Pure Prestige Auto Detailing, Custom Detailing, Car Detailers, Reality Check

Top (clear) coats are extremely susceptible to micro-abrasions from virtually anything that touches them. With repeated mistreatment, the result is unsightly marring visible mostly in direct lighting. These scratches primarily originate during processes of regular maintenance like washing and waxing.

Drive-through car washes are a major source of damage from spinning nylon brushes or flex-wrap foam strips which can accumulate and retain contaminants from other cars which then whip across your car’s paint repeatedly. Washes that begin with a scrub down from long-handled plastic-bristle brushes before running your car through a power-wash tunnel are also a source of marring since the bristle tips are abrasive.

Debris on wash mitts and sponges are another major culprit. The typical person soaping down their car at home doesn’t rinse the mitt or sponge regularly during the wash. It’s more common for people to keep wiping down the finish until the mitt is dry of suds. Unfortunately this means abrasive particles gather on the mitt and are then dragged along the clear coat causing micro-abrasions and swirl marks.

Using old bath towels to dry cars can cause scratches and swirls as they get old and crusty. Even microfiber can scratch your finish if it has been overused, cleaned improperly, or exposed during storage.

Wiping down painted surfaces after using the same towel to wipe wheels and lower regions of the car where larger contaminants build up is a common cause of marring for patrons of the local “all by hand“ car washes. It’s possible some of their employees may have the common sense to wipe a car from top to bottom, but that doesn’t change the fact that the same towel probably wiped down the nether regions of the car before you.

Pure Prestige Auto employs and recommends the two-bucket wash method while using only the most plush 1,400 g/m2 microfiber towels available to dry and buff paint while separating towels for wheels, interior, glass, painted surfaces, and lower parts of the car. Towels are cleaned and individually inspected for foreign contaminants before they are stored in protective bins until used again.

Scratch and swirl removal
Most detailers who claim to perform this task often do not. They apply products containing fillers to hide the scratches and swirls instead of actually removing them, and the effect is muted light refraction which lasts for several weeks at best before the fillers wear off and scratches and swirl marks reappear. Applying glazes is no more difficult than applying a coat of wax however it’s very common for detailers to bill you excessively for it. Permanent* results require resurfacing which is more time consuming and should be done by experienced professionals.

After a conversation with a local Mercedes-Benz dealership, we discovered they offered a $700 option to apply paint sealant on new cars. The distributor who provided them with the sealant recommended they apply it over a coat of wax for the best gloss. When we inspected the brand of sealant (which retails for $35 per bottle) we discovered it contained naphtha; a petroleum-based solvent added to strip existing chemicals and coatings from the surface of the paint.

It’s important to know what each product is designed for, how it may interact with other products, and where it fits into the process. In the above example, the sealant containing naphtha strips away the wax making that step a completely wasted effort, and to make matters worse the sealant residue becomes more cumbersome to buff away when the solvent evaporates.

100% pure carnauba wax** has a melting point of 180º F to 187º F (among the highest of natural waxes) and is harder than concrete in its purest form. In order to have problems from unwanted melting it would have to be a mixture of another wax along with the carnauba (beeswax is the most common) on the surface of a black car sitting in the sun on a long summer day.

Natural carnauba** comes from the Copernicia prunifera, a palm from the Brazilian rainforest which secretes it onto its leaves for protection against moisture loss and other harmful effects of direct sunlight. When it comes to protection and durability, carnauba wax is Mother Nature’s undisputed champion.

Since Connolly’s of London folded in 2002, almost all automotive leather interiors are manufactured by laminating the leather with a vinyl material to seal and protect it from staining and wear, meaning most leather conditioners available today (like those containing lanolin) are completely ineffective since they never reach the leather at all. Imagine putting plastic wrap on your skin before applying moisturizer.

Using dual-action/random orbital buffers because they are safer...

Many detailers claim to use them because they are “safer” for paint. This is very true. Because of their random motion, dual-action buffers do not have the ability to create as much friction between the surface of the pad and the paint. The trade-off is they lack the power and efficiency required to permanently* remove anything but the most superficial scratches and swirl marks. The tool they are avoiding is the single-action (rotary) polisher which is the ideal tool for this application. Paying for a detailer to do a paint correction with a dual action/random orbital buffer is like paying a gardener to trim your lawn with a pair of scissors.

Darker colored basecoats act as a contrasting background for light refracting from scratches and minor surface marring in the upper clear coat which, in and of itself, has no special color properties. Other than that, there is no difference between dark colored cars and those with lighter or metallic coloring, and there is certainly no difference in the way they should be treated. Detailers who claim to be “red and black specialists” are taking credit for the visual characteristics of the colors themselves.

Wet sanding should only be done if there is adequate thickness to the clear coat to remove the imperfection safely. Judging safety requires a coating thickness gauge. Select few detailers actually own and use a thickness coating gauge, however coating thickness gauges have specific limitations.

Some detailers will offer services involving coating thickness gauges however few understand their limitations. Most standard gauges are designed to measure coating thickness on steel (and sometimes aluminum) however they cannot differentiate between primer, basecoat or clear coat. This means thickness of the clear coat alone can only be estimated for metal body panels.

Thickness gauges designed for metal panels cannot measure coating thickness on composite, carbon fiber, or fiberglass; materials becoming more common on today’s sportier cars that value lightweight materials. To measure coating thickness on non-metal surfaces requires an ultra-sonic coating thickness gauge, which is a several thousand dollar investment few detailers are willing to make.

Concours awards are not won or lost by detailers. Only in select situations will a handful of points be awarded for overall appearance. The car itself is being judged for authenticity, workmanship and maintenance. Points are deducted based upon how much the car has deviated from its original condition, and while a clean and presentable car is a necessity for the Concours, an obsessively detailed car with electrical problems or a malfunctioning A/C compressor will never beat a clean all-original car in perfect working condition with a cheap coat of Turtle Wax.

*This refers to removal of existing imperfections, and does not prevent new imperfections.
**Pure natural carnauba is extremely hard and must be mixed with softeners in order to make it a spreadable paste at normal temperatures. 100% carnauba is referring to the wax component of a formulation and simply means that no other waxes are added into the mixture.