First of all, why is decontamination an important step to preserve your vehicles paintwork?
Contamination can be anything from bird droppings to Iron fallout. Different types of contaminants can have different impacts to your vehicles clear coat. The two big ones are:
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Iron fallout: This comes from different sources. This can be brake dust, iron particles from a railroad or airborne particles from a factory nearby. Fallout can easily eat into your clearcoat which protects your paintwork, oxidise and therefore rust. If you have a dark colour car you may not be able to see the fallout or iron filings so easily but you can probably feel them (Rough paintwork surface even after a wash)
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Tar: is the sticky, black substance that usually appears on the lower part of your car. This stuff can impact the finish of your paintwork and leaves unsightly marks.
Before any paintwork correction or protection is applied to the vehicle, these contaminants need to be removed. Unfortunately a normal soapy wash will not get rid of these pesky particles. The two main methods are chemical decontamination and manual decontamination (Clay Bar). Clay Bar is more aggressive compared to a chemical decon and will completely cleanse your paintwork leaving it silk smooth and leave a clarity that a soap wash alone couldn't provide
What is a "Safe" wash?
A safe wash on your paintwork is so important when we're talking about proper car care. The wash stage is where the most damage can happen to your paintwork without even realising. When washing the vehicle incorrectly you're essentially scraping all the dirt particles across your paintwork which inevitably causes swirls and marring! So how do we decrease the chances of this happening?
We like to provide a 4 stage wash that significantly reduces the chances of any defects occurring whilst washing. The aim is to remove as much grime off the paintwork as possible during the NON-CONTACT pre wash stages.
Step 1:
We always start with a deep wheel clean. We start at the bottom because we dont want to clean the paintwork only to have dirt from the wheels to splash back up onto the clean surface,
Step 2:
This is the pre wash stage. We rinse off any loose dirt then apply a thick snow foam layer. The snowfoam softens any remaining grime and we rinse the car once again. At this stage the car is prepped for a contact wash.
Step 3:
This is the stage where defects can occur if steps 1 and 2 aren't completed properly. We use a soft luxury wash mitt and ALOT of soapy suds for lubrication. This is the contact wash. The wash mitt is
designed to trap the dirt deep within the mitt so that it doesn't touch the paintwork once
removed. A 2 bucket method is used, one bucket for rinsing the mitt and another containing the
soap. This allows for only clean water to touch the car. Grit guards are also used in the buckets
which traps dirt that will come off the mitt once rinsed.
Step 4:
Almost done, Promise! This is the final stage in which a plush microfibre towel and a quick detailer spray is used to aid the drying of your vehicle. The towel decreases the chances of the water drying and causing water marks and the detailer spray adds a glossy shine to your paintwork to finish the look!
Okay, so we have all heard this statement before.
Got a scratch -"Just polish it out" . Got a dent - "Just polish it out" . Ripped your bumper off? - "no problem, Just polish it out!!".
We're sorry to say that polish is not a miracle cure to any and all damage on your paintwork. We feel like it's really important that if you are going to get your vehicle corrected you fully understand what the process is and have the right expectations towards the final result.
So the process... to keep it short there are a few pre steps that need to be done before the pads even touch your car. A premium wash and decontamination is vital and the paintwork clean and smooth to the touch as anything that is left on the surface of the paintwork will be scraped around the paintwork once the polish pads picks it up.
With the help of your car detailer identify what the best steps for correcting your
paintwork are. Whenever a correction happens your are removing more and more of the clear
coat to reduce the defect however this clear coat layer protects the paintwork underneath. The
more clear coat you remove during the correction the more risk of exposing the base coat. This is
why paint correction can be detrimental to your car if not completed correctly and safely . Your
experienced car detailer will have this conversation with you and suggest the best options to give
you the best results but SAFELY. If you rub your thumb nail over the scratch and it gets caught on
scratch, it may be too deep to safely remove but may still be able to be reduced.
So what are the options? The main two options are compound solutions and polish solutions. There can be a wet-sanding stage for very deep marring and scratches but the majority of cases can be corrected with the solutions above. Compounds have much more abrasive qualities compared to polishes and are therefore the go to in most cases where you may need a deeper correction level. Polishes also have an abrasive quality but offer more of a finishing look. Our 2 stage paint correction package starts with a compounding stage, then either a polish or super finish stage which will remove any love bites caused from the compound and leave your paintwork looking full of colour and full of depth and reduce the defects by a huge amount! If you don't need your paintwork corrected to that extent and just want the benefits of the polish/ finish stage you can opt for our "Single Stage Correction" instead!
