My car is getting on in years now - 10 years, 107k miles, and it is never parked in my garage - always parked in the drive, literally steps from the Atlantic Ocean and the salty, sand laden breezes that are cancer to a car's finish. Most people don't know this, but nothing is done to new cars to decontaminate and correct the finish after their travels on ships, trains, and car carrier trucks when they arrive at the dealer. Therefore, your paint has NEVER been truly decontaminated - just washed and waxed at the dealer before they place it on the lot.

For regular maintenance, I use Griot's car wash, microfiber dry, and finish with Griot's Speed Shine every 2-3 weeks or more often depending on how dirty the car gets.

Every 6 months I do a cleansing wash and decontamination to strip the surface and inspect the paint. This is the best way to see the paint and judge for clarity, swirls, hazing, etc. That way I can decide how much correction is needed to restore it. This time, I saw just minor surface swirls in the clear coat and a simple finishing ream will correct that. But I also noticed some loss of depth, decreased clarity, and slight hazing on the hood, roof, and trunk lid. Finishing cream is not aggressive enough to remove that. It needed an actual correction. I did one slow pass with correcting cream and did another inspection. One pass with the correcting cream worked. If not, I would have done a second pass. Then I applied the finishing cream to remove any remaining faint swirls and leave behind a coating to protect the finish.

DAY ONE:
1) Chemical Guys Clean Slate Cleanser wash to deep clean surfaces
2) Carpro Iron-X treatment for chemical decontamination (horrible odor!)
3) Carpro Tar-X treatment for road grime decontamination
3) Chemical Guys Watermelon Snow Foam with Griot's Prep Mit for mechanical decontamination
4) Carpro Eraser again to one panel at a time before Griot's Correcting Cream (orange stripe)
5) Place the unprotected car in garage overnight unless you want to complete in one day

DAY TWO:
7) Polish tail lamps and headlamps with Griot's Plastic Polish
8) Apply Griot's Finishing Sealant to headlamps and tail lamps
9) Griot's wheel cleaner to each wheel
10) Carpro Eraser to one panel at a time before applying Griot's Finishing Sealant
11) Clean windows inside and outside with Griot's Window Cleaner
12) Clean all rubber seals with Griot's Rubber cleaner and apply Griot's Vinyl / Rubber dressing
13) Apply Griot's Undercarriage Spray to wheel wells

Tools that I use:
Greenworks 1500 PSI 1.2 GPM pressure washer
Griot's BOSS G15 orbital with 5" and 3" backing plate
Griot's BOSS microfiber fast cutting pads 5.5" and 3" (for polishing)
Griot's BOSS microfiber standard pads 5.5" and 3" (for wax)
Griot's BOSS innerflex pad for 5.5" pads to assist in contours of panels
Griot's Fine Surface Prep Mit (more effective than clay bar and cleans easily if dropped)
Griot's Foam pad conditioning brush to clean microfiber pads after each panel.
Griot's PFM Terry Weave drying towel
Griot's Plastic polish (tail lights and headlamps)
Griot's Dual Weave glass towels
Griot's Window Cleaner
Griot's Rubber Cleaner
Griot's Vinyl / Rubber Dressing
Griot's Undercarriage Spray
Griot's Speed Shine
Griot's Speed Shine Towels
Griot's Car Wash
Griot's Wheel Cleaner
Chemical Guys MIC_708 microfiber towels with silk edges (polish and wax removal)
Chemical Guys MIC_495 Chenile wash sponge
Chemical Guys CWS 803 Clean Slate Surface Cleanse Wash
Chemical Guys CWS 208 Watermelon Snow Foam wash
Chemical Guys EQP_313 Torq Foam Cannon
Chemical Guys MIC_721 Miracle Dryer Towel
Carpro Eraser 1 liter
Carpro Iron-X 1 liter
Carpro Tar-X 1 liter
Impacto Gel Palm Anti-Vibration Gloves
SudMagic Boar Hair Detaling Brush Set
EZ Wheel Detail Brush
_________________________________________________________________________
Iron-X removing metals and contaminates:

.
Tar-X removing road grime and other contaminants:

.
Hood after rinsing with water only - NO polish, NO wax , NO paint correction - just a wet hood (no beading cuz all the waxes and coatings are removed.)

_____________________________________________________________________________
THE RESULTS:
I confess to being on the anal side of cleanliness, health, work ethic, and also car maintenance. Following is proof that if I keep up with the paint surface, even after 10 years and over 100k miles, it still can still rival new cars in the dealer showroom.

ENGINE BAY


TRUNK


FENDER / HOOD


HOOD - that isn't haze, it's the high definition reflection of the sky and clouds


WHEEL AND WHEEL WELL (255/40/19)


FRONT BUMPER


TRUNK SURFACE


TRUNK LID


ROOF LINE

none of your images work

Everyone else sees them. Are you using IE, Google, Chrome, etc? They may not work on strange web browsers.

Yeah I see them. Looks good to me!
What do you use on your glass to prevent water spots and such?

Every wash, I use my use my Griot's prep mit on the glass. It leaves the glass feeling like, well ... glass LOL. You know what I mean.
After drying the glass, I use Rain-X. They make a glass cleaner that removes any possible soap residue, etc that I may have left on the surface and it leaves a slight coating. I also use Rain-X washer fluid so each time I use the washers, more Rain-X is applied. I can drive in light rain and not even need the wipers. Water just stays in 'drops" and don't flatten out and spread - the drops run up the windscreen and over the roof. The windows and side mirrors seem to be less susceptible to watermarks and dirt film after rain storms as well.
Lots of people use glass polish and an orbital machine with special glass pads, then apply a sealant. I don't see the need.

Gotcha. My last ST had hoooooorrrrrriiiible water spots both on the paint and glass. Tried the acid waterspot removal stuff, buffing, everything. Couldn't get rid of them, so I'm trying to be pro-active about the new car. Even my corvette has them a bit.
The problem around here is it gets balls hot out, rains just a tiny bit, and then returns to being balls hot, so the water just gets burned into the paint and glass :/

Larz wrote: ↑

Mon Feb 25, 2019 11:23 pm

Everyone else sees them. Are you using IE, Google, Chrome, etc? They may not work on strange web browsers.

It was the Ghostery plugin.

Wow! That looks fantastic! Nice work!

Griots makes some really good products for the DIY'er. I like their stuff a lot. If you're still using Rain-X instead of their glass sealant then you're missing out though! I had a customer bring me their car back after nearly a year since I had last detailed it and the Griots Glass Sealant was still beading! They claimed they hadn't even ran it through a car wash since I had done it last, so I was floored to see it hold up so well.

Kompresshun wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 04, 2019 1:14 pm

Wow! That looks fantastic! Nice work!

Griots makes some really good products for the DIY'er. I like their stuff a lot. If you're still using Rain-X instead of their glass sealant then you're missing out though! I had a customer bring me their car back after nearly a year since I had last detailed it and the Griots Glass Sealant was still beading! They claimed they hadn't even ran it through a car wash since I had done it last, so I was floored to see it hold up so well.

I can't explain why I never tried Griot's glass products. I have everything else they make including the 6" machine, 3" machne, BOSS machines, and even their metal cart to push the stuff around, LOL. I am going to order all of the glass products and pads. Thanks for the information. WEhen a pro detailer like yourself makes a recommendation, I always listen.