mak213

oooo shittt i live in philly lol and work outta west chester def comin to get my car done lol

bimmerzone

wow, talk about being nearby
Let us know

Munich77

I second going to autopia and finding a good detailer.. A good detailer will make your car look like new... those mass production hand wash place are likely to scratch up your paint. As for a good wax job - at most you can get 6 months out of a good wax (some special synthetic sealants such as FK1000P or Klasse Sealant Glaze). I would probably wax it 3 times a year.

C's Bimmer

California Detailing is GREAT! I lived in SF for 9 years and I took my E39's to them at least once a year. They do full paint correction too. These guys are some of the best on the biz. I highly recommend them.

Howitzer

URL please?

stoic1

http://www.griotsgarage.com/home.do

inktoxicated

if your paint doesnt feel like glass it needs a polish and then a wax to protect it. run ur finger along the paint if its rough its got lots of dirt and contaminents on it. give it a nice good hand bath with good car soap and a good clean micro sponge. dont press hard just let the sponge do the work. get her all foamy and clean and give a good rinse off. dry it off with a leaf blower if you have one. if not a good shammmy. just dont drag a towel around the car to dry it. get a qaulity polish and go to town one section at a time. dont rush because youll miss spots and get poor results. after you take the polish off go to a good carnuba to protech the work you just did.so basically your going over the entire car twice. its gonna take some hours. the next time your ready for this work all you will need is the carnuba. try to wash the car once a week. and do all this in the shade. a hand buffer will save your arms and lots of time. pick one up at pepboys or something.dont pay a detail shop do it yourself have fun and save a few bux

stoic1

There is another step that should be done before polishing or waxing. Using a clay bar to remove contaminants that still remain on the on the clear coat so the surface is clean as possible. If the car is new straight out of the dealership a mild polish may only needed to take care of any micro marring, if the paint job is perfect, the car should just have a wax job done. A more course polish may be needed for swirl marks or deeper damage to the paint.

mannynj

Yes, claybar before polish. End it with a TEFLON treatment. It'll last 1-2 yrs, you can literally lightly hose off bird crap, highway debri, and highway bugs with ease, they wont penetrate the finish. It wont help against large debri(rocks) but its another later of protection.

tuffluck

there are a few things you should know about polishing your own car. for starters, it's extremely obsessive. i don't mean the act of polishing, i mean that once you understand what polishing is and does, you'll see so many defects in your paint it's, at times, close to unbearable. i have been an amateur (but good, i just don't do other people's cars) detailer for about 7 years.

the second thing you should know is that detailing takes a serious amount of time to be done right. swirls/hazing/marring on your paint cannot be removed by hand; you need a machine. most people buy porter cable machines. you can get them online or even at home depot. and no these are not the same machines that cause the dealer haze you see on some new cars.

detailing your car is really about 5 steps to be simple. 1 is wash, 2 is claybar, 3 is wash again, 4 is polish (with a compound that cuts into your clearcoat and reduces swirls), and 5 is protect with an LSP or wax. numbers 4 and 5, by many professionals, is expanded into something more like 4-7 or so.

but that's really not necessary to the every day enthusiast, and i guarantee you following steps 1-5 properly will look as good as just about any detail you'll see on the road. steps 1-5 will take you a full 8 hours, if not more. if you have to pause and come back to the work for more than 12 hours, even if your car is garaged, you'll have to wash it again. dust on the paint will just cause it to get marred again if you polish while it is on your car.

my advice: if you are obsessive in nature, or just want your car to look great to you but don't really want to know the specific "problem" areas, you should get your car detailed by a professional. someone referenced www.autopia.org already, and that is a great place to look up professionals that know what they are doing that will make your car look great for $250 or so.

as for it damaging your paint, polish sands down your paint to a level surface so that scratches are no longer indentations but the surrounding area is on the same plane. if you do this enough, yes, you will eat right through the clear coat. mild polishing is recommended once every 6 months or so. this is harmless to the paint as long as you aren't using a very abrasive polishing compound and spending an hour on each body panel. but, in reality, i only do it every 1-1.5 years, and wax every 6 months or so. that does the trick for me; mileage for you may vary. the more i polish the more i realize it doesn't take an over-the-top dose to turn heads.