General: Paint correction

[revaido]

I've had my XC90 since December and figured what with the nice weather lately (and two weeks paternity) it was time to give it some TLC.

She's got 96k miles on a MY2012 now so the paint had plenty of swirls and scratches from daily use.

It's been years since I've done anything like this so there was plenty of reading to do and I didn't really find much about the Volvo paint (in this case the 452 - sapphire black) other than a couple of posts saying it was fairly hard paint.

I ended up buying a Vertool Force Drive polisher kit with the Meguiars microfibre pads and matching correction and polishing / wax finishing liquid.

I gave it a good clean beforehand and then a good claying to get the crap off (and there was a lot of crap) before getting on with the two stage Meguiars correction.

I've got to admit I don't know if it's how things have moved on since last time I did this to a car but the bundle was really easy to use and worked wonders.

I also got some Dr Leather to treat the seats (which was great) and some BlackRock Leather N Rich cleaner to treat the steering wheel as it seems to have picked up a few ring marks the last time it was in the dealers.

The exhaust cover I've seen a few people replacing them and figured I'd have a crack with a Brillo pad which has worked for me in the past (be careful just to get the exhaust cover and not the paint though) and it worked wonders. It's been rusty looking since I got the car and now it's nice and shiny again!

A few pics below straight out of the phone. I'm very happy with the way it turned out and half thinking about maybe sticking a ceramic coating on there to see how that fares, otherwise I'll stick some Victoria Concours on there in a few weeks to protect it for winter.

[AidXC90]

That looks great, revaido! Superb swirl-free shine on that paint. Very encouraging for me if I ever have a chance to get onto nice work like that on my XC90, instead of the greasy upside down work that I'm doing now