Been lurking for a while and decided to join this friendly and very infromative forum. Before owning my current car I knew nothing about detailing. My wash routine was grab the bucket and whatever car soap I had around, wash with a mit and dry with a chamois or water blade and bath towel
. Add a coat of wax a couple times a year and that was about it. Last fall I purchased a Focus ST and joined a forum to learn more about this hot hatch. I was mostly interested in the performance section and did some performance upgrades and then thought now what. One day I checked out the detailing section on the forum and it opened my eyes. I had no idea what a 2 bucket wash or claying a car was and that if cared for properly it wasn't really that hard to keep swirls to a minimum and you could even buff them out yourself
. Before I knew it I was searching the interwebs for anything detailing related and of course found Autogeek.
Purchased the Autogeek 2 bucket wash kit with Pinnacle Crystal Mist and Rinseless wash and I was off. As soon as the weather warmed up enough I started doing regular 2 bucket washes at home, learning proper detailing techniques and adding to my arsenal.
Fortunately I didn't make the mistake of taking the car to a regular car wash during the past horrible winter and only used touchless washes but it had a fair amount of dealer installed swirls that the more I learned about detailing the more they bugged me. I had the dealer put on a 5 year coating (won't do that again) when I bought it and debated waiting a while before polishing it off but in the end I couldn't wait to try to get the cars finish to the next level. Next purchase was
Griot’s Garage & Meguiar’s Paint Perfection Kit. I also picked up the CG V series polish sampler kit and a bottle of SF4000 so I had some options.
Gave the car a wash, clayed it then spent the next 2 days polishing and resealing. I decided to do a one step polish since it was my first time and really didn't know what to expect. From what I've read the Focus paint is soft so I tried the SF4000 and V36 with a LC Tangerine pad. The v36 seemed to do a slightly better job on the swirls so that's what I used. The car turned out great, thanks in part to all the great info I've found on this forum. The car is 90% swirl free and looks the best it has since I've owned it.
Even though it was a lot work I'm looking forward to next time and going slightly more aggressive and knock out that last 10%. Hope to contribute when I can and learn more from everyone here.
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Originally Posted by CieraSL
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