Bought some AutoGlym Polar Seal after seeing it on YouTube.

Car was filthy so gave it a wash then used the Polar Seal as directed. Spray on, rinse off.

Results were impressive, now just need to see if it holds up.

Bonnet immediately after washing

Bonnet after rinsing the Polar Seal off

I guess you have to be a certain age to get what that title is all about, but anyways…

The Celica was looking a bit unloved, so with the MINI at the workshop, I had some garage space (turns out I didn’t but I’m done getting annoyed about the amount of stuff in there) and some weekend time.

Dead as a dodo. It got a new battery in February last year, before being used to conquer the Beast from the East’s snow, but not a hint of power. Tried sticking it on charge, my fancy digital charger just said “error” it was that flat. Gave it a jump off the BMW, soon as I disconnected the jump leads it died. Tried again and left both running for ten minutes this time, still died as soon as the lead was taken off. New battery added to the shopping list.

Now the lack of garage space didn’t matter as I couldn’t reverse it in. So I got out the claybar kit.

The paint on the car is dire. The mist of overspray means the paint feels like sandpaper and there’s also crazy markings that look almost like Damascus steel, where I used G101 to dissolve some bird muck and didn’t rinse it off properly.

These run off lines don’t come off with normal washing.

The outline of a box that was sitting on the sunroof when the overspray mist landed.

That’s a close up of just how bad the rear wing looks with all the overspray and bonded surface contaminants from the storage in the underground car park.

Turns out I already had a claybar kit, despite buying one on Saturday to use on the car. So now with more clay than an average pottery, I set about a section of the rear wing.

The results were extremely underwhelming. Despite 4 separate sessions with the clay, the paint is still awful. This was just 1 session and on an area less than a square foot.

There is a difference in feel, but it’s like 1200 grit vs 800 grit, visually there’s no real difference.

You can just about see where I haven’t clayed in the top of this photo

After a sulk, I decided to try something else. Cracked out a bottle of Meguiars Ultimate Compound and had a go at a section of the bootlid (the upwards facing surfaces are by far the worst). Now this was a different story, but bloody hard work!

So now I know the solution, just need to mentally come to terms with just how much elbow grease it’s going to take to do the whole car!