Motors Post your favourite detailing products, techniques and results

I really need to de-swirl, clay and give a proper polish to mine, but the weather's too hot atm!

Those alloys look pretty filthy, any recommended substances for cleaning them? I've just put some new wheels on mine and would like to keep them vaguely clean.

EBC pads cheat at trying to improve braking performance by being ridiculously soft, they've certainly done a number on yours!

Oh, a little pic sauce (forgive cameraphone):

 

I agree, the weather is far too hot for polishing and waxing this week! I'd have to put mine inside to do it if I was doing it this week, but I'm going to be at our other house (which has a much bigger, mostly empty garage) for a long weekend in the middle of June, so I'm going to do it there rather than try and tackle it here on the driveway, where the polish bakes onto the paint before you get a chance to turn the polisher on

The EBC pads were good all right, but they were the ones that didn't agree with my discs - they wouldn't stop squealing, so I changed them for a set of OEM supplied pads a few weeks ago. All that dust was from the EBCs though, gathered up over a period of just under two months (the last time I had the wheels off to clean them).

I used the Autoglym Clean Wheels spray on these for the first time, and it was much better than the Meguiars Hot Wheels that I'd been using before. It ate right into the brake dust and a wipe with a sponge scouring pad and some hot water with Meguiars Gold Class shampoo in it was all it took to get them that clean. Tackling the tar was just a matter of going over each rim with a rag soaked in the Concept tar & glue solvent. It doesn't take much scrubbing or effort to get them looking that clean using these three products. I use an EZ detail wheel brush for the narrow spoke between each wide spoke where the sponge won't reach. I scrubbed the tire walls with a household scrubbing brush and hot soapy water, then dressed the tire walls with Meguiars tyre gel.

Little boy blue is looking good in the summer sun with those pretty new wheels!

 

Good advice there - any tips on what to use to build up a bit of dirt protection? I was planning on just slapping a bit of standard polish on it to build up a bit of protection, since it's a decent but not perfect rattle-can job.

I'm very pleased with the looks and performance - the old wheels (205 Speedlines) were quite a bit heavier by comparison, and the reduction in unsprung weight has completely picked up the handling - it rides as well as it did on the standard 14" steels with slightly better looks.

 

Mine's simple but effective.

Hose down to loosen dust (never any actual dirt on the Mustang)

Meguiars Gold Class shampoo in one bucket (with grit guard) and warm water to rinse (with grid guard) in the other.
Wash with lamb's wool wash mitt - going in one direction only... light pressure, never in a circular motion.
Always rinse in the mitt in the rinse bucket before reloading with more Gold Class.
Hose off.

Simple

Same with rims.

Every 5th wash or so I'll use Meguiars Tech Wax 2.0

Once a year I'll clay bar it.



I've had this car for 6 years now almost, and there's not a single swirl mark to be seen.

 

A couple of coats of doublecoat wax will do the trick, that's what I've been using since I ran out of Poorboys wheel sealant. It's good, but I ran out of it back before Christmas and I've been using wax since, although as you can see there wasn't any wax left on there this time. They should be sealed/waxed every time you wash the car to stay "effectively clean" for any length of time in between washes.

Your wash process is exactly the same as mine. I use a Meguiars grit guard in my wash bucket and a Zaino bucket and grit guard for the rinse. Same shampoo and two lambswool mitts. I wouldn't use any shampoo after using Megs Gold Class, it's just awesome stuff. And I have an upper bodywork and lower bodywork mitt because the Clio does get dirty

I clay, polish and wax mine a few times a year because it's a daily drive and gets covered in fallout and contaminants which I can do nothing about other than keeping it well waxed and washed regularly. Two years since the pictures at the start of this thread were taken, and it's holding up all right I suppose. If it hadn't been touched by the goon squad down the road with their gritty sponges, circular wash pattern and stupidly harsh chemical detergent, there would be no swirls in mine either. That was out of my control though, and I'll be correcting it back to a show finish in a few weeks

As I've mentioned before, I won't be letting anyone so much as breathe on the GT4 once it's in final paint!

PS: Horsey also looks awesome in the sun!

 

I purchased ValetPro Bilberry Wheel Cleaner last year and it's been the best wheel cleaner I have used so far. It also smells really nice too.

 

It's not shiny yet, but it is once again hydrophobic, so hopefully tar, dirt, brake dust etc will have a hard time sticking to the paint until I get it polished and sealed:



Advantage Collinite. It's the best wax I've ever used.

 

Other than CYC who do you boys favour for detailing products?

I ask because I intend on buying c. £40 of gear to top up my supplies, and £5 delivery on everything seems very steep compared to a lot of places offering free shipping yet still with competitive pricing.

 

A fiver may be steep for you on the mainland, but you're just getting a small taste of what it's like for me - every CYC order costs me £15 no matter the size and weight, and it's the same for Scan and any other retailer who uses DPD. The irony of it is that DPDs 'NI Two Day' service actually means 'pay us £15 and we might get your stuff to you in a week'.

Anyway, courier woes aside, I order almost exclusively from Elite Car Care and CYC, although there are other options like Shinearama, i4Detailing, Ultimate Finish etc which all have good reviews on Detailing World. I bought the G220 V2, M105 and M205 direct from Meguiars-Online because they offered it at a better price and with cheaper shipping (free for non islands & highlands orders). I plan on getting involved in some DW group buys in the next couple of weeks when my Paypal account is eventually sorted out - there are immense bargains to be had there.

[edit]

FWIW, the general consensus on DW is that Elite > CYC "as a company" meaning they're better at keeping stuff in stock, have a better range, have better customer service and are nicer to deal with. I definitely order from Elite when I want stuff by a certain date because they ship orders the same or next day. My last order with CYC shipped 4 working days after being placed. When I sent Tim a stern email about it and the fact that I'd paid £15 for shipping that took a week in total (5WD) his reply was basically "it took a while to process your order because we were busy, and blame the courier for the cost, not us".

 

Obsessive Car Detailing? What's that then?

 

I just bought a really nice car and yet I still can't be bothered to wash it. I'm not sure how you guys can find the willpower to go through all this just for two days of sunshine before it pours rains and ruins your efforts.

I washed it two weeks ago because I wanted to show it off to family and it rained two hours later. Such a bummer

 

The idea of detailing is to clean and protect your car, so a shower of rain shouldn't really do much for a well washed, polished and sealed car. Sealants are there to stop such things ruining paintwork - dirt can't stick to sealant the same way it can bond to unprotected clear coat, so washing it off is much easier and less likely to scratch the clear coat. Also, it's addictive and rewarding to keep a car looking better than showroom fresh and the challenge of doing so whilst driving it on dirty roads every day just adds to the challenge and makes you even more determined to achieve the best results possible

 

I understand and I agree I should do the same



but I'm just way too freaking lazy. Honestly I think half of the reason why I don't clean my car is because of the physical effort that is required

I don't know wheter i should laugh at myself or cry


Cry i think is the answer

 

Both my Dad and I have had good results with halfords wheel cleaner/wax stuff (blue spray bottle). It brings up my white wheels nicely and makes them easy to clean. And has also protected my Dads Spiders on the T350 (not that it gets used much , but the brake dust wipes straight off).


I've had issues recently with my polishing and waxing. I always seem to have problems. The most common problem is polish or wax not coming off properly. I'll start buffing and it goes all speckly, and I then have to put some real elbow grease in to shift it.

Had a nightmare on my mums new car, washed off some bird muck, then clayed it ready for polish then wax. Put the polish on, and it was almost like it had stained the area. Did the rest of the bonnet and it was slightly better as it wasn't so obvious, kept rubbing then put some wax on, and then that didn't want to come off properly either.

All Meguirs stuff, sometimes I do alright and it goes on and comes off easy, other times I want to kill myself and the car...and the bottles and towels....with fire,

 

@OP
Nice wax job!

Are those pics taken at the local dogging spot

J/K

 

Specifically which Meguiars products are you using, and are you polishing by machine or by hand? If by machine, which pads are you using? The surface temperature of the panel you are working on has an effect on how effective the product is, as well as how easy or difficult it is to buff off. Paint can't be polished or waxed properly if the surface is anything more than lukewarm to the touch, but the cooler the better. Having the bodywork cool to the touch and out of direct sunlight is ideal, which is why pro's and enthusiasts always pull the vehicle they're working on into a garage or workshop after washing to do the rest of the detailing processes.

Thanks! And no lol, nowhere as exciting as that! That's just one of our many local orchards!

 

It's all being done by hand, in the shade, towards the end of the day.

Meguirs clay and detail spray, then Meguirs stage 2 deep crystal polish, then meguirs Tech wax 2.

It must be something I'm doing as I've done all right with it other times. Did wonder if the Fiat had some sort of paint protection stuff on it, or if whatever wax was already on it didn't agree with the meguirs stuff.

Going to clean all my pads and towels I think, make sure I've got no contaminants in anything. Might just buy new applicator pads actually.

 

I follow this guy.


His techniques and products are so good (expensive but they work really well). AMMO NYC. He has also just started a podcast, look for drive and protect on itunes.

 

i didnt know this thread existed

i use i variety of products.... but my best is Auto Finesse Desire wax

i use autosmart, Auto Finesse, poorboys, scholl concepts, 3M to name a few

did paint correction on the GTA a few months back....

SWIRLS


AFTER


50/50




Recent wash and Wax


Beading

 

meguirs polish and wax is horrible to use and really difficult to get off... i would avoid it