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TIPS
· Wash the windshield wipers using the sponge or mitt reserved for harsh applications. Also, windshield wipers can be made to last longer with occasional dressng (Armor-All, etc.) treatments. Be sure to wipe off all the excess after your application.
· Apply a coating of graphite oil to your antenna mast. This will make raising and lowering it easier and will make an electric unit more reliable.
· Most of the time it is best to apply a spray product to an application cloth, rather than directly on the surface being treated. This will prevent over spray from affecting nearby areas.
· Others may disagree, but in our opinion bumper stickers, decals, license plate frames with messages and other forms of distraction have no place on a well detailed car.
· A simple black or chrome license plate frame is a nice touch however. Be sure that any legally required license plate registration tags are on straight and cover the previous years sticker. Some detailers will go so far as to position the slots on the screw heads so that they are both horizontal.
· Try using a photographer's loupe, which is basically a magnifying glass set up to be the right distance from a given surface, to inspect your cars finish. Its less efficient than the baggie test described on the claying page, but it can give you further insight into the condition of your paint.
· If your car has been repainted, consult the painter regarding how long you have to wait before you wax your car. New paint needs to "cure", time in which the solvents that are part of the process dissipate. Applying wax, which seals the paint, will interfere with this process. New cars do not have a waiting time before waxing requirement, as their paint is cured in ovens at the factory and are cured quickly.
· When cleaning glass, use a vertical motion for the exterior, and a horizontal motion for the interior. If you have any streaking, you won't have to guess which side of the windshield it's on
· Always attend to bird droppings as soon as they appear. Their content is very harmful to your paint and is a good reason to keep your wax job up as it will help to protect you. When cleaning bird droppings, resist the temptation to scrub hard as the material is coarse and can cause scratches. Try spraying the area with Windex or your favorite glass cleaner and then try and "dab" the area to remove the offending material.
CLEAR COATS
All About Clear Coats clear coat is the top coat of a paint that contains no pigmentation or color. In a typical automotive paint surface, there is a primer coat which is what is sprayed on the metal or plastic body surface, a base coat, which contains the color and a clear coat. A clear coats purpose is to provide depth and gloss to the finish (known as DOI, or Distinction of Image in the industry) and to protect the base coat from the elements, including the harmful UV (Ultra-violet) rays of the sun.
Clear coats became popular in the early 1990s and currently over 90% of new cars feature a clear coat as the top (exposed) surface.
Clear coats require special consideration. Because they are clear, scratches and swirls tend to become more prominent since the clear characteristic causes such defects to be magnified. For this reason, avoiding scratches and swirls is critical if you want your clear coated surface to look good.
Most detailing products available today are clear coat safe and are so labeled. This generally means that they are non abrasive or minimally abrasive.
The best and easiest way to determine if you are dealing with a clear coat is to check the owners manual of the car. If that is not an option, apply a small amount of polish to a rag that is not the same color as the car and apply it to a not normally seen paint surface. If the color does not appear in the cloth surface, then you have a clear coat.
The protection provided by a clear coat will not prevent oxidation but it does help the situation considerably. The clear coat itself can lose it's oils which makes it vulnerable to oxidation, turning the surface dull.
Although a clear coats protective properties make modern paint jobs last longer, they still have to be maintained with oils (applied as part of a polish job) and a protective wax. Not maintained, a clear coat can disappear, leaving the base coat exposed to the elements something that it was not designed for. If your clear coat is gone, a new paint job is required.
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