When you wash a car, you can use two buckets: one with soap and one with clean water. You dip your sponge in the soapy bucket, then rinse it in the clean bucket before wiping the car again. This keeps dirt from sticking back on.
Aclantera makes steering wheels that feel great to hold and look nice. They’re used in many sports cars and high‑end vehicles because they’re strong, comfortable, and can be customized with different colors or materials.
Acid cleaner is a strong cleaning spray that can remove tough stains from your car’s paint, but it can also damage the paint if used incorrectly.
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This is one of the ones in here, so make sure you stick around, and we'll get right into it. I think one of the most in the reason why it's number one, and these aren't really in any particular order, but the first one happens to be, I think, the most overrated, most done, most kind of agreed upon step, and that's the two bucket method.
This was designed in a time where soaps didn't really have much cleaning power, but they did other things like just had lubrication and foam, and that's about it. It really didn't have these modern surfactants like the ones I have in the Super Sober to kind of lift dirt and encapsulate dirt and provide lubrication all at the same time.
Even when I started to really look at this personally, it really isn't even the safest method to wash a car. Really, what it comes down to is how the traditional method would be you would rinse a car down with a steady stream of water, and then go into your two bucket. One bucket would be clean water that you essentially wash the wash mitt out in, and the other one would have your soap and stuff, and you would take that wash mitt, dip it in the soap bucket onto that car.
You just pre-rinsed, and then you would after a panel or whatever, you would dunk it in that second bucket that is essentially your rinse bucket to clean the wash mitt and then dip it back into your soap bucket and then back onto the car.
Obviously, this is a huge time commitment, a huge water commitment, and what I learned in my own personal experience is that that initial pre-rinse of the car isn't really doing anything.
Sure, if you have heavy dirt build up and stuff like that, it may remove some of that, but other than that, it's not really doing what we're trying to avoid, which is removing the dirt and contamination from the surface of the car.
And start to kind of detach that from the surface of the car because the dirt and debris all bonds itself under the car, so it's about breaking that bond.
And the simple steady flow of water is not enough to break that bond.
So, we do things like pre-soak and foam a dry car, I've talked about the dry foam method, I've talked about using quality soaps that actually clean and do the things like lift and encapsulate the debris and start to break down the dirt on the car.
So, definitely pre-soaking is definitely the way to go.
And then my personal preference when you do have to do a contact wash is to just use a high quality microfiber towel.
I have wash towels on my website, I'm looking at making like a wash pad out of that to make it a little bit more reusable.
That's something maybe coming in in 2026. But again, I think the faster, safer method today is to pre-soak foam one bucket, maybe if you need it, obviously you need a separate rim bucket if you're going to do that.
And then rinse. I like the dry foam. I'll dry foam a car or foam a car when it's dry.
Rinse that foam again and then I know on that second foam, if I need to do a contact wash, that is going to be the safest, absolute safest way to go about it.
But I think the two bucket method is just not only time consuming, but it's just not necessarily the safest. And this is from my own personal testing and coming from the idea of like, hey, if we're, you know, touch, if every time we touch the car we run the risk of scratching it, why are we touching it so much?
And then kind of reverse engineering the process of what we've always been told and stuff like that. So that is, you know, my own personal experience that I think that the two bucket method is just kind of outdated.
Going on to number two, I originally had jotted my notes down as like the three step polishing system. So the traditional like compound and then refine that polish and then refine that polish even more.
But I think when I'm thinking about it out loud and even talking about it, this is really dwarfed into, I guess it would be a polish, a compound polish glaze, that would be the traditional three step.
But I think we've really moved even into a two step polishing system of like just a compound and a polish. And I believe my truth is is that we're actually going to a one step system or at least a single product system, maybe with multiple pads or multiple tools.
I just think and I've talked about this before. But again, when it comes to compounds, polishes, whatever you want to call it, it comes down to abrasives and the aluminum oxide in the formula and then how the, how that aluminum oxide plays together with the oils, the solvents, water, everything else in that formula.
And so it's extremely hard to find abrasives that can work well together with all these other things and still achieve the goals that you have. So that's why we have the differences between compounds and polishes compounds use sometimes a different size abrasive sometimes a different cut.
If you think about, you could think about abrasives as like diamonds, how diamonds have a lot of different cuts to them, abrasives are kind of the same way, some are pointy, some are spiky, some are more rounded.
There's literally an infinite amount of choices that you can make. And so, but what happens is those abrasives in the formula in conjunction with solvents and oils and water and everything else that goes into it can act differently.
And so that's why we have this compound and polish separation because the abrasives in a compound usually don't finish out well. So that's why you see marine with a compound and everyone kind of talks about it how like it doesn't matter.
Oh yeah, it hazed up a little bit but don't worry, switch over to the polish and we'll fix that because the polish has a different abrasive in it that finishes out better or maybe there's more oil in the formula.
It's incredibly difficult to get to a formula that you can have a heavy cut and a nice finish in one without having that mar without having that kind of haze that sometimes comes through with a compound.
Now, it's doable. I've proven that it's doable with the picture perfect polish and there's others to like 3d1. I think it's very, very close.
It's a little oily to me, but it gets very, very close with that cut and finish in one step. It's the name 3d1.
But I think I still see whole brands coming out with four different polishes and compounds and even just even if you have a compound and a polish, I just think that is a little bit outdated.
That doesn't really take advantage of the modern abrasives and that's what we were able to do with the picture perfect polish is we were able to engineer something that cut and finished incredible, especially on the cut and finish pad that I have it paired with.
But no more three bottles, three different pads, three full rounds of polishing. I think with a pad dependent one step polish, you can save time and get a better result. I think that's the main thing too, is I'm chasing results.
Number three would be layering multiple protection products. I know this goes hand in hand with the compound polish glaze, but we see it now too with like put your ceramics spray on first, then put your sealant, then put your liquid wax, your paste wax on top of that.
And honestly, this is just pure marketing. It really just is because I think when you have modern, you know, ceramic sprays, whether that's tough a shell or any other ceramic spray that can bond so well on the first application, you really don't need additional layers of other things, especially like a car nuba based wax that literally melts off in the sun.
Sure, if you want it for different reasons, maybe a little bit of gloss or something like that. Sure, but I think layering if I were to have kind of an overarching thought like layering separate products like that is a bit unnecessary.
Modern ceramic sprays are bonding and cross linking so well that they're on there incredibly well and extra layers of other things just usually lead to streaking or just hassle.
I like to have kind of my my foundational co layer, I'll say I guess I would call like that. And then because I do like to touch my car. Unfortunately, I still use a ceramic spray. I actually just cut it one to one. I use tough a shell. And when I get down to about 50% of a bottle.
I'll fill the rest up with filtered water. And then that bottle becomes like my what I call my quick detail spray. And it's just tough a shell diluted one to one. And then I'll crack open a new bottle of tough a shell at full concentration.
But and then after I get done with a car wash, I will wipe it down with the tough a shell that is diluted one to one. And then that becomes like my quote unquote like ceramic detail spray because I like touching the car. So technically, I'm still layering. I'm just layering the same product in a less lesser concentration.
And instead of, you know, worrying about having another sealant having a spray wax or anything like that. That's just how I do it. And that's how I found most effective to eliminate kind of the streaking. And then you're saving a little bit of product.
You really don't need to reapply a full concentration every car wash. But me personally, I like to touch my car. I like my car looking good. So I do touch it every time I wash it, which is sometimes a few times a week.
So number four, using different soaps for each stage of your wash process. So like having a pre wash foam, a contact wash, a coating safe, a strip soap, a high pH, a low pH, a pH neutral.
And again, this goes back to modern formulas, modern surfactants. You can have a pre soak. You can have a soap that is high pH and pH neutral in the same soap.
Using four different soaps doesn't make your wash safer. It just makes it take more time. And it's more expensive. And that kind of goes back into my whole thesis with Jemos detailing as well.
Like, you know, I had a hard time figuring out how I wanted to price the picture perfect polish because it replaced three different products bare minimum two. Right. And so when I looked at the market, I'm like, well, two different products are going to cost you like $100.
Like, I'm not going to price us at $100. That's crazy. Right. I use my normal kind of pricing strategy formula that I do for all my products. And I think I offer a very good value in that product. But it's all about whittling down how many products you actually need to get the result that you want.
And that stems from my mobile detailing days where I didn't want to have a bunch of different products because I didn't have a bunch. I didn't have a bunch of room in my van. So I had to whittle down what I used for the results that I was going for and I'm just my product line as a continuation of that.
And so things like the picture perfect polish, you only need one liquid. Yeah, you may need two different pads, but you only need one liquid to achieve 99.99% of what you're going to come across. Right. It's a swirl mark remover. It's a heavy cut compound. It's a finished polish. It's a medium polish. It really does it all.
And the same with the super soap or you can dilute it a little heavier and a pump sprayer and it's going to be a little bit higher of a pH.
You could dilute it down how I suggest in a foam cannon and foam the car and it's a ceramic safe pH neutral soap. Right. You could dilute it down even further. And it's still pH neutral. You could use it in a bucket.
You could use it in a garden hose foam cannon. You could use it in a pressure washer foam cannon. You could use it however you want. But at the end of the day you have one soap.
You don't have four different soaps. Right. So another place where it gets over complicated and I think overrated a little bit is on the interior.
Something that I need to talk a little bit more because I think the complete cabin cleaner is just a complete cleaner.
But again, there are so many different products of like a dedicated leather cleaner, a plastic cleaner, a vinyl cleaner, a separate fabric cleaner, a rinse agent, an alcantera cleaner.
And again, it goes back to if you have a modern formula, you really don't need this because truth be told is that a lot of the chemistry that trickles down into the detailing market.
So much bigger industries think household cleaners for example, like those big brands are always innovating and trying to find the latest and greatest formulations to market their products differently.
And so the raw material suppliers are constantly innovating and constantly getting more modern raw materials and it just sometimes doesn't trickle down to the detailing space as quickly.
So what I'm trying to do is instead of letting it trickle down to us, I'm trying to reach up for it and what I'm finding out and this is why I'm kind of doing this episode is video is like with these modern raw materials, you can have a pre cleaner, a leather cleaner, most of the car is vinyl anyway, clear coated vinyl.
And so which is basically plastic and so the same thing that'll work on clear coated vinyl will work on plastic and if it's gentle enough, it'll work on alcantera and all these other surfaces that are in a car because that's one thing I thought of like, man, if you look inside a modern car, there are so many different types of surfaces in that car.
And so my thought was, well, I want to have just one cleaner that can do all these things, but that's really hard because a floor mat is much different than an alcantera steering wheel, right?
So you don't want to wear down the alcantera, you don't want to stain the plastic if you are spraying it on a door panel, but you needed heavy enough to work on a really nasty carpet, right?
Again, it's achievable just with more modern formulas. So I think the days of having a dedicated leather cleaner and then a dedicated vinyl cleaner and a dedicated rinse agent and a dedicated pre cleaner.
I think those days are over because people want fast, they want streak free, they want something simple, they don't need a ritual, they don't need a ton of products.
They can put a 16 ounce bottle in a cup holder like my wife does with a towel and, you know, leave it there that way, whether there's any oil or dust or grime, you know, it doesn't have to be overthought.
You can just use the complete cabin cleaner, right?
All right, and I think I got two more here, so I don't know, I lost what number I'm at, but how about we just summarize it into one last one?
I think drying aids and spray sealants and spray waxes after every wash are necessary and unnecessary. Again, I kind of talked about this before. I just use, you know, when my toughest shell bottle gets down to about 50% of product left.
I fill the rest of the bottle or I refill it with distilled water and that becomes my drying aid, my ceramic detail spray, my spray wax, my whatever.
And because I just like to touch the car, but you still get nice slickness, it could be used as a drying aid, but why use inferior products that don't really last?
That's why I don't use spray wax or spray sealant or a drying aid or a quick detail spray anymore because I'm like, well, if it's requiring the same amount of effort, why don't I just use a formula that is a little bit more stout?
That makes a lot more sense to me, right? And so that's what I choose to do. So because I still like the slickness and I still like the protection, you're not going to, obviously, if you do this with toughest shell, you're not going to get the most robust protection, but I already have that foundational layer of toughest shell on the car, right?
So again, you don't need to have a million different products, you just need to have products that actually perform. So with that, again, my method and what I like is I just like fewer steps, I like a faster workflow, I'm busy, I got kids, I got a wife, I got life, but I still want my cars dialed in, right?
So if I can have a faster workflow that gives me the results that I want and I'm looking for, that's where it's at, too. And with fewer products, you also have fewer mistakes, there's less chance that you take a tire shine that's happened to my brother-in-law, he was foaming a tire shine.
I don't know why, but again, if you don't want to pick up the wrong cleaner and then damage something on the interior of a car, maybe the tire shine foaming was an extreme example.
But you don't want to use, spray the wrong cleaner on your rim, you don't want to start spraying an acid on the interior and be like, what am I doing? That's the wrong cleaner, right?
If you have fewer products, fewer mistakes, faster workflow, less waste, better consistency, more money in your pocket, and ultimately better results, because more steps do not equal better detailing, right?
Better chemistry equals better detailing, and that's what I'm all about over at Jembo's detailing. So hope you guys enjoyed that episode. Let me know if there's any other detailing kind of mistakes or overrated steps or overrated products.
I'd love to do a part two of this video too, and I'm sure I missed a ton. So if you want to support the channel, obviously you can head over to Jembo's detailing.com, where I believe in fewer steps, makes better detailing.
Better chemistry equals better detailing, not better, not more steps. So Jembo's detailing.com, I'll make sure to link that below, but thank you guys for all the support. I'll catch you guys on the next one. See you.
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About this episode
Exploring the most overrated car detailing steps, this episode challenges traditional methods like the two bucket wash and excessive product layering. The host argues for modern techniques that save time and enhance safety, such as pre-soaking and using fewer, high-quality products. Insights into polishing methods reveal a shift towards one-step solutions, while the discussion on interior cleaning emphasizes the need for versatile cleaners. Listeners will gain practical tips to streamline their detailing routine without sacrificing results.
Are you still doing detailing steps that don't actually make your car cleaner, shinier, or safer? In this episode, I break down the MOST overrated detailing steps that modern chemistry has made totally unnecessary. These old-school methods slow you down, waste product, and don't improve your results.
