Hello and welcome back to the Bespoke Automotive Refinement Podcast, the Kansas City auto detailing service. Guys, I’m your host, founder, owner, operator, and detailing connoisseur, Thomas Thill. Guys, today we’re going to be talking about the do’s and don’ts of car detailing because there are so many myths about what is good for your car, what is bad for your car, ways to make your car look good for a long time, and ways to absolutely wreck the finish of your car.
So let’s jump right in. The first myth that I want to debunk is hand polishing. I have a car in my care right now that I’m going to be working on for the next couple of days.
A customer had watched videos online about polishing and compounding and paint correction and there are a lot of DIYers out there and I respect it. I’m a DIYer myself. But sometimes it’s not smart to dive right in to doing sheetrock on a home when you’ve never sheetrocked before.
So let’s talk about paint correction first. Is it smart to attempt to paint correct a car when you’ve never held a polisher, you’ve never done any detailing? Absolutely not. I think back to the early days of my Kansas City auto detailing career. I was 14 years old and my father purchased some polishing compound and some hand polishing pads and told me to have it with one of his trucks.
And I polished that truck in direct sunlight and the paint faded almost immediately. There were several mistakes made. Number one, hand compounding is never a good idea.
It causes micro marring, it causes hazing, and you’ll never be able to get true depth and true gloss out of a paint job by hand polishing. You need heat. You need friction.
And I don’t care how buff your shoulder is, you cannot move your hand faster than a 9,000 rpm polisher. And that’s where we come in with our Kansas City Auto Detailing Services. We have the tools to properly paint correct a vehicle.
Another myth is polishing in direct sunlight. When you begin to compound a car, whether you’re using a machine, whether you’re doing it by hand, you will open the clear coat, open the pores of the clear coat, causing the pores to soak in UV rays, contamination almost immediately. Compounding in direct sunlight will immediately damage your paint.
So if you are interested in having any sort of paint correction done on your car, truck, or SUV, I highly recommend you reach out to Bespoke Automotive Refinement, Kansas City Auto Detailing one stop shop. The next question that we’re going to debunk is ceramic coating. I’m on lots of forums online with car detailing, both on Facebook, Reddit, CarGurus, everywhere.
And a lot of car enthusiasts believe that ceramic coating is snake oil. Guys that have been doing carnauba wax for 20, 30, 40, 50 years think that ceramic coating is snake oil. Let’s talk about wax.
Wax is a silicone-based product that doesn’t bond to your clear coat. It doesn’t flash to your clear coat. You rub it in by hand, you let it sit, you let it dry, and then you wipe it off.
And over time, that wax can be washed off because it’s not actually bonded to the clear coat, it’s just sticking on the clear coat. Now, what a ceramic coating does is it actually flashes to your clear coat, so you can’t wash it off, you can’t rub it off, you actually have to compound it and sometimes even wet sand it off. So once it’s on, it’s on.
And the result in a ceramic coating is the same level of slickness that you get in that first wash after a freshly waxed car, except for a ceramic coating, it lasts for up to five years. And our Kansas City Auto Detailing Services and specialists can take care of those questions, and we can take care of those services for you. So you don’t have to do it yourself and risk having high spots in your ceramic coating that have to be wet sanded off.
Sometimes it’s smarter to have it done right instead of saving money. The next topic, car washing. What is the safest way to wash a car? You will never hear me tell anyone to run their car through an automatic wash.
Imagine this, you run your car through an express car wash, where they have these sponges that spin at 3,000 revolutions per minute, and they’re slapping your paint. Now imagine you aren’t the first car to go through there. You’re actually the 112th car to go through that car wash.
And 20 of those cars had just gone down dirt roads and were covered in mud. Well now your car is being smacked with sand and rocks and gravel, and that’s causing scratching. So the truth is, running your car through an automatic car wash will in fact cause scratching, micro marring, and hazing, and it will 100% damage your clear coat.
A final question, degreasers. Are degreasers safe to use on the interior? The short answer, yes. The long answer, it depends.
Are you using acidic degreasers or non-acidic degreasers? Acidic degreasers will eat through your finish on your interior trim, it’ll leave fading in the dash, it’ll leave acidic smells and odors, and it can cause permanent damage to the entire interior. But if you’re using non-acidic degreasers and you’re mixing them properly, you can clean any interior fabric and finish without damaging the finish permanently. But guys, why do DIY when you can hire Bespoke Automotive Refinement Kansas City’s number one auto
detailing service just take care of this stuff for you? Because sometimes it pays to have it done right the first time instead of paying someone to come fix it already.
Time and time again, I have found myself fixing DIY guys’ work. So just pay to have it done right the first time. Guys, thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of Bespoke Refinements podcast.
We are the one-stop shop for all Kansas City auto detailing services, and we look forward to servicing you guys today.