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-   -   A superb Car cleaning, polishing & detailing guide (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/technical-stuff/102011-superb-car-cleaning-polishing-detailing-guide-474.html)

I guess your basic question has been answered well, ONR or similar water less washes/ rinseless washes are safe to be used and do not strip off the underlying wax layer or interfere with them.
Now coming to daily cleaning- the routine is perfectly fine, a few key important points
1. Use a CLEAN and high quality microfiber, make sure that is does not have dust/particles trapped and those if run on the surface will cause swirls/scratches
2. You have to hold the microfiber in a way to put least pressure. Make 2 folds so that the microfiber has 8 sections and hold it between your thumb and other fingers and wipe( like the way a face cream is applied using an applicator ? ). Avoid putting the entire 5 fingers on the cloth and rubbing over the surface.
3. Do not move the microfiber in circles, instead in straight lines over each panel and keep changing sections. Ideally, use 2 microfibers
4. Go from top to bottom, usually there is more grime and dirt at the bottom and you do not want that to run over the top section in case it does get into the cloth! Inspect the cloth post cleaning and panel and flip it over ideally to a new section
I know this means some effort, some care and practice and also use of more material than what we really do, but on the other hand- it really goes a long way to keep a minimally swirled car
Another KEY point to note: DO NOT put pressure on the duster and rub it over the surface, instead just gently glide it over as it picks up dust!

The edges are almost invisible. Will post the pictures soon. Got it done for the door handles and the door sills.

@ NewtonMeter: It costs Rs.425/sqft. The total cost for 4 door handles for i20 was Rs.790 and for the 4 door sills it was Rs. 1360 (Including Tax)

Why not do it yourselves at home at a fraction of a cost and using 10 times better sealants?
That 3M Sealant they use is pretty dated, the world has moved on to better things :)

This might be already known or posted but I am putting this across as an information and might mostly benefit the Chennai BHPians.

Today when driving from Home to Office I was tuned to 91.1 FM (Radio City) and came across this ad.

Fast Track Call Taxi services have started a new sub group. I am sorry, I missed out on the name but started something like "FOP Services" (not sure) that offers car wash at door step. What attracted me was that they do the car wash with RO water and suggest that the car wash can be done three months once if done by RO water.

Looks like they are targeting at "Call for Car Wash" just like their "Call Taxi" services.

Any other inputs on this from other friends who heard about this would be highly appreciated. Kindly excuse me again for not getting the exact name of the group that is started by Fast Track. :(

Thanks for the heads up. Called Autosol India's Chennai office and they were kind enough to offer free home delivery of the product with cash on delivery option:) Will be using it over the weekend.

How on earth do they think that what they wash the car with makes any difference to the amount of dirt, and the speed with which it will settle on it? :eek:

Using soft, or low-mineral-content water will mean less tendency to get hard water marks --- but this can be avoided by drying the car carefully anyway.

I suppose I could try RO water for rinsing, but it would take an age to fill buckets from the domestic RO machine so I think I'll let the advantages be theoretical and stick to the pressure washer.

I must have probably used the right word there. :) . I was rather surprised on hearing it over the radio. Will try to post the exact ad content the next time I listen to it.

My assumption is that they are trying to convey something regarding that time period of three months but are unable to convey it the right way.

Hi guys. Any idea how to get rid of Holi water colour marks from a white car. Couldn't save it from the marks despite parking away from the area of celebration. The marks have fainted after a quick spray of ONR followed by a moderately vigorous wipe by MF cloth, but refuse to go away completely.

I think claying can be of help here. have you tried that? lets see what the experts have to say.

If you have Formula 1 Scratch-out, do apply on the stains, it will immediately go after gentle rub. Formula1 scratchout has mild abrassive and do not harm the clear coat. Also do not forget to wax that area.

Guys I need a good DA polisher machine (for cheap!). Please suggest.

The Skil rotary is cheap (at 5K) but is just that (a rotary). I am looking for something more easy to use.

At a later stage (inspired by the UD team) I intend to get into freelance detailing.

Recently worked on a couple of very scratched up cars (A wine colored Manza and red Vista) and got excellent results with my hands and elbow grease. My couple of pictures that I took from my phone when working on the car.

Before


After


Anyone in Viman Nagar who needs a detailing for free...( donations accepted ;) ). PM me and we could meet up over a weekend

That is awesome. Would you be in Chennai anytime? Let me know.lol:

Good work on that car! :thumbs up
Wish we had someone here in Bangalore. I can wax/polish the car myself but I just need a few tips here and there :)

Friends can someone tell me how much clay would be required for doing up a car? Yesterday I detailed one door of my car. Claying it yieleded a lot of contaminants but I'm guessing by folding the clay over and and over I can use it on 3 doors at the max 4. This was with perhaps 30gm of clay bar.

Currently I'm carrying out an experiment on my car where I've marked out each door for different combinations of sealants/wax/sealant+wax. The door I did yesterday was with my recently bought collinite from Bringing best. They are very customer oriented which I liked. Plus very neatly packed.





According to the topic posted out here by Mr. Nirmal regarding use of collinite, it said it would be best to get collinite into a squeeze bottle from autogeek. Since I don't have anyone to bring such stuff for me, I decided to improvise. After a lot of effort and time managed to find an effective combination that worked. Used an empty lotion bottle from body shop and a fevicol bottles squeeze cap. And these bottles are made of very good quality plastic and even on immersing in hot water did not change shape.



Currently its a work in progress as I get time I'm doing each door. The current list of products being used are :
1. Collinite
2. Wolfgang Deep gloss paint sealant.
3. Blackfire sealant. (Ordered)
4. Meguiars clay kit
5. Motomax 2k rubbing compound.
6. ONR W&W
7. JOPASU magic wipes
8. Meguiars supreme shine mf towel
9. Pinnacle foam pad
10. Meguiars foam pads
11. Eurow towel (yet to try)

All this is being done by hand with the help of regular foam pads although I'd have liked to have the hand cutting pads from autogeek just to give a bit more bit to the compounding. This can never compare to the quality of machine polishing but currently I don't have the budget to buy the DA but some fine day it might be an impulsive buy :D

I've a lot of combinations planned but this takes a lot of time compared to applying only 1 product at a time. This door itself took me about an hour to complete. The aim of all these experimenting is to find out the best product suited for my car in the current weather conditions.


So here are some pics from yesterday's work along with short descriptions. Would appreciate feedback and advise regarding how to better my process and even reduce time taken.

1. Initial condition of the car.




The car hadn't been detailed with any sort of clay bar for its entire life of two years in fact it never went to a detailing shop. So I expected the surface to have contamination and was secretly hoping for lots of it to be picked up by the clay so I could verify myself that the smooth clay bar is effective.

2. Claying with Meguiars smooth clay kit + Meguiars quik detailer as clay lube + Meguiars supreme shine towel to clean the excess lube from surface



The contaminants picked up by the clay from just a single door.








The towel being used to clean the surface after claying. Very effective.
Surface was left very smooth after claying although I feel it would be even smoother if done with an aggressive clay. Here I'd like some advice too from the experts.

3. Compounding with motomax 2k rubbing compound and meguiars foam pad.

I applied the compound by hand all over the door as shown in a video on the motomax website. Then used the foam pad to do section passes in up down and sideways motion for 5 to 6 times just for my satisfaction although I feel this will only work with machine.









Buffed off with a jopasu magic wipe.

4. Gave the surface a clean with onr blue one. Just to remove some dirt. But should I've done this in the middle of the process? Since I don't even have a polish with me. Please advise.

5. Waxing with collinite 845 plus pinnacle foam pad plus jopasu magic wipe













I found the pinnacle foam pad to be better than meguiars because of its size and thus being easier to maneuver. But the price is 3 times that of meguiars so I'm keeping this single pad just for wax applications.

Due to the light color of my car I knew I couldn't expect mirror like reflections but what did improve with collinite in a single coat is how the finger just glided over and it felt very slick to touch. Gave a second coat too about 2 hours later as I had to go off for some work in between. This slick nature I feel Is what is going to let the water bead and also very easy to clean dust off with a simple wipe.

All in all, what I realised is car detailing is a much more fun process than doing a bike as the area covered is larger and the results are more prominent. But I've a lot of learning to do in this regard as I've just started.

I wanted to check the beading today but did not get time. Will try out tomorrow.

My clay stock is running short and I soon may have to turn to notorious for his OEM bars. Notorious sir can you pm me the details how to go about ordering your bars plus the prices.

Feedbacks are welcome :please:

Some after shots.

Clicked a few pictures and a video couple of weeks later after posting the above, and had to wait a few more weeks to be finally able to put up the pics. The Video is shot upside down and I have to fix it before posting.

All the pictures are after a simple water wash and chamois+microfiber drying.
Please excuse the cell phone photographs.

The hood after drying



Drivers side doors


Orange peel effect


SKIL pressure washer


Last week I did another wash with shampoo and the foaming bottle works, but it takes quite a lot of car wash for the foam. Certainly looks good, but it is economical to use the two bucket method instead. Quick waxed using Megs ultimate quick wax to restore the diminishing water beading.