What to Do the Week After a Detail
We hand a lot of cars back looking excellent and see some of them again in six months looking as though nothing happened. The difference is almost always the wash routine in between.
The first 48 hours
If a coating or sealant was applied, give it time to cure before the car gets wet where possible. We will tell you the specific window for what was used.
Avoid parking under trees, and avoid automatic washes permanently from this point.
The maintenance wash, properly
- Rinse thoroughly from the top down before anything touches the paint. This is the step that prevents swirl marks and it is the one most often rushed.
- Two buckets — one with soap, one with clean rinse water and a grit guard. The mitt goes into the rinse bucket between panels so grit does not go back onto the car.
- pH-neutral car shampoo. Not dish soap, which strips protection because that is what it is designed to do.
- Top to bottom, lower panels last, with a separate mitt for the dirtiest areas.
- Rinse completely and dry immediately — a clean drying towel or a blower. Letting a car air dry in Florida is how water spots happen.
- Never in direct sun.
Frequency
Every two weeks is a reasonable target for a car parked outdoors here. More often is fine; the risk is not washing too much, it is washing badly.
Deal with contaminants immediately
Bird droppings, sap and lovebugs are all acidic and all etch clear coat in Florida heat. Rinse them off the day you notice rather than at the next wash. That single habit prevents most of the correction work we do.
A topper each wash
A spray sealant or drying aid used as you dry refreshes the protection and takes about two extra minutes. Over months it makes a substantial difference to how long the detail holds.
Or let us do it
For a lot of customers a scheduled maintenance visit works out cheaper than the correction they would otherwise need in a year. Call (863) 529-4370.