Detailing General

Didn't see one up, so why not.

ITT: We ask random shit about car washing, waxes and polishes and shit, how autistic we are, how butthurt you are it isn't legal to wash your car in the street where you live etc.

Also check out my sweet wax job.

Other urls found in this thread:

news.esotericcarcare.com/how-to-wash-your-car/
twitter.com/SFWRedditImages

you aren't done correct?

Nah I usually don't buff the wax off, makes the car dirty as shit because everything sticks to it, but at least I know its protected.

Huh

What products should I use to dry out my car? I'm a poorfag and take my car to wash at a car wash. Is there anyways I can dry my car in peice without it looking like shit the next morning :(

>waxing in direct sunlight.
>not waxing a panel at a time.
>not covering half of last pass


Sweet.

not op but desu shut the fuck up

Water blades and shammys scratch your car, but if you're using a car wash you probably don't care about that anyway. Buy one of those big microfibre towels if you care.

Also if your car wash place doesn't do a good job of rinsing the soap off then you're pretty much screwed.

>thinking the sun has any heat in it at 7pm in Britain
>wasting your time waxing a panel at a time
>thinking I missed a bit

Spotted the bus rider.

Buy an old car that's already scratched up and you won't have to waste your time and money on detailing. Easy.

>dude just cut your legs off then you don't need to worry about buying shoes

damn, looks so easy waxing a black car. White is so hard to cover every inch and not leave any behind

Ye, I've waxed a white car a few times and shits difficult. Even worse is burning your eyes out staring at the bright white paint for ages.

Op do you use those round foam pads for that? pic related. was using my palm and a microfibre but wondering if these would be better?

A man with no legs can't walk.
No amount of scratches in your paint could ever affect your car's performance.

Yeah used one of those. I find using a microfibre just wastes a shit load of wax and it's annoying it flopping around.

They are cheap as shit so no reason to not have them really.

>how butthurt you are it isn't legal to wash your car in the street where you live etc

Is this actually a thing?

Having it look nice is part of the enjoyment of ownership, if you didn't care about how your car looks why not just buy pic related?

I gather it's a thing in Germany and I think a handful of US states.

>I literally only buy cars for appearance
Some of us actually enjoy driving.

how long did it take you in total? use to love polishing and waxing my whip but it used to take about 3 hours for the whole shebang. havent got time for that anymore so thinking of buying some of this stuff. amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B003XR0G6A/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

in germany it is

>not driving your car and also taking care of it
My generation, I swear.

Used to take me hours and hours until I realised I was using, way, way too much product.

I think it took me around an hour, it's hard to say because I spent a bit of time before that getting some scratches out and I wasn't keeping time. I think an hour is considered a long time to wax a car by hand, one guy in a detailing thread once said he can do it in less than 10 minutes but he could have been talking shit.

I find it quickest to put some wax on the pad, spread a line, then cross hatch the line in the opposite direction to spread it in, then finish up with circles to make sure it's evenly covered. Maybe someone who knows better can say if this is the best way to do it or not.

>one guy in a detailing thread once said he can do it in less than 10 minutes

Ill believe it when i see it

an hour sounds about right. will post here if thread is still live tomorrow with a shit review on wax vs demon shine. cant be fucked with waxing once every 3 months desu

I didn't mean a automatic car wash jackass. I ment those you put 4 quarters in to have 4 min of washing your car

Theoretically, what would be wrong with using a damp inverted clean cotton sock (new) as a wax applicator?

>applying wax in direct sunlight

You serious?

Impressive. Saw this last detailing thread.

What products do you use?

>White is so hard to cover every inch and not leave any behind

I know that feel. I've found that good artificial lighting can help a lot so I bought one of those battery powered Ryobi LED job site lights that I can constantly reposition as I move around the car.

>amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B003XR0G6A/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
I've heard DemonShine is shite, but I'm not sure. I try to avoid buying from Halfords, but I've heard 'Car Plan Hi-Foam Wash' is the same shit as DemonShine but with a different label. I got it from Halfords for 8 quid (buddy works there) and it foamed pretty good in my lance.

Bumpity

Getting a new car soon and I've never given a shit before so a few questions:

>What items would I need for a detailing kit?
>Is there a good guide on what to do? (shit gets pretty confusing with all the different products available and a bunch of conflicting advice like "use claybars" and "no claybars are the devil")
>Would a pressure attachment for a garden hose be good to use or is that too rough?
>I've seen people claim that they wax their windows instead of rain-x.. is that actually a thing?
>How often do you guys wash/detail your cars and how long do you spend doing it?

news.esotericcarcare.com/how-to-wash-your-car/
This is the best "guide" I've found but I have no idea how accurate or meme or overkill this is, and frankly they shill a lot of their products or partner products so I dunno if there's other/better options that they just don't focus on because they're not being paid by them.

Why would I waste time doing that when I can drive.

>What items would I need for a detailing kit?
for entry level tier, wax (take your pick), filler (basically anything that advertises itself as 'polish', it just fills in swirls)
>Is there a good guide on what to do? (shit gets pretty confusing with all the different products available and a bunch of conflicting advice like "use claybars" and "no claybars are the devil")
>you can fuck your car up with clay if you're a moron, but its a necessity if you drive on shitty roads. e.g. roads currently being paved
>Would a pressure attachment for a garden hose be good to use or is that too rough?
won't work don't waste your time, get a proper pressure washer if you want one
>I've seen people claim that they wax their windows instead of rain-x.. is that actually a thing?
yes it's a thing. rain-x has the downside of making other car headlights at night glare like fuck, wax doesn't do this, but will last like 5% of the time. the trade off is your choice.
>How often do you guys wash/detail your cars and how long do you spend doing it?
how long is a piece of string pretty much. A wash can take 30 mins from getting the shit out to being done washing it if the car is mostly clean, to taking a few hours if it's so dirty a pre-wash solution is needed and thus wax needing applied.

The thing no one explains to you when you're a pleb is the wax on your car is meant to be destroyed. The guy who waxes his car then goes drives through a farmers field is going to have a much better time cleaning his car than the guy who didn't wax. Don't try and look after your wax job as if it's invincible, because it's not, even synthetic waxes (which are technically sealants) that advertise a 12 month logevity will last, at most 4 months, on a car that actually gets driven.

Like I said, it's far easier to apply some wax, get your shit dirty, then damage your wax in cleaning that dirt off, than it is to not wax, get your shit dirty, and clean it off your clear coat.

Meguiars mostly.

>Two bucket method
>Wash every couple weeks
>Gold Class soap
>Ultimate liquid synthetic wax

Once a year, usually spring, I strip the car. Meaning wash it with an aggressive detergent like dawn. Then I'll seal it with a good synthetic sealant. Meguair's Mirror glaze 2.0 is pretty good and pretty cheap. then you just maintain.

If I'm in a hurry I'll use Meguiar's wash and wax. I can knock out a car wash in 30 minutes.

How is a neet worried about time? I work, go to school, spend time with my gf, play video games and STILL make time to drive and take care of my car. This sounds like a you problem.

Are quartz coatings meme?

For a brand new $50-60k car, should I just take it to a detailing place and have them coat it for me the first time so I don't fuck it up?

Thx4replysfriend

>you aren't done correct?
Wax is a sacrificial layer that slowly wears off. In the meantime it protects the paint. As he drives, little dust particles and other debris hit the car's surface. As they bounce off, they carry off a little bit of wax. Over time, the billions of impacts wears the wax off and its time to get more wax.

So his idea of leaving the wax on does work. But looks shitty. I think OP does it just to annoy other people with his twisted idea.

.

>one guy in a detailing thread once said he can do it in less than 10 minutes but he could have been talking shit.

It also depends on how he said it. Did he mean apply the wax? Or to wax, remove the wax, and do the final buff? It takes longer to remove the wax than to apply it. So when someone says 10 minutes, that means he has 4 minutes to apply it and 6 minutes to remove it from everywhere and buff.

>then you just maintain.

with what

>hould I just take it to a detailing place and have them coat it for me the first time so I don't fuck it up?

Detailers like to use polishes to correct the clear coat. So I refuse to do that. The word polish is misused or mis-understood on Veeky Forums. The normal meaning of polish is a product that also contains a mild abrasive. It removes scratches in the clear coat by wearing away the clear coat thus reducing the depth of the scratch.

If your detailer likes to polish (because his service package has it), then if you go to him five times, you are probably out of clear coat in some spots.

this faggot again

>If your detailer likes to polish (because his service package has it), then if you go to him five times, you are probably out of clear coat in some spots.

That's why you don't go five times. If your paint is that bad you only get it corrected once. It's been said before in these threads that clearcoat can withstand a number of paint corrections before getting burned off.

But by all means, keep using your glazes that only hide the problem without fixing it.

That's not really his question though. He's asking about coatings.

Coatings are very expensive, people say they are silica, or glass, or ceramic, or quartz, that's all just buzzwords. I could get technical but it's basically a more chemically tailored version of clear coat that is applied by hand and bonds to your existing clear. Generally a coating will have superior properties pertaining to hardness, hydrophobicity, UV, and chemical resistance.

Regular washes and keeping wax on it.

dont wax in circles

It was more of a rhetorical question. He is very clearly not done.

fedora detected

Wax is fine to do circles with. The wax and applicator are non abrasive.

my paint is faded on my roof and on the top of my trunk, it looks like pic related, but my clearcoat isn't peeled through yet. What's going to be the best way to fix that? I'm not looking for showroom quality, I just don't want rust.

Additionally, the paint on the side panels are swirled to shit, how to fix?

I understand the idea behind it, and I don't particularly care if it's expensive as long as it works. Nor do I mind paying someone to do it properly the first time if it's like a thing that you do once and then just "keep up with".
I'm picturing it like basically a clear coat for the car's clear coat that you apply a full coat once and then do 'maintenance' applications on to keep it from getting worn down.

Also it seems like a lot of the advice is concerning cars that have already been washed/driven a lot when I was specifically asking about a new car.
Like I literally have no idea what to do in the sense that,
>do I just apply a coat of wax immediately? >Wash the shit out of it then apply?
>if it's factory new are there cases where I'd have to do a paint correction first?

Also do quartz/glass coatings work in conjunction with wax or are they 2 separate solutions to the same problem?

I've also seen some like clear plastic film applied to cars (looks like shrink wrap kinda), but that seems more supercar territory.

As you can see I have no idea what I'm doing, which is why ideally if someone could point me to an all encompassing guide for a novice that'd be awesome. I kind of hate asking so much dumb shit because it feels like spoonfeeding.
Looking at a ZL1 if that helps.

t. asshole who hasn't ever cared about his paint to this degree and just runs his car through one of those drive in machines

>"mommy, daddy's wiping the car with a diaper again"

>do I just apply a coat of wax immediately? >Wash the shit out of it then apply?

You always wash a car before applying wax. Use more car wash concentrate than you would for a normal wash or a "paint cleanser" (dish soap can works too) to strip the paint of any old wax before applying a new coat.

>if it's factory new are there cases where I'd have to do a paint correction first?

Even before a car gets to the dealership its paint has already been subjected to dust and dirt from being shipped/transported. And when the dealer washes the car they're nowhere as obsessive as detail hobbyists/enthusiasts/pros, and so they unwittingly install swirl marks.

If you were really anal you could either get it corrected right away or if you special ordered the car you specifically request the dealer to do nothing to it once it comes of the transport truck. Otherwise if it's not really noticeable with the naked eye just do your best to practice good washing/detailing technique. If the swirls become more prominent, get them corrected and keep practicing/find out what you need to improve.

A newer car will require less correction, but you always want to correct the paint before coating, because otherwise the imperfections are locked in, you can't get rid of them, and I don't like the idea of counting on the coating to fill things in. Most detailers include the price of a full correction for a coating, expect to pay between $1000-$3500 for the whole thing.

Coatings and wax are different, wax will not even stick to a good coating because it is so repellent to foreign matter.

As for PPF (paint protection film) a lot of guys are doing this now as extra defense, and most film today is compatible with coatings, so people will PPF the whole car, then coat the film. Very expensive, but the protection is extreme.

kind of an off topic question but i think it fits here... do new car windshields come with rainx or is it some special shit? i've never gotten my rainx applications to last as long as a new car windshield will keep its water repellant coating.

if they use something different, what is it and where do i get it?

Anyone here have experience making a (barely passable) living detailing vehicles as their full time income source?

It can be done. I own a small business detailing high end cars, but that's mostly side business. I could quit my restoration job and do that full time, but honestly I don't want that headache.

The clear coat looks toast to me user

You could *try* compounding it and polishing it, but I doubt there is enough clear coat there to fix it. A cheap fix would be just vinyl wrap the top or something.

that's not a pic of my car, it's not that greyed out yet.
My car is black, and the paint is still black, but definitely looks 'worn'.

I work at a dealership. I know we have a 2 guys who are hired on to do work just cleaning our inventory. From what I see they do an adequate job. Not really called upon to leatherwork or fine detailed dent repair on bodywork or rims. That part of a modestly (ou of factory warranty) used car can make or break a sale sometimes if the vehicle is mechanically sound in other aspects. Just wondering if some of Veeky Forums is able to deal with the pressures of normal life out of their parents basements.

>Additionally, the paint on the side panels are swirled to shit, how to fix?
Looks like the clear coat has been worn down in places by too much buffing. You see the ribs showing up suggesting that whoever was polishing used a bit of downward force.

If the paint, not the little bit of remaining clear coat, has swirl marks in it, that means someone used a power buffer. And they got all the way thru the clear coat into the paint itself.

I see swirls as in someone was circle polishing, doesn't look like it went all the way through as the circles are very fine and thin.

I'd have to see it. There's a very fine line of whats fixable and it all has to do with how much clear coat you have to work with. My paint was in rough shape but was very fixable as there was plenty of clear coat to level down.

You expect putdowns with the elitists in this thread

>orange peel

What's the best compound for a one step polish job?

I bought m205 and m105. The car I'm doing is actually in pretty okay condition and only needs a light polish.

Can I just use 205 on that bitch? Or should I get a better one step?

When a lot of people talk about polishing they mean with like a machine buffer... do you guys actually own these or what?
How does a pleb polish a car without one, just take it somewhere to get it done?

This is what I use, it works well but it's crazy expensive

I know user. Like any car after 2000 has this problem. Not easy to fix either.

here's my best picture on my phone of what I've got... I think the clearcoat is still intact, just faded.

that shit needs colour sanded man.

it's got FLA, or fat ladies ass.

cellulite isn't cool bro, wet sand that shit with 1800.

How do you guys protect your plastic trim? Headlights?
Do you do anything to your windows other than Rain-X?
Do you coat your rims in anything?

Yes. I have a Makita random orbit buffer that has variable speed and shit. Wasn't crazy expensive, maybe 80 burgerbucks? Might as well invest man.

Don't even try to polish without a machine. It's virtually impossible.

Luckily, you can get a cheap polisher for 80 to 100 bucks. I recommend the Porter cable

Cool. Is it relatively idiot-proof to use one of these? I can't help but feel I'm going to do something like overpolish and ruin the clear coat

>plastic trim
clear colored rattle can spray because I'm poor. You can get airbrush stuff if you want it to look show floor quality, rattle can gives you 90% of the results when done properly for 10% of the price.
>headlights
Same concept, as they are also plastic. You will need to sand before you coat, or else you will seal in imperfections like UV scarring and the typical "foggy headlights".
>coat rims
I personally don't, no experience in this area. I only polish them once every summer once it's done raining every other day to get rid of the brake dust and it looks good enough. Some people do plastidip, but that looks shitty 95% of the time.

I'd say you could correct that. Definitely needs to be clayed first. I can almost feel the grit from here. Then compounded, probably something on the medium-aggressive side. Then a good polish.

if you want the shiny shine shine, baby oil, or olive oil, if you want the neutral shine, meguiars natural shine.

Windows get glass cleaner applied and removed with NEWSPAPER, then rainX polish applied with sponge and cleaned with microfibre.

Rim's get degreased, washed and waxed because brembos and race pads create dust at 20mph so fuck that everyday.

The Porter cable, no. It's not possible.

With a more powerful rotary, yes.

Watch thejunkman2000 on YouTube. He has a whole tutorial for novice machine polishing

They are pretty idiot proof as in it is hard to *hurt* your car with one. But it is not idiot proof for wasting your time with improper products and techniques. go watch ammo NYC on youtube. He is autism levels of meticulous, but extremely good at what he does and a decent teacher.

so the general process will be
>rinse
>clay
>rinse again
>polish
>wax
missing anything? what products to use?

The ammo guy is a complete faggot. Start with thejunkman2000, go to his Playlist and skip the initial car wash videos and start around the polishing tutorials

>rinse

wash.

>rinse again

no.

yes.

>rinse
>FOAM
>wash with shampoo to remove grit and shit
>rinse
>clay

the clay will spread any shit left around and scratch the shit out of the paint, so get it all off first.

hi junkman

Larry is a cool guy. Just because his product line is outside of the price range of 95% of this board doesn't mean he's a faggot. He teaches good technique.

Wash
clay
wash
dry
COMPOUND
rinse/wash
dry
then polish
wash
dry
sealant (optional)
wax

That would be best case scenario. Also set aside 12-16 hours to do it properly. This is going to be a learning experience and very tedious. But the pay off is well worth the effort, like any other major undertaking.

lube the shit out of the body while claying, with either shampoo and water in a spray bottle, or detailing spray.

Why does it take so long to clay a car it took me an hour just to do the hood and to be honest it's not 100% smooth some parts still fail the bag test

Wtf I already want to quit. Do I seriously have to not feel a SINGLE drag with the bag test? It's definitely more smooth than it was. But I'll be here all week at this pace

Hi Larry

>Is it relatively idiot-proof to use one of these? I can't help but feel I'm going to do something like overpolish and ruin the clear coat

Bodyshops and detailers can overdo it and in one sitting polish all the way thru to the paint. One of my good friends at the company I work for has a neighbor who works at a body shop. There's plenty of stories about people doing the wrong thing all the time. Many customers don't know until it's too late. The sealant or coating and wax covers up a lot of problems caused by the detailer or body shop.

I spent two 7 hour sessions getting my car to the point I felt it was acceptable. Detailing is definitely not for the impatient

I wish.

But what's the deal with all these people who say they can clay a car in 30 minutes? How....

I know, I know. It took a lot to get it to this point. It's just gonna have to wait.

>compound, polish, wax
what kind should I get? what to stay away from? Everyone references Meguiar but I see like 3 different cutting compounds alone. Something to rub out some surface scratches from careless parking neighbors would be preferable.

Didn't take me more than an hour to clay my car.

You guys need to use more lube or do a better wash job beforehand.

What lube are you using

Depends on how bad it is. Front, hood, and kick panels are always the worst. Mine took 1.5-2 hours to clay total. Just gotta throw on some headphones and power through it.

Griot's speed shine.

Didn't take me that long to clay, I'm talking full detail

Meguair's Ultimate compound and ultimate polish are good for noobs. It's what I use. The other types of compounds and polishes are for when you needs a very specific level of aggression so it doesn't take 937,000 years to do the job.

Tfw swirl city