Do's & Don'ts and Tips & Tricks
• Don't aim a high-pressure spray wand directly toward the painted surface of your vehicle. Spray the surface at an angle to diffuse the pressure.
• Exercise caution when running your car through any form of industrial car wash. The most advanced car wash still uses high-pressure water spray and harsh chemicals that can inflict marks in the surface.
• Don't rush while washing. More damage is done to a car's finish by washing and drying than any other process.
• Don't wash the car in direct sunlight, which might allow water spots to "bake" into the finish, nor under very low-light conditions where you may not see dirt on your wash mitt being drawn across to the paint surface.
• Don't dry your car with inferior products, such as large, embroidered bath towels (not 100 percent U.S. cotton content) and cheaper chamois rags. A clean, white bath towel is acceptable to remove the water from the glass surfaces of the car, but it may not be suitable for the painted surface.
• Don't wet-sand a scratch or paint aberration unless you know what you're doing. Use a sanding block for flat surfaces and sand by hand for curved areas. A good rule of thumb is that if you can just barely feel the scratch with your fingernail, you have a great shot at wet-sanding and buffing it out. If the scratch is deep enough to have gone into the primer, it will require either color, or color and clear in addition to buffing.
• Don't trust that the paint in a factory or aftermarket touch-up bottle matches the color of your car. Spend a few extra dollars and bring a small panel to the professional paint-supply company to have them color-match a small quantity of paint for chip repairs.
• To do chip repairs correctly, put the smallest amount of color-matched paint into a surface that has been prepared; then use multiple applications of clearcoat to build up the material over the surface so that you can wet-sand and polish it back down. This takes several days, as each minute layer of clear has to dry before the next application.
• Use microfiber wash mitts, drying towels, and polishing towels on the painted surfaces. All microfiber products are not created equal, so be safe and wipe a blank CD. Low-quality "unprocessed" microfibers will scratch the CD-and the finish on your car.
• The use of plastic "grit guards" inserted into the bottom of the buckets further ensure that no abrasive particles will be picked up from the bottom and transmitted back to the vehicle surface.
• Use 3M blue painter's tape to cover up all factory decals and trim pieces that abut to and around the glass surfaces. This protects them from the edges of the buffing pad and eases cleanup of the buffing compound.