Steps to Polish Your Car
Keeping your car cleaned and polished is very important. As simple as this may seem, making sure that you clean and polish your car in the correct order and in the proper way makes a huge difference in appearance and the all-around life of your vehicle. Sometimes a simple misreading of instructions could cause you to unknowingly strip the clear coat right off your car.
- Choose the proper type of car soap and polish for your car. Do not use dish soap or any other soap not specifically made for cars. This is because only car soap has the required pH balance required to protect your cars paint finish. The same rules apply for your polish.
- Wash the car. Using an average garden hose, rinse off your car with just water to take off any top layers of dirt and debris. Fill a bucket with warm water and a good amount of your car washing soap. With a sponge, or even better a micro-fiber cloth, wash the entire car thoroughly.
- Rinse your car. After washing your car with soap and water, you will then want to rinse the car from any existing dirt and soap, by giving it a good spray down with just water.
- Hand-dry your car. When finished rinsing your car and all soap is completely off, it is best to hand dry your car with a special material car drying cloth. This cloth feels like rubber and can continue to be reused.
- Polish your car. When the car is completely dry, you can start your polishing. Make sure that the sun is not beating directly on your car while polishing, because you do not want the polish to bake in.
- Apply polish to gentle micro-fiber cloth. Starting on one small section of the car, gently apply your polish so that it can still be seen. Do not leave clumps of polish on your car, but just enough so that you can see it. Do small sections at a time, until you have coated the entire visible body of the car.
- Let dry. Begin one section at a time with a new, clean and dry cloth. Gently massage the dried up polish, which will be a white color at this time, into the car until clean and shiny.
- Once you have cleaned off all of the dried up polish, you will be left with a great looking finish on your car.