Irvine, CA – Have you ever wondered how some people make their cars shine like meteors streaking across the sky while your pride and joy refuses to attain show car status no matter how much wax and polish you pour on?
Instead of washing my car last Saturday morning I decided to unravel this mystery by joining members of the Nash Metropolitan Club who’d signed up for the weekly car care clinic held at Meguiar’s wax headquarters.
We all shared the same goals – learn the tricks from the experts to get the swirls out of our paint jobs and avoid doing more damage while striving to attain shiny car nirvana.
You scoff. Who doesn’t know how to wash and wax a car? How much could there be to learn? Well, wallow in your smugness while we graduates of Car Care 101 make our metal pals glisten.
Instructor Mike Phillips, one of the resident evangelists who puts the “passion in polish,” at Meguiars was on hand to guide us through the maze of myth about techniques and the dizzying array of pastes, liquids, towels, chamois, sponges, buckets, applicators and buffers needed for a complete car care arsenal. Meguiar’s alone makes over 400 products for distribution in 92 countries, “which can be kind of confusing,” admitted Phillips. Not to worry – all would be clear by the end of the day.
Meguiar’s has been in the surface care business since 1901 when the company started making furniture polish in Evansville, Indiana. After moving to Pasadena, California in 1913 they rode the car boom wave as manufacturers and body shops discovered their products worked great on the era’s wood bodied autos. “And Meguiars made the transition,” said Phillips.
After WWII car crazed enthusiasts returned home from the War and started to hop up and trick out their cars. They learned that body shop pros were using Meguiar’s and the hobbyists decided to emulate the pros. The result – head-turning car finishes. “They’d show off their cars and word spread,” explained Phillips. The enthusiasts came in increasing numbers to Meguiar’s and by 1971 the company responded to the demand with a consumer line of products.
Still relying mostly on “word of mouth” advertising coupled with an ever-growing presence at car shows, auto enthusiasts events as well as its own TV and radio shows the company has built on that original grass roots connection to car lovers around the world.
Which explains why every Saturday there’s a car club making a pilgrimage to Meguiar’s Irvine, California headquarters to delve into the secrets of shinology.
Phillips broke the process into five major steps; washing, surface prep, polishing, protecting and maintaining. While I’d wondered if there was enough here for a day-long seminar I soon learned we’d be racing to squeeze it all in.
Washing is one area I thought I knew it all. I’d heard you shouldn’t use dish soap on your car but I thought that was a myth designed to push special sudsy products. Apparently, I was wrong. The chemicals that get your dishes sparkling clean wreak havoc on your car’s paint and cause it to oxidize. Not good. Fork over the extra dough for something designed to lift the dirt off your delicate finish not your soup tureen.
And just because it feels good to stand in the sun on a summer day while giving the car a once over – don’t do it. You’ll reduce your chances of turning lobster red, contracting skin cancer and caking the soap and water on the car. Seek out shade and get to work. Now, for the kicker. The good ole reliable pail isn’t enough. You should have two pails. One for soapy water and one with clean water to rinse out your mitt or sponge. The goal is to keep the road grit from being dragged over and over the finish as you wash the car. The mitt will pick up dirt and dirt is an abrasive. Also, cars don’t require aggressive washing. Be gentle good friend and wipe off the rinse water with clean chamois, microfiber cloth, leaf blower or terry cloth towels. One approach is waiting for your wife to leave the house so you could use her prize, high thread count, Egyptian cotton bathroom towels but that’s an at your own risk method. Phillips said it’s,” personal preference – just don’t scratch your paint.”
Once the loose dirt is removed you have to take a look at the car’s surface to see what more needs to be done. You’ll notice scratches and swirls. Some are surface defects from, “acid rain, industrial contaminants, trees, and other stains.” To get those off requires a liquid abrasive applied with a flattened patty of clay (available from Meguiar’s in a kit). A little work begins to loosen up the offending blotches and now you’ll probably see that there is more work lying just beneath the surface.
This is where you may need to, “put a little passion behind the pad,” according to Phillips as you take paint cleaners like Meguiar’s Scratch X and rub out the imperfections in the paint’s clear coat.
A little elbow grease can remove offending scratches and swirls that are, “the #1 consumer complaint.” It might take two or three passes working on the bothersome nicks that cars can pick up from a number of sources including using a dirty mitt when washing, dirty water, pebble laden towels at car washes or from car detailers who damage the paint. This is not the part of the process that you can rush through. Depending on the car you may have to set aside several hours or more. Be prepared to work on small areas until you get the results you need.
Once you’ve washed your baby and gotten rid of the surface blotches, the scratches and the swirls you’re finally able to move to the reward stage --- making it shine.
While most companies make combo polish/wax products it was suggested that you think about using a separate polish to really prepare the paint for the wax coat. What the heck, they’re the experts. Again, do this in the shade. You can use a Dual Action Polisher to speed things along.
Now, for the piece de resistance the application of wax. But this step is fraught with a long running argument, “paste or polish.” This is something that cannot be resolved here or probably anywhere except in the eye of individuals who will debate this perplexing question forever. For the sake of discussion, the experts at Meguiar’s are agnostic on the issue and make products for both camps. We did notice that the Meguiar’s paste wax, “smells like bananas.” So if scent is a deciding factor the winner would be the wax. The precise ingredients are a trade secret and no bananas probably died to make your wax but the real question is how much is enough?
Phillips recommended two coats on the paint in the summer and two coats on the lower rocker panels in the winter. Use a high-quality, 100% cotton terry cloth or micro fiber cloth to remove the wax and once again, you can use a Dual Action Polisher for application.
While we didn’t have time to do a complete car, the results on George Mocaber’s ’57 Nash Metropolitan were impressive.
“There aren’t many places you can go to actually learn,” said Mike Atherton of Downey, California. “I needed to do it but didn’t know how to do it right.”
He echoed what everyone was thinking after this demonstration of the, “Art of Polish and Paint.”
For more information: Phillips maintains a car care forum for Meguiar’s that can answer most questions you have and he even lists his phone number.
Check out:
www.Meguiar’s.com and
www.Meguiar’s.com Or call the Customer Care Center
1-800-347-5700
Mon – Fri 6:00 – 6:00 PST
Sat 7:00 – 3:00 PST
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