Exterior:

The exterior of a car involves everything OUTSIDE the shell of the car, mainly paint. Like anything else, you can either restore a surface or maintain a surface in detailing.

By restoring, you're trying to rejuvenate the paint back to its original lustre and gloss. You do this through polishing. Polishing is a process of removing light scratches, taking out dried up paint (paint that will not help maintaining your existing "good" paint).

Use the philosophy of your skin. When it gets dried and chapped, you have to exfoliate to reveal the fresh skin, then you protect it with lotion. The lotion is like the wax that we use on the paint. If your skin is chapped and dry underneath, using lotion directly will only HIDE the defect until the lotion wears out. Same thing with wax, if you just wax an oxidized, dirty or swirled surface, you're only doing a temporary fix that'll make it SEEM shiny. You could've just sprayed oil or something to get the same effect. Or have you seen your car when it's wet? Looks great, until you dry it off.

Polishing will provide the great looking paint surface your after then we protect it through waxing or sealing.

Some of you might ask "is the the so-called 3-step detailing"?

Honestly, most paint does not need to be compounded. With the right combination of technique, pad and product, you can polish a surface very close to the result of a compounded surface. If you compound the paint, you'll lose a considerable amount of clearcoat (the top layer of most factory paint), this layer of clearcoat is responsible for UV blocking and the gloss of the car in general.

In Big Bert's Professional Detailers, we compound panels only as necessary, and if it's just a small portion we compound that portion only. Why lose the paint of the whole car just because you have a 6" scratch? Doesn't make sense. You waste paint, you waste money (you have to compensate for our labor hehe), you waste time and effort as well.

Next issue is sealants and waxes, what are the differences and what do you need to know?

First of all, both products are meant to do ONE thing...

Provide a sacrificial layer for the paint so that the contaminants and damages will hit the protective layer first before reaching the paint.

The other benefits such as gloss, beading/sheeting, depth, slickness, etc are consequential bonuses.

So what's the difference between the two? Mainly durability. Waxes are made of oils and waxes, ingredients that does a good job in protecting the paint but falls short due to its inability to bond with the surface and easily affected by heat. Waxes melt at a much lower heat range than a polymer sealant. A sealant is fully synthetic, bonds with the surface therefore can last 4-8x longer than a good wax. Still, different products will offer different protection, but even the worse sealants will last as long as a good wax in most cases.

Much like synthetic oils last longer than mineral.

So you ask, "If sealants are superior, why are waxes still around?" Simple, there is no such thing as a perfect product. With every plus, there's an equal negative for it. Sealants are generally expensive, difficult to apply correctly, takes a long time to properly cure, highlights imperfections, and veers away from the traditional show-car, wet-look of waxes that we've grown to accept as "great looking" paint.

Although sealants are superior in durability, not all consumers are after durability. Some people (like myself), waxes/seals our cars at least once a week, so durability wax never an issue for me unless it's the typhoon season or something. I prefer the deep look of a wax over the high gloss of a sealant, but that's just me. I'm sure that there's only a handful of people that waxes their car 1-2x a week or more. So for most people, a sealant is a great sacrifice.

If you never find waxing a tedious job, then by all means, stick with it. But if it is, a sealant will allow you to enjoy your car's shine for a long time without fuzzing too much about it.

We at Big Bert's Professional Detailers offer both waxes and sealants by different manufacturers. We will honor your request if you choose a particular brand, but we will also give you advice on what looks good on what. Some waxes or sealants look great on certain colors and crappy on others.

We'll talk about Interior and Engine next time... [/u]