So I’ve been pretty anxious to finally get this all done since buying the car but I just haven’t had time to dedicate until recently. It’s been killing me driving around a car I haven’t personally cleaned inside and out – I don’t know why – just an OCD thing or something…

Anyway, over the last week I’ve been tackling bit by bit on the Fit to at least bring it up to the level that I think is “clean”. It doesn’t matter who owned it before – even if it was a dude that was OCD like me, I’d probably end up redoing it again anyway LOL. Last week I did a full interior shampoo on everything – seats, carpet, doorsill fabric – anything that was able to be shampooed was indeed shampooed. I then steamed and cleaned up all crevices inside and in the door/trunk jams to get out the gunk that’s been sitting there for who knows how long. The good thing about going through the car is you get to clean everything… The bad thing is that you start to notice certain imperfections or things that you need to change or fix. On the interior, there are a few things that I’d like to tackle over time – IE., replacing the interior carpet with a new one, replacing some seals and adding in missing bolts that for whatever reason weren’t there to begin with…

The interior is boring so I never really took pics. The most exciting part is really just prepping and finally getting the coating on. This time, I opted for CARPRO SiC over the classic UK 3.0 + Gliss combo. SiC is still fairly new and there really isn’t much out there in terms of longevity but I wanted to take the chance on this one. Apparently it’s basically UK 3.0 + Gliss in one with the protection and slickness in one. I guess we’ll see over time, but I’ll talk about the process throughout the post.

The Fit in all its glory. Unwashed, unpolished, uncoated. Looks good from afar and not too shabby up close but not the best.

The first hand wash in the new garage too. Excuse the ugly flooring – new flooring doesn’t go in until mid-September.

The resident BI can’t wash the car without making sure his own barrels/wheels aren’t clean LOL

One of my favourite steps in the process is actually using an Iron filling cleaner like IronX. It could totally just be a psychological thing with the color changing effect but it does feel like it gets a lot of things that you can’t with a simple wash mitt or claybar.

The affected area was behind the door handles which I soaked a lot longer. You could even start to see the contaminants along the edge of the handle.

Upon soaking, you could see so much of that red leaking out and immediately start clearing up.

Other parts of the car that are often neglected are the pieces right up against black like near your grill and those little crevices. You can see a bit here which required some claybarring to remove.

Even after just IronX and a claybar, the car seems to shine even more…

One of the other things I’ll end up doing maybe over the winter is repainting certain pieces to all match. It’s not terrible but you can see that the bumper is slightly off compared to the rest of the front. It’s definitely not in your face noticeable but it bugs me…

I ended up claybarring the door sills and jams as there was a bunch of build up there…

All clean…

The side mirrors also had a bunch of build up which IronX and claybarring helped remove easily…

Always funny to see Champ White next to any other white cause then it just looks yellow hahaha

Done for the day. I let it just sit and dry over night because I hate polishing the car when there’s water drips just coming out from little crevices…

The next day, I started the polish. The paint was in fairly good condition already so I didn’t need much. I did a simple stage 1 polish with CARPRO Fixer and an orange pad.

Cleaned up the headlights nice

Slickkkkk

Side results…

Looking good on this side too…

The rear end was nice to polish as well. Got the tail lights all shined up as well as the rear hatch. Often times the hatch or rear of a car is super contaminated from all the kick up on the road. Gotta take care of the ass…

Got some of the swirls out of the wing too. Smooth carbon is the best carbon.

And the much anticipated SiC. I initially wanted to try a graphite coating but I’m just too invested and sold on the CARPRO ecosystem and lineup so I just decided to try SiC instead. Most of the thoughts on this have been fairly positive – the most notable feature of this being the slickness that it brings…

I will say that SiC is definitely slicker than UK 3.0 + Gliss right off the bat. It’s extremely nice and satisfying. It is also significantly easier to apply than UK 3.0. When I was doing it, the ambient temperature in the garage was about +20C and the cure time was anywhere between 1-10 minutes. I found that even after about 8-9 minutes, that was my sweet spot. It wasn’t hard to take off at all and it didn’t grab like UK 3.0 did when it flashed.

You might notice that the results produced a much deeper and strong gloss and shine. Even just on the headlight, I was thoroughly impressed with the deepness it created in a clear lens.

The hood produced a very nice shine and gloss as well.

I would say on dark colours, SiC seemed to really create a dark and deep gloss that is actually super noticeable. The wing and carbon weave here is a good example.

I thought it looked great after the polish but upon wiping off SiC, I didn’t think would’ve looked this good.

Gloss on the rear quarter… Beautiful

Tail lights just shining like a diamond

More gloss on the carbon canards…

Roofline…

And that’s that! Unfortunately, sometimes gloss can be a little understated on white but it does look great in person. The most important thing is now it’s protected – which is all I really wanted.

Bada bing bada boom! Stoked on finally being done. I opted not to coat the wheels yet – I’m going to probably take off all the wheels over winter and clean them up properly and then work on replacing other things like bolts and getting the fenders and sideskirts repainted and reinstalled a little better as well. Little things but in the end, it’s the small things that matter!