Thanks for the "welcome back" comments guys! This 2004 Coupe is what I would call "slightly rough around the edges" but that's probably just me being overly picky. My 2005 Roadster is in better than new condition, but I'm rather over the top about this sort of thing. This coupe will share daily driver duties for me and will sit outside, so I'm not too concerned about it being "perfect". I did do the electric tape wrap on the rear hatch striker bar this afternoon and holey moley what a difference!!!

Now, you guys who are getting fresh paint jobs, there's really nothing wrong with polishing the paint right after it's been painted, but you might want to stick with Meguiar's professional line products rather than consumer on brand new paint. I've become a huge fan of our M100 since it cuts like crazy and finishes out really nice, too. Very fresh paint may be quite soft so you may not even need that much cut. It may well be that M205 Ultra Finishing Polish is more than enough, and it's amazing stuff.

Just how soon after painting is it OK to do this stuff? Consider that a body shop will likely wet sand and buff within 24 hours of shooting the clear - yep, that's pretty soon. And at the risk of tooting my own horn a bit too much here, we did that very thing (with the aforementioned products) on a little car called "Imposter" at the end of February. If that name sounds familiar, it's because Chip Foose built it and it won the Ridler Award at Autorama a week after we finished it. Yes, you read that right.... I actually got to work alongside Chip Foose at the end of a 4 year build that earned him his 4th Ridler Award. Damn, I've got a cool job!!!!