

Four Steps in Maintaining Your Car Paint

Very few people know how to maintain their car’s paint. Almost everyone will always just wash and dry their car. Occasionally when they feel that they need it to look good they’ll have it waxed.

This article lays out the proper steps in maintaining your car. The following steps take a previously dirty car from cleaning to protecting.

Step 1: Washing

Washing is what we are most familiar with. Because washing is intuitive we think that the main way of protecting our cars is through washing.

Although this can be somewhat true, washing actually removes the clear coat for cars that have it. This does not happen in one washing but through numerous washing sessions especially with detergents not meant for car use.

Washing your car is just the first step among the four discussed here. Step 2, the Clay Bar confuses a lot of people.

Step 2: Clay Bar

Claying a car would be difficult for anyone unfamiliar with car detailing to put together. Indeed much confusion happens when a Clay Bar should be used.

Clay Bars are meant to be used after washing. They work by clearing the paint of imperfections. Contaminants that were not taken out by washing can be effectively removed by a clay bar.

Step 3: Polishing

Polishing may sound like the last step in maintaining your paint but actually it’s not. People might mistake polishing as a process of making the car glimmer or shine.

When we say polishing here it actually is more like cleaning. A polish contains very light abrasive materials that dig into the paint to remove scratches.

Polishing is also responsible for removing those fine cobweb shaped swirl scratches that ruins the finish of a car.

Step 4: Waxing

The last step in maintaining the paint of your car is waxing. Waxing is a protective process.

A wax creates a layer of protective material that acts as a shield. You can think of this as an extension skin for your car. This is probably the most important step as it prevents the elements like the sun and weather from ruining your paint.

Waxes generally come in different forms. The most popular among them is the carnauba wax coming from Brazil. Newer synthetic “waxes” are not even waxes at all. But they do have the same bonding effect that carnauba based waxes do.

This four steps in maintaining your car is not a rigid system. Waxing your car for example can be done every 3 months or so. While washing it down with a car shampoo should be done more frequently.

If however you want the maximum treatment to maintaining your car’s paint then doing this four steps twice or thrice a year will ensure a car that will hold on to its shine for a long time.

Posted in Car Care Tips

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