Your advice and recommnedations needed.

[StraySheep]

This is a great forum with a wealth of information on Meguiar's products.

If the experts here can please give me some advice and recommendation on my product use for my detailing job.

First off, I live in Toronto Canada, and it snows here for 5 to 6 months and there are salt on the road during the winter months. So I only wash and detail my car the at home on the drive way and in the garage for 6 months and use touchless car wash at gas stations during the 6 winter months.

My focus is to have good protection and minimize swirls on the paint. I am not the kind of person that details my car every 2 months. I only detail it twice a year, around April and September.

Here's what I have been using for the past year.

For Paint.
1. Wash with #00
2. Clean paint surface with Scratch X, especially the front bumper, door handles, and lower side of car around the wheels.
3. Polish entire paint surface with #9 to reduce swirls.
4. Protect entire paint surface with #20 and wait for a few hours before buffing off.
5. Protect with another layer of #26 on top.

For Wheels.
1. Wash with #36
2. Polish with #28
3. Protect with #20
4. Top off with Rain X wheel protectant.


Is my detailing job #00, scrtachX, #9, #20, #26 enough to protect me for the winter months? The car is in the garage 80% of the time when not use and I wash my car at the touchless car wash at least once month during the winter.

Any advice and recommendations would be helpful, thank you.

[Mike Phillips]

I think it's safe to say that taking your car to a touch-less car wash is going to result in having your waxes chemically stripped off the finish.

If you think about it for a moment, if nothing is coming into contact with your cars finish to loosen and remove built-up dirt, such as a wash mitt or brush, then what will be responsible for loosening and removing the dirt?

Strong chemical cleaners.

These same chemicals that are strong enough to do a great job of removing the dirt from the finish and the rest of the car will have an effect on the protective wax coatings and dressings you apply and that effect is to loosen and remove them with the dirt.

One of the things we teach at our detailing classes is for the owner of the car to take ownership of the car washing step. This is the best way to control the quality and results from the process.

Nobody's wax or paint protectant product is going to hold up to repeated trips through a touch-less car wash. Other than that, you plan looks great.

[mike_svt]

I must admit that I've been pleasantly surprised at the durability of #20 to pressure washing during the winter months. I've taken my car to the local car wash probably 6 times this winter, plus washed it in my driveway w/ my pressure washer another 6 times, and the water still beads up! There's still a lot of gloss in my paint and it's still "smooth as glass!"