chinny

I am already quite satisfied with what I am achieving with Meguiars Nxt range. Guess what I'll do from here is to keep use meguiars nxt and the seal it with this liquid hardwax. Thanks for all the replies.

Dropped by the dealer for a chat the other day and mentioned how shiny his cars are. The guy is so good that he went round the back and gave me a huge bottle of Autoglym Liquid Hardwax. My dilemma now is that on the bottle - it says "Recommended for trade use only". True enough, I looked up autoglym catalogue and I couldnt see it listed. I dont want to be a fussy prick and return the bottle to him but at the same time I am too chicken to use it. I have used the autoglym resin polish before, works OK but too much hardwork hand polishing it afterwards. Not sure if this liquid hardwax is the same or similar stuff. Any opinion out there?

Volkswagen isofix seat, great seat, other isofix and non isofix belt tends to "twist". Paid more but no more hassle of "untwisting" belt.

I think my real problem now is not really the swirls, it is just that I am far too fussy! Just today, an old gentleman wheeled himself out of his house to say how shiny the car is and haven't seen such a shiny car before. Made my day. I have two meguiars pure wool wash mitt now that I kept clean all the time. The meguiars rx helpline are pretty helpful. Now that I am over the swirl, i have to stop looking for new scratches!

It is shinier than ever now, put some Meguiars Nxt wax on it- meguiars helpline said no problem although my dealer still says plain water and good chamois will do. Still marks like crazy though, just found a few more scratches on the boot lip as someones must have put a boot there to tie their shoe lace or put their shopping on it. As for the swirls, saw George Bush presidential limo on TV just now - and guess what i saw - ..... swirls !!!!

Is the tint after sales or factory?

Going to try that damn thing again tomorrow. I just thought of it as being hesitant, not faulty before I read all these replies.

Thanks a lot Tel, and the autopia handbook is very helpful too- has a lot to go through still. Guess I wont be doing any work tonight then.

Oh s**t, is this true? At one extreme, you have a fussy freak like me and on the hand we have Mr "balls of steel " Javeed who puts his black lexus through the auto carwash. Wow. Tel, any word from your car workshop mate about other products?

have you tried supagard? this the service audi offer your new paint when you buy a car, costs upto £300, but easily bought off of ebay for considerably less and applied yourself What is supagard? keen to try anything. When I called my dealer after the first incident he actually suggest plain water and a good chamois to wipe down. Sounds too easy to me. He said the new paint is also tougher - I haven't called him back yet to say that he is wrong - or Lexus is wrong. But after the wash last night , I took it out for a drive today and boy does it gleam in the sunlight! Just have to learn not to look too close, might not have that chance anymore, have to give the car back to the wife as school reopens tomorrow.

tried mine from day one, my driveway is on a pretty sharp incline. Same problem as yours, it held the car back a bit - or rather just slow it down but it does keep rolling back, albeit slower. Still helpful though while I wait for the garage door to open.

Thanks for all th reply and the dimmer switch for the garage - suggestion of the century dude! I have a black volvo too and honestly it never seems to scratch as easy and yes there are some swirls - Anyway, I washed the 250 again today- with a brand new mitt and guess what, it caught a tiny tarry grit off the car and straight away I got a 30cm scratch on the bumper! I did manage to get most of the scratch out with Meguiars Scratch X. Perhaps I just have to stop being so fussy and look at it up close but really it is heartbreaking to see it not in perfect condition. It looks so beautiful when I first picked it up.

Had the black 250 for almost a month now and washed it twice so far. After first wash, noticed lots of circular swirls immediately, so for second wash, got megiuars Nxt gel wash, Nxt techwax and Meguairs scratch X. Did the car, looks beautiful, so shiny it reflects the clouds in the sky, but when i parked it back in the garage and under fluorescent light those damned swirls are still there!! Should've got silver instead?

Got black, and guess what after one wash by my helpful kids - swirls galore! My fault I know, 1/ dirty chamois 2/ kids enthusiasm. I always wanted argento ice but my wife hated it, and its her car after all. Have to say though, when it's clean, it does looks pretty awesome but very hard to clean especially on a hot summer day like today. Go get whatever colour you like, I am never 100% sure about the colour myself, but the car itself is a pretty special machine. Once inside, even if the colour is puke beige, it is still very special .

totally off the topic here, jamboo where did u get the picture of the 250, looking for a nice one to put on my desktop. back to the topic, my dealer has been pretty good, got us plenty of lexus freebies and not a useless bottle of wine or bouquet of flower in sight.

I envy you having owned an IS200 for 6 years. I have always wanted one - a white one to be exact but can never convinced my wife to do that. But the IS250 managed to change her mind, we ordered the car at the car launch and just after 3 months from buying a brand new c-class! Don;t get me wrong, we like the 250 but sometimes I wish the 250 drives like the c-class (blasphemous! some of you might say)> in my ideal world, I would like it to drive like the C-class or perhaps the C-class is built like the 250, but then taht is an ideal world and last time I checked, it doesn't exist. :) Either way, the 250 is undoubtedly a superb cruiser.

Try dropping the seat lower to get a mroe engaging ride? ← yeah, done that, but you can only drop it so far before losing all credibility, a 32 yr old hung back and low doesnt look quite right! we did thought of sport suspension , but that is only available as an option for the base version. Had the sports kit on the previous C-class and that was a good drive from day one although the exhaust sounded a bit tinny. Still, love the 250, never driven the Is200 or 300 before, heard that was more sporty. How's the ride Stranger?

You will love it, i chose the same combo for my 250 too, black w/ beige, wildly impractical for me, living in a dusty environ with two youg kids too. You mentioned you owned MB before, so do we, and one thing that I noticed is that it that the 250 is unfortunately not as engaging to drive. Don't get me wrong, it is very refined - but sometimes to the point of being totally insulated from the driving - can't really explain it but there is a sharp bend near my house and I uesd to love taking the MB through the corner, but with the 250, I feel nothing. Still love the 250 though, the interior is a thousand times better that the MB and I am comparing it to a C-class that is only 3 months old. Enjoy.

Really? I thought there had to be something up with that, unusual for Mercedes to set something up like that. Someone said that radar would be affected by fog, but I don't know about that one. Do you have a link for it? I'd love to read the full story about it :) ← It was in the paper - can't remember the date, it was a test organised by a reporter with MB involvement of course. In the paper it mentioned that criminal cahrges may be laid - here's another report re - the crash www.autoblog.com/2005/11/28/mercedes-s-class-crash-the-truth-comes-out/ True lesson I suppose is , if an idiot gets behind the wheel, a smart car is still going to act stupid. ACC or not, we still has to concentrate on the road.

The only car that's supposed to be able to do that is the new Merc S-class but if you saw top gear a few weeks ago, you'll see that that couldn't do it either ← Apparently the system does work in the new S class, the car reviewer who organised the test rigged the whole thing, can't exactly remember how he did it and the guy and his accomplices have been fired from the network. MB has a lot of work to do counter this -ve publicity. The better for Lexus I suppose.

ACC works quite well but like most things there are a few exceptions, after i picked up the 250, I took it for a long 4 hours drive, mainly open road. Being a holiday weekend there was quite a few boats being towed and I find that the ACC doens't seem to respond well to boat. In one instance the car took me quite close (even though I have a 3 bar setting) to the back of the boat before it suddenly "spotted" it and with lots of automatic braking and bells and the disp blinking "brake,brake". A bit disconcerting. The radar prob can't pick up an uneven object like a boat on a trailer. Otherwise, ACC works a charm, all you have to do is turn the steering and enjoy the views - and being in New Zealand, have to stay concentrated so that I don;t speed into a 65km specified corner at 100km, another interesting experience, not one the 250 can't handle but i wouldn't do that too often. Pucker factor goes up quite a bit then. Its a beautiful car , we all agree no?

Thanks Tony, just got this info from my Lexus dealer, he said just to wash it and don;t bother with waxes, new lexus paint has much better coating (true or is he just trying to stop me from bugging him on christmas eve! :D ) Koshime's black lexus shine is really , really slick. Guess waxing it is then.

What's swissol, zymol or zaino? I have only seen the usual turtle wax or mothers or meguiars in stores here in new zealand. Did the valet guys put on the wax for you or did you do it yourself? if you did it, how long did it take? and how do you find time, making the 250 looks so good and save old ladies from strife too! Anyone has problem with dust getting around the rim of the exterior lock button on the handles? Only 4 days with the car, washed it once and already it has turned into dust magnet.

Ok, good point, just want to personalise the 250 a bit bcos down this end, all the 250 only has two options. Plus looks rank pretty high, i replaced the wife's new MB C-class with the 250 because I hated the color on her C-class (which I picked!) :tsktsk: koshime's black 250 looks sublime, somehow our black 250 doesn't shine like his, not even on the day we picked it up from the showroom.