Basic clean and detail advice needed...

[DreamEater]

Hi,

Finally bought myself a car that is worth cleaning! I've got a Saab 9-3 1.9TiD Vector Sport in silver, with grey and cream leather.
The car covers around 20k+ a year, and is kept outside.

I /could/ dedicate a few hours once a month for a major clean and an hour or two a week to rinse it down. With this in mind, what can I use to clean and protect it?

Cheers,

Dave.

[DreamEater]

Bump....

From what I've been reading, I was thinking about covering it in foam...then using a soft mitt to clean it, microfibre towel to dry it, then a polish and wax?

Would Autoglym be worth buying...?

[Ashleyp]

depends on your budget dude!

a basic wash would consist of:

washing (2 bucket method) with a decent wash mitt / shampoo. sonus wash mitt is around £7, and if on a budget - meguiars gold class is pretty decent! CYC huge drying towel is about £9 iirc.

it's hard to polish [and do a good job] by hand unless on a honda from experience as they have soft paints, but results are achieveable.
for medium swirls i've found Menzerna PF2500 / intesive polish / 85RD 3.02 or what ever they call it these days.
for light swirls & finishing - SF4000 / super finish / PO 106 FA or whatever it's called now.
and i used one of the 'ultimate german foam applicatiors' which are about £2 online.
using that gear by hand i managed to remove a lot of swirls from my mothers vectra.

before polishing, you may want to look into using a clay bar too. only needs to be done once or twice per year, and for the cost of around £6, it's well worth it IMO.

then sealant and/or wax, again depending on your budget.

In terms of sealant, many people reccomend finishKare 1000p, i've never used it myself, but from reviews it seems great, and has added versatility of working well on the engine bay / wheels as well as the cars paint work

obviously you'd need extra little bits like a few microfibre cloths for removing polish and buffing etc, and you may want to buy wheel cleaner too.

Been a while since ive had to buy anything new, but www.cleanyourcar.co.uk is always great

[Carl-h]

To do a nice job with even the basics costs a bit to start with. Tot it all up and for just the bare essentials you'll already be over £100. I've been buying detailing gear since I was 14/15 so dread to think how much I've spent lol.

All the things listed above are great and for the outside there's only really a wheel cleaner (bilberry for me), trim dressing and tyre dressing missing. For the inside you'll only really need a Hoover, glass cleaner and some trim dressing. Doing inside properly too makes all the difference for me though.

[DreamEater]

Hmm...the temptation to buy cheap then expand...

But I might as well do it right in the first place...any idea where I can buy this stuff you talk of Ash/Carl? Preferably near Luton or Enfield.

Cheers.

[Carl-h]

The best place is online. I've not yet found a shop that sells anything useful other than halfords for some over priced below quality Meguiars stuff and that's only if I'm desperate. Don't get me wrong, some of their stuff is great (like their tyre endurance gel, only one I use) and beats the usual stuff in there but when you get into it there's much better about. Have a look on cleanyourcar.co.uk they will have everything your after.

If your ever unsure on a product just type the name into google and put detailing world after it. Will normally find out everything you need to know that way. It's a great site that ended up costing me a fortune haha. There's quite a few people here who know there stuff too but on detailing world everyone thinks the same way, there's still people here who think the two bucket method is a waste of time and don't know what swirls are lol.

[Collavts]

Cant go wrong with autoglym claybar, super resin polish and rapid detailer imo. Its a good routine to go through, takes a while but quality results

[goldies]

www.elitecarcare.co.uk

these guys sell everything you could ever need on most budgets..

[DreamEater]

Well, thanks for all the help guys

I went to Halfords for a look at the Meguirs cleaning stuff and ended up spending £60 on mitts, cloths, chamois, brushes and some Rain X!

I bought some Demon Shine in Asda for like £2 for 2Litres the other day, I plan on giving it a good clean everywhere, then assessing how hard I need to go at the paintwork.

From what I can see at the moment it just needs some coloured polish in places and then a good wax to protect it.

I could be wrong...and still very tempted to hand it over to be detailed...

Dave.

[rorz_vts]

If I was you I'd bin the chamois and the demon shite, chamois will add swirls and the demon shite will strip all the protection you put on the car

[MuZiZZle]

get some autofinesse tough coat on it and the dirt will fall off

and try and get an ultra plush drying towel!