a-Pro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.detailedimage.com\/Ask-a-Pro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.detailedimage.com\/Ask-a-Pro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}