1 - Washing your vehicle

Materials:
- A Garden Hose (preferably one with a nozzle) for outdoor wash
- Two wash buckets (preferably one with a grit guard)
- 2 Sheepskin wash mitts
- 1-2 Microfiber Wash mitt or grout sponges
- Car Wash (I will be doing an ONR wash for this demonstration)
- 1 Large Waffle Weave Drying Towel (or equivalent MF towel)
- 3-4 Microfiber Towels
Tire Shine
Chemical Guys wheel well spray
Plastic trim restorer
Plastic trim protectant


Washing the vehicle is a pretty fundamental key to maintaining your vehicle. Most marring and swirling is induced during this period so it is probably to your benefit to do this step properly to save you grief later on. I will be doing an ONR wash which is different than washing with a regular car wash shampoo in this DIY. I will briefly cover on that area too.

Before you begin, it is a good idea to gauge what you are dealing with. Here is an examination of the vehicle before any washing is done. I use 2X250W work halogen lamps to examine my area (will discuss further in the polishing stage). The sun works quite well too:







First thing to do for an ONR wash is to fill once bucket with warm water (I usually do 2 gallons). The other bucket I fill with either 1-2 gallons of water, depending on the ONR concentration. Generally I do 2 ounces of ONR to 2 gallon of water. I bump this to 4 ounces of ONR to 2 gallon of water when I am going to be rewaxing the vehicle or polishing. I let my wash mitt soak up in the ONR (remember to remove any tags!).



The MF wash mitt in there, is what I generally use on the lower body panels. ONR does seem to make sheepskin mitts extremely dirty, so I would say if you have enough MF washmitts, this might be a better idea. After this, I put 4-5 ounces of ONR to one gallon of water in a spray bottle as a QD. I prespray all body panels with this mixture. If you have access to a garden hose with a possible fertilizer sprayer (obviously not used for the prior purpose), put cheap carwash in it and spray the entire vehicle with it. With the latter, make sure you get into the wheel wells and clean them out properly. If you have access to a jack, jack up the vehicle and get the whole under body panel

Next is to determine your wash area, generally you want to divide the vehicle into 3 areas. The top panels, bottom panels, and the wheels/tire area. You might need another section depending on your vehicle size. For my vehicle the selection for the wash is as follows in the EXACT order:

Sheepskin mitt - Roof, Top pillars, front windshield, side windows, rear window, side mirror covers, hood, trunk lid, headlamps/taillamps (Area 1)
Microfiber Wash mitt - Upper portion of doors, front fenders, rear fenders, lower portion of doors, trunk
Grout Sponge/Microfiber Wash mitt - rear bumper, front bumper, rocker panels
2-3 MF towels - wheels and tire

For an ONR wash, I dunk my mitt in the ONR solution, wipe off excess and apply sparingly to the panel, generally moving in one direction (if marring does occur it will only be in one dirction) while applying light pressure. If the dirt/crap is still on there, try using your sprayer to break it down, if no luck, dunk your washmitt in clean water and then into your ONR solution again and do another pass. Repeat for each panel in the order determined by yourself with the wash media OR mine as described above. If you are doing this in a garage, you can usually dry off ONR after completly washing the vehicle. I am in my case, so here are some pics of that:





IF YOU ARE CLAYING, READ THE BELOW, OTHERWISE SKIP this section


If you are doing this outside, you will need to wipe off each panel after washing it.

For drying, I spray a small amount of QD on the body panel and on my WWT to minimize any water spotting. I then lay my WWT on the panel, patting it down, and then picking it up to minimize marring. If not possible, I will lightly pull the towel in one direction. If you notice any water spotting, spray ONR QD on it, and wipe with the WWT.

Once you are done drying your vehicle, it should look something like this:



If you live in an area where it considerably road construction (i.e. Canada), it will be necessary to follow up with tar removal.

After tar removal, we can proceed to cleaning the wheels (we will dicuss this later on), power polishing (skip this section if you will not be performing), and applying the LSP (wax, sealant, glaze, etc.).

Power Polishing - July 27

Equipment:
-Porter Cable 7424 Random Orbital Polisher or similar (Ultimate Detailing Machine will be used for this detail)
-Menzerna Intensive Polish or similar (Poor Boys SSR 2.5)
-Menzerna Nano Polish or similar (Poor Boys SSR 1.0)
-4-5 All purpose Microfiber towels
-2-3 Buffing Towels
-Isopropyl alcohol at 1:1 concentration with water (ISA)
-2X250W Halogen lampstand (more is better) and 1 portable halogen lamp (trouble light)
- Lake Country 6.5 inch Orange Pad (3-4) or Purple Foamed Wool
- Lake Country 6.5 inch White Pad
- Lake Country 4 inch orange pad (5-6) or Purple Foamed Wool
- Lake Country 3.5 inch Backing plate

Power Polishing is possibly on the areas where most individuals seem to be afraid of embarking on. However,when done properly, polishing is a very easy task (although time consuming depending on polisher). A minimum I would recommend for actually clear coat correction (removing swirling) would be a Porter Cable 7424 (PC), any cheaper solutions simply will not be suffice for most clear coat correction. Other good entry level polishers are the Ultimate Detailing Machine (UDM, this used to be available with a stronger motor but has since become a rebranded PC with a better warranty), and Flex Tool XC 3401 VR Polisher (makes most swirl removal a chore, very powerful but still uses a random orbital pattern, if cash is no concern, this is the one to go with). Rotary polishers are not recommended for newbies to polishing due to the possibility of burning the clear is greatly enhances since the polishing pattern is not random orbital. They perform a better job and allow for a more precise polishing job but greatly increase the risk compared to a PC. For this writeup, I will be using the UDM with the prior generation upgraded motor.

Before you begin polishing, it is essential you assess the condition of your paint. This is best done after washing, claying, and tar removal to better gauge the amount of marring present on your paint.

What is marring and what are you going to do by polishing? Marring is scratches still present within or on the clearcoat induced by external factors: ranging from washing techniques, weather conditions, area conditions, etc. Power polishing WILL NOT remove scratches which are past the clearcoat: ways to tell if they are is if your fingernail catches on the scratch. Visually you can also see if your basecoat is visible (black, grey, etc.). To recap DO NOT POLISH an area if the following conditions apply:

1. Your vehicle paint is older than 15 years old and is severely marred (more below)
2. Visually you can see clearcoat peeling
3. Visually you can see basecoat appearing through the color coat
4. Scratch is past the clearcoat (i.e. fingernail test or one of the above)

^If any of the above are present, consult a professional detailer who has a paint gauge meter to determine if there is enough clearcoat remaining prior to polish. If you fail to do that, you run the possibility of stripping your clear coat and going into your basecoat. A very, very expensive repair (new paint job).

In your visual inspection you should also gauge the extent of present marring. Something like this would indicate heavy marring:



Something like this would indicate medium/light marring:


To conduct your visual inspection, it is probably best to do it with a halogen work lamp. These usually are very high powered and make spotting marring on dark cars very easy. On lighter colors it becomes a bit more tricky, ranging from using flurescent lighting to tungsten lighting at different angles. You will need to experiment a bit to find the best solution for you.

For my write up, the vehicle was deemed medium in marring. With this in tow, I conducted a test panel [test panel - a typical body panel on the vehicle you will conduct with different levels of pad/polish/speed (N/A on a RO polisher)/pressure to gauge how correction will occur on the rest of the vehicle] to determine the best route for the correction. In almost all instances, you want to start with the least aggressive measure. From my quick inspection, I knew a white pad (read other posts) would not have the cut necessary for the removal. A 6.5 inch orange pad would be the minimum requirement. The next question was if I could use a lighter polish such as Micro Polish. On my test panel, it was determined the marring was too severe for micro polish. Intensive Polish was the next route of action and seemed to correct much of the marring on 1-2 passes. 1-2 passes was also sufficient for me on the 6.5 inch LC orange pad. If it was taking more passes, I would have worked down to a a lower profile pad.

Well I guess before you can use your test panel, you need to know how to polish . Read the below, and do the test panel as mentioned above and apply that to the rest of the vehicle:

With your cutting pad (Purple Foamed Wool, Yellow, Orange, or White) apply polish in either an X, 5 dots (one in the center and 4 surrounding it), or a nickel size amount on the middle of the pad. I prefer the first two as the latter tends to lead to polish dropping before it goes on the vehicle. Here is my pad and my UDM:



Here is the amount of polish on the pad:



With that done, you want to divide your vehicle into panels, in a roughly 2X2 area. You want to ensure you have enough polish to perform the correction and don't destroy your pad but not too much polish that you saturate your pad with polish and perform an adequate correction. With that done, you want to slap (don't literally slap it) the pad on the corners of the work area (I apply it roughly in a 3X3 formation). Here is how it looks:



After the polish on the vehicle, you want to smear the polish over the area WITH THE POLISHER OFF. It should look like something like this:



There might be areas you missed, try getting them covered in polish. If not, we will do it in the next step. With your polisher on the lowest speed (1-2), spread the polish evenly over the area. Once the polish is evenly spread, turn off the polisher with it flat against your vehicle paint (otherwise will lead to polish splatter). Later on you will not need to stop, but for a newbie, it might be nice to view that you have the area covered. I don't have a picture but it should look more or less like the above but with no visible blotches of polish.

Continued below... :arrowd: