Step 1: Bottom up. Always start with the wheels. Your wheels are the grubbiest area of the car so they will require a good pre-soak with a quality wheel cleaner. You’ll need brushes to get to the hard-to-reach areas, along with a separate wash mitt and bucket than you’d use on the paintwork.
Step 2: Wash the whole car to remove any loose contaminants from the vehicle’s surfaces. It’s important to use a good-quality pH balanced shampoo. Apply wash solution to the vehicle (washing from top down in small sections at a time). Do not wash under direct sunlight.
Step3: Decontamination stage, spray on an iron dissolver first to dissolve any ferrous contamination such as industrial fall out and rail/iron dust that has fused itself to the paintwork. Next, you’ll need to use a solvent tar remover to soften any tar that may be stuck to the paint. An important step here is to rewash the vehicle, or at least the areas treated with the solvent before Claying. Clay bars are effective in shaving off any remaining stubborn contamination that washing cannot remove, such as tree sap or even overspray in its path. Remember to use a lubricant. Then wash and rinse again and drying thoroughly is necessary.
Step 4: Inspect and evaluate the condition of the paint damage, i.e. severe scratches, light scratches etc. to determine exactly the right types of paint correction products that best suits the next application.
Step 5: Defect Removal – You cannot have high gloss and clear reflection unless the hidden paint defects are removed entirely. Compounding using a machine polisher and the right abrasives-enriched compound will remove severe scratches, acid rain etched, oxidation and other paint defects. This crucial step will lay a foundation to a mirror finish.
Step 6: Swirls Removal – Polishing is a gloss restoration step to enhance paintwork and reduce the appearance of fine swirls. It’s particularly essential for darker colours and metallic with clearcoat paintworks.
Step 7: Protection – Wax and Paint Protection Coating will create a long lasting brilliant high gloss. It helps seal and makes the gloss last longer and offer UV protection. It also provides resistance against various alkaline and acidic deposits and others air pollutant contaminants. This slows down oxidation on paintworks.
Step 8: Tyre dressings and trim. After cleaning your tyres and trims, it is essential to restore tyres and plastic trims back to their true colours.
Step 9: Glass is the reflections to the perfect finish, often people forget a good-quality glass cleaner is a must to remove finger prints and others streaks that may be left over during working.
FINALLY. STEP 10: Final touch-up, spray and wipe down with a quick detailer to finish off all the previous hard work. A good quick detailer will rid the surfaces of any potential residue left from waxing or sealing, as well as any finger prints perhaps left on your vehicle. It is finishing touches like this that often get overlooked, but can be the most important, especially for that show-car finish we all so desperately want to achieve.
