Looking for a decent car polish thats going to protect the paint work on my new i30. Not looking for something thats always going to give it a show room shine as according to my Dad this will need polishing more often. I usually look at brands such as Auto Glym etc but is there something else I should be considering instead ?
If you're looking for a decent wax that you can apply and forget about for a few months, Collinite 845 is pretty much the standard. I'm not massively into this world but it works well for me, goes on easily, good results, lasts, not mega expensive.
As an ex car valeter for Reg Vardy for some years, AutoGlym works fine though you can get and apply a paint protector. This requires a bit more extra work but is pretty good .
I just took a pic of my car and sent an email to Maguires for some recommendations, though my car is 25 years old, red turned pink.
First thing's first, you're looking for a paint sealant, not a polish. Polish is something abrasive that you use to remove defects. On a brand new car you shouldn't need to do that but quite often dealers don’t have a clue what they’re doing and your car will have been “improperly washed” enough times that its paintwork actually does contain swirl marks and other fine defects. Machine polishing is a whole other conversation though, since you’ve asked about protection I’ll stick to that for now. If you just want to protect the paintwork you need a wax, a synthetic sealant or a blend of both. If you are really serious about long term protection from the elements then you can go as far as ceramic coatings, some of which you can apply yourself if you know what you're doing and some which manufacturers will only sell to authorised professional detailers and cost a lot of money to have applied professionally. I personally use a mixture of two products to protect my van and car. Both have been machine polished and to protect all the hours of effort that I put into doing that, I use Auto Finesse Power Seal which is a synthetic polymer sealant that comes in liquid form and can be applied by hand or more effectively by machine, plus an added layer of protection on top of that in the form of a blend of synthetic sealant and natural carnauba wax called Ioncoat Naviwax. The Power Seal is designed to offer long term protection and on its own would be fine as long as I kept an eye on its effectiveness between washes, but a coat of Naviwax once every few months makes paintwork so durable that I like to call it “ballistic hardened”. It’s also ridiculously easy to apply by hand compared to some paste waxes. I’ve been a big fan of Collinite waxes and before I discovered Naviwax, 476S was my go-to paste wax for the car and van, but I would rate Naviwax much higher in terms of durability and ease of use. Collinite wax would probably contain more Carnauba than the synthetic sealant, so if I was preparing the car for a show or something and reflectivity was more important than durability, I would strip it back and add a couple of coats of Collinite instead. But for protection against the crap that gets thrown at your vehicle during every day driving, it’s very hard to beat a tin of synthetic sealant for £25 these days. You, on the other hand, do need a polish. Meguiar’s will probably respond with something along the lines of “polish it with M205 using a foam or microfibre cutting pad on a dual action polisher. What that means is you need to remove a layer of the paint that is faded to reveal the shiny paint underneath again. It’s the same as polishing brass or any other metal; you remove a layer of oxidation to reveal shiny metal underneath. Older red paint was and still is more prone to fading because the manufacturers didn’t use an effective blend of UV protective tinters or additives in the mixture. It’s the number one most likely paint colour to fade or oxidise. You can polish it up to a good dark, shiny finish again by hand, but it will be absolute hell on your arms and the recommended thing to do is invest in an inexpensive dual action polishing machine, a few pads and a couple of bottles of compound and polish. I won’t write an entire essay on the process, there are plenty of articles on Detailing World and other detailing sites covering the process. Also take a look at some videos by Larry Kosilla (AMMO NYC) and Junkman3000 on YouTube. Their videos plus a bit of trial and error taught me how to machine polish several years ago. Thankfully the challenge hasn't arisen in my 9 or 10 years as a "weekend warrior" detailing enthusiast, but if I was going to tackle a badly faded red car I would be using a bottle of Meguiar's M105 and M205 with Meguiar's own Microfiber cutting and finishing pads, used on my Rupes Bigfoot 21 random orbital polisher. Menzerna are my compound and polish manufacturer of choice, but for a job that big I would want value for money and start with the Meg's products.
This is exactly why I asked before I went out and bought something that wasn't right for the job. Thanks for that, now I know I need a wax Its going to the dealer from where I got it from this weekend for a full valet due to a muck up with the tax on my old car.
