Honestly what's even the fucking point at taking care of your cars paint. I go to wash my car today...

Honestly what's even the fucking point at taking care of your cars paint. I go to wash my car today, use a wash mitt with grit-guard, two bucket method, then dry it with a microfiber towel afterwards. Car dries, shit ton of scratches and swirl marks, paint chips all over the hood and front bumper from highway driving. Even if I invest in a DA polisher and have at it with my car, those fucking scratches and swirl marks will come back once I wash my car again. Only way I can think of preventing this shit is to foam cannon my car, wash off, then dry it with a fucking leaf blower to prevent adding any new scratches/swirlies. Someone tell me that's the way to go or I'm just going to give up, I love my car to death but I'm tired of putting time and money to make it decent looking, when driving it will just ruin it all over again. Fuck cars and paint.

I gave up and just had a detailer do it. $400 a year and that includes a wax every three months and ceramic sealant once a year.

If you apply sealant ever 3-6 months you won't get any swirls

I'm honestly about to do that. I found a detail place near me that'll do a 4 step correction on my paint and have some sealer thing on it to protect it for 3 months for $100. Also I never thought of using a sealant, which do you recommend?

Do that paint correction from detailer then just reapply sealant by hand every 3-6 months. Jet seal is good shit

Yeah that's what I'll do, as soon as I get the car home from the detail I'll apply sealant. So that shit will just prevent more swirlies from appearing and all?

There is none.

If they apply sealant just wash car every 2-3 weeks then apply sealant in 3 months with applications every 3 months

Gotcha, will do user. Now I feel a bit better about this gay shit.

What car?

Civic, I know it's not the fanciest to keep it great condition paint wise but I love it and want it looking nice.

Congrats on becoming a man, you now understand entropy and why "people" that spend time washing their cars are just struggling against the inevitable.

I'm realizing now I've just been wasting my time trying to keep it in great condition when it's a daily driver and I hit the highway a lot. Not gonna care about scratches or swirlies or anything anymore, not worth my time. I'll leave it to the detailers.

Wolfgang deep gloss sealant is the best by far, it needs time to set after application though. I don't use it because I don't have a garage.

I honestly just give it a good wax a couple times a year and call it good.

Maybe it would be different if it was a car I only drove on weekends, but keeping a perfect finish on a daily driver is not worth the effort. Nobody cares about or notices some paint swirls anyways.

Give it a 5 star polish and ceramic coat, or go full OCD and put a clear bra on it.

Anybody try those new wipes they're showing on TV ads lately?

yeah they're great

The final maximum entropy, the universal heat death is the final red pill. Realizing that the energy and motion of all the material universe will eventually cease and there will only be cold, motionless, nothing. Embrace it.

Why are you polishing the paint of a machine that in the cosmological sense can barely be said to have even existed at all. You are trying to enhance the reflections of a star whose light will someday fade away in paint that is already being degraded and flaking from metal that is already beginning to rust into oxidized iron dust. What is the point of your Sisyphean struggle to polish your turd into a slightly more shiny turd. We barely exist for a flash of a moment on the surface if a bubble on the rippling surface if time and you are worried about your paint?

Go drive your car too fast on the bendy roads, make love to a woman, watch the stars rise and set. Live your life. Stop looking at your reflection in your paint and thinking that is really you, or you risk loosing your perspective on reality. Your car is barely more than a grain of dust floating in the universe. Let the light bounce off it and ride that grain of sand into the infinite mindfulness of the awakens ones.

There's a reason you never saw Han Solo carefully waxing the outside of the Falcon. Because even George Lucas knows worrying about that shit is gay.

There must be a certain talent or fine touch required to properly detail your car. I tried a foam cannon, waffle weaves, two bucket method, and I can never get it to look just right. After I finish I think I'm done but I see have tons of smudges and swirl marks. I finally said fuck it and just went to a detail shop.

...

I daily drive a shit box so my routine is to wipe it down with a scotch brite pad when it rains and cover any chips or flaked off paint with close enough rattle can paint.

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I find waffle weaves pretty harsh, plush microfibre is best.

Y'all are completely missing the point.

Even if you don't have a show car or you'll never be able to get your car back to perfect condition, you should still wash your car regularly.
Washing your car (and waxing occasionally) keeps the paint healthy. Keeping the paint healthy maintains the value of your car.

Even if your paint is 2/5 quality, why allow it to drop to 1/5.

Maintain the value of the things you own, that's being responsible.

a few months ago I washed my car for the first time in about 5 years. Purple Power cleaner with a hose and old t-shirt rag. It looks so much better now that all the black muck is gone off my white paint.

Any easy to apply wax covers up all the swirl marks. Correction by a cut-rate "detailer" can be dangerous since it is basically using abrasives to thin down your clear coat to the level of the scratches. But in some spots, they might thin down too much and hit paint.

>but keeping a perfect finish on a daily driver is not worth the effort. Nobody cares about or notices some paint swirls anyways.

Also you can obsess over it for hours, and then in 3 days or 3 months some dumb bitch in target will back into your rear quarter and leave without leaving her details anyway

I wash my car but I don't bother drying it anymore. Just get the worst of the water off with a microfiber or squeegee that I keep rinsing with the hose to remove any grit.

Why are you on this board? this board is for auto enthusiasts. kill yourself