Basic car detailing, what and how often?

dnme

I'd like to keep my car body work in good shape. But I don't want to get too complicated or spend a fortune. Can you give me a general guideline of what I should be doing and how often I should be doing it?

Do you wash weekly? / monthly?
Clay? or Polish? or both - How often?

The simpler I can keep this , the better.

randy hickey

As regards frequency, it depends on a few things, e.g. the mileage the car is doing, whether you can motivate yourself to do it regularly etc,etc.
There's no right or wrong answer as such, but I would tend to do a maintenance wash on my daily driver every week to ten days.

If you detar, clay, machine polish and wax (or apply a sealant to) a car, then you should be able to go for a couple of months with a simple weekly maintenance wash, before a detar,clay and wax is needed again.

Also, if you take care with your wash process, by using a soft MF mitt with the 2BM and maybe even use snow foam as a pre wash, you can definitely minimise the amount of swirl marks that are inevitably reintroduced to the paint over time.

If you don't have access to a machine polisher, then pick up a clay bar,shampoo,detar, some Autoglym SRP and a wax or sealant of your choice and that should get you going.

dnme

What if I give it a foamy wash once a month with and leave the rest to once a year? Is there an argument to be made for less is more? All that agitating, rubbing, polishing, de-taring, claying etc, its gotta seriously hurt the paint over time surely?

randy hickey

Well, your average wax won't last a year on the car.
You only need to detar if there are tar spots on the car, and you could get away with doing it once a year if that's all you're up for.

There's absolutely no way you should be polishing your car regularly - sometimes the uninitiated confuse 'polishing' with 'waxing'.

I think the best thing you could do is get the paintwork as decontaminated as possible to start with, then apply a wax, then only wash when needed and suss out for yourself how long your wax lasts.
When you reckon your wax is on the way out, then it's time for a quick detar,shampoo and wax again.

(I know the process a lot of us here use is far more intricate/detailed, but I'm trying to keep it as simple as possible, as that is what the OP is looking for)

Zoney

Did my first ever proper detail back at the start of January - detar, clay, Autoglym super resin polish and extra gloss protection.

Still good 4 months later - the polish is still trapped nicely under the EGP, hiding swirls and an improvement to minor scratches. Topped up with another EGP twice since.

Washing weekly at most, with two buckets, a mitt and Autoglym shampoo.

I'll definitely do another full detail in the next month or two, and another probably in early Autumn. I think 3x a year will be fine for me.

Typically, if I can fit it in, as well as the weekly/fortnightly wash other options are a thorough clean of the alloys with alloy cleaner, polish of the windows, trim restorer, and tyre dressing (used some Aldi stuff and it seems to keep them black enough for me for some time!).