I had the use of my mom's garage last afternoon through part of today. I took it upon myself to do my annual major paint work on the car.
I started by giving it a thorough wash using Meguiars wash, a large bucket, and two mitts - One for underhood, wheels, and the bottom couple inches of the car where it's the dirtiest. One for the 'clean' areas of the exterior. I did the door and trunk sills, and a quick underhood wash as well.
I dried the car and moved it into the garage. I started with a clay bar. This is probably the first time the car's been claybar'd, and as such took off lots of debris from the paint. I used Meguiars Detailing Clay with Meguiars Quick Detailer as a lubricant.
The next step was a thorough cleaning of the paint using Meguiars #2 Fine Cut Cleaner and a rotary buffer with a foam pad.
Due to the numerous rock chips on the hood, fenders, and bumper of the car and the fact that I never repaired them (Most of which were from the original owner), I took time to do some touch-up work. I used a touch up pen/brush comination to fill in (no exaggeration) about 100 chips, pits, and nicks on the front end. While the results weren't perfect, they're good enough for now. A proper job would require clearcoating every touch up and wetsanding to level with the surrounding paint, but I simply didn't have time (or the patience) to do so.
Being after midnight at this point, I decided to continue in the morning. My next step was Meguiars #3 Machine Glaze, a machine applied pure polish. I used the rotary buffer again with a fresh pad. While the Fine Cut did a good job of bringing the paint back, the Machine Glaze adds incredible depth and clarity to the paint. The duo brought back my black-grey paint to a much truer black. Machine Glaze is a must-have for any dark colour, especially black.
My final step was wax - I used Meguiars NXT Tech Wax 2.0. This is the first time I've applied their NXT Wax, and is a move away from their High Tech Yellow Wax for me. I tried it based solely on the rumour I'd heard that it the residue from it dries clear. It does. I attempted the use of a random orbit buffer for removal, only to have the pad come loose from the backing. I found during the resulting hand-removal that this NXT Tech Wax seemed to be more difficult to remove than the Yellow wax. The small amounts of residue that your 'second wipe' should remove required a fourth, fifth, and sixth pass with considerably more pressure than normal.
I dusted the car off, cleaned the windows using Invisible Glass (Which is easily the best glass cleaner I've used), and applied tire shine.
I'm happy with the overall result - The paint was definitely due for work. I need to focus on keeping wax on the car on a more frequent basis to avoid this twelve to fourteen hour process on an annual basis. In the meantime, it's as smooth as glass.
I then drove home and unloaded the car, vacuumed the interior, and went to a friends house. It turns out their sprinkler system goes on nightly
2 miles left to home and some total spoon throws up stones on a resurfaced road and now iv got a bunch of windscreen chips and cracks to deal with 
.... Awesome
it was a reasonably slow leak but enough over a few days losing it i guess, i only checked the levels the other day
