{"id":34213,"date":"2021-08-12T00:00:24","date_gmt":"2021-08-12T04:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.detailedimage.com\/Ask-a-Pro\/?p=34213"},"modified":"2021-08-05T13:31:20","modified_gmt":"2021-08-05T17:31:20","slug":"pre-sale-prep-2011-mazda3-s-sport-hatchback","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.detailedimage.com\/Ask-a-Pro\/pre-sale-prep-2011-mazda3-s-sport-hatchback\/","title":{"rendered":"Pre-Sale Prep – 2011 Mazda3 s Sport Hatchback"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve always had a soft spot for the Mazda3 hatchbacks – great value, handles like the BMW 3 series had before it got bloated, and the practicality of a hatchback. Add in Mazda’s glorious paint colors and I’m a fan.<\/p>\n

This Mazda3 belonged to a very dear friend that just left the island. It had obviously been a beach-buggy for three years, as both the interior and exterior needed a good bit of love. The usual amount of sand, plus the RIDS and general paint damage you expect of a 10-year-old car with 130,000 miles on it.<\/p>\n

Intake Photos<\/h2>\n

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Wheels and Tires<\/h2>\n

As usual, I started with wheels and tires. Meguiar’s D143 Non-Acid Wheel Cleaner<\/a> and Tuf Shine Tire Cleaner<\/a> are my two go-to chemicals. The wheels get the usual DI Brushes Wheel Wash Boar’s Hair Brush<\/a>, Wheel Woolies<\/a>, and the DI Brushes ATLASTA<\/a> for the lug nuts. The Tuf Shine Tire Brush<\/a> is my standard for tires; it does a great job.<\/p>\n

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She was already fairly clean on the exterior, so I did a rinseless wash with Optimum No Rinse Wash and Shine<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Interior<\/h2>\n

The interior was typical of a Hawaii beach buggy – sand everywhere, with quite a bit of saltwater stains on the seats and seatbelts. About ten hours were spent with my trusty Ridgid shop vac, a carpet extractor, the DI Brushes Pet Hair Removal Brush<\/a> (also works great for sand), and the DI Brushes Speedy Stone Pet Hair Remover<\/a> (works great on the sand too, but is MURDER on plastic and other trim – be careful with it).<\/p>\n

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Paint Correction<\/h2>\n

The paint had your typical defects that come with being ten years old, and add in Hawaii’s atrocious water spots. I’m constantly amazed at how far buffer pad and polish\/compound technology have come in the past decade. My primary buffer is the Flex XC 3401 VRG<\/a>, an absolute beast of a machine that hasn’t let me down. I recently replaced all my older Lake Country pads with their Force line<\/a>, and couldn’t be happier. After several test spots, I settled on the Lake Country Force Grey Heavy Cutting Pads<\/a> with Griot’s Garage BOSS Fast Correcting Cream<\/a>. Five years ago I would have had to do a multi-stage correction with Meguiar’s M105 and M205 or Menzerna 400 and 1200 to get the same level of correction and finish as I was able to get away with from this more modern combo. It cuts beautifully, while still finishing down to a great shine.<\/p>\n

The roof was a particularly troublesome area, as they kayaked frequently which meant saltwater would just sit on the paint. I wasn’t able to get 100% of the clearcoat etching out, but it was greatly reduced.<\/p>\n

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20 minutes with a rotary tool had the exhaust tips cleaned up.<\/p>\n

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To test out the capabilities of the Lake Country\/Griot’s combo I settled on, I decided to wetsand and polish one headlight, and only polish the other headlight. I started with 1500 grit, then 2000 grit, then 3000 grit, and polished out the passenger side. I simply polished the driver side.<\/p>\n

The verdict? Wetsanding was entirely unnecessary.<\/p>\n

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After polishing, I gave it a two bucket wash with a blend of Gtechniq W4 Citrus Foam<\/a>, Chemical Guys HoneyDew Snow Foam<\/a>, and Gyeon Bathe+<\/a>. The Gyeon Smoothie<\/a> is my wash media of choice, ever since my beloved Lake Country Wash Wedge finally gave up the ghost. Note to self: Ask Reece to start carrying the wash wedge. Gyeon’s Wet Coat<\/a> finished up the job. I love how user-friendly Wet Coat is – no worries about dilution, it leaving weird residue, etc. I’m waiting on 303’s new graphene spray<\/a> to see how it compares, and if it can knock Wet Coat off it’s current throne.<\/p>\n

All Done<\/h2>\n

I’ve always lozed Mazda’s paint, so it was a joy to see this Mazda3 brought back to beauty.<\/p>\n

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Buy Products From This Article<\/h2>\n

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View Products Now <\/i><\/div>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pre-Sale Prep – 2011 Mazda3 s Sport Hatchback<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56,"featured_media":34786,"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":[49,54,32,52,27,38,43,29],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-34213","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-exhaust-tip-care","8":"category-fabric-vinyl-plastic-and-rubber","9":"category-imperfection-removal","10":"category-interior-care","11":"category-professional-work","12":"category-protection","13":"category-rims-and-tires","14":"category-washing-drying"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.detailedimage.com\/Ask-a-Pro\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/Mazda3_12-1024x525-1.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1kPO7-8TP","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.detailedimage.com\/Ask-a-Pro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34213","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\/56"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.detailedimage.com\/Ask-a-Pro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34213"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.detailedimage.com\/Ask-a-Pro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34213\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34787,"href":"https:\/\/www.detailedimage.com\/Ask-a-Pro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34213\/revisions\/34787"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.detailedimage.com\/Ask-a-Pro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.detailedimage.com\/Ask-a-Pro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.detailedimage.com\/Ask-a-Pro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.detailedimage.com\/Ask-a-Pro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}