Detailing in direct sunlight is tricky because heat can cause products to dry too fast and water spots to form, which can make washing and protection less effective. The host argues that modern chemicals and improved techniques now make it possible to achieve good results even outdoors.
Paint correction is when you polish your car’s paint to remove scratches and swirl marks. The goal is to make the paint look clearer and more even before you protect it.
Wax is a protective layer you put on your car’s paint. It helps repel water and makes the paint look shinier, and it’s usually applied after you’ve cleaned and decontaminated the paint.
A sealant is another type of protective coating for your car’s paint. It sits on top of the paint to help block dirt and water, and it often lasts longer than wax.
A ceramic coating is a long-lasting protective layer that bonds to your car’s paint. It helps water bead up and makes the surface easier to clean, but you usually need to prep the paint first.
Claying is a step where you rub a special clay product over your car’s paint to pull off stuck-on dirt and grime. It makes the paint feel smooth so wax, sealant, or coatings can stick better.
Embedded contaminants are stuck-on stuff on the paint that regular washing won’t fully remove. Claying helps pull them off so your paint feels smooth and protection can work properly.
Rail dust is tiny iron particles that land on your car and stick to the paint. It can make the paint feel rough and can cause rust-like spots if it’s not removed.
Clear coat is the shiny protective top layer over the colored paint. Its condition and hardness affect how the paint reacts to claying and whether any tiny scratches are noticeable.
Quick detail spray is a slippery spray used to help tools glide over the paint. During claying, it reduces the chance of the clay catching and causing scratches.
Clay skids happen when the clay doesn’t move smoothly and starts to drag across the paint. If that happens, you’re more likely to leave tiny marks, so lubrication matters a lot.
Foaming a dry car means you spray foam on the car before rinsing. The foam helps loosen dirt so you’re less likely to rub gritty particles across the paint.
“Dwell” just means how long the cleaner sits on your car before you rinse it off. Letting it sit longer can help it loosen dirt so you don’t have to scrub as hard.
Water spots are those hard, chalky marks that show up when water dries on the car. They’re often caused by minerals in the water, and they’re worse when the car is drying in the sun.
Deionized water is water that’s been filtered to remove minerals. Since there are fewer minerals left behind, it’s less likely to leave spots when it dries.
The two-bucket method uses two containers: one with soap and one to rinse your mitt. It helps keep dirt from getting back onto the paint and causing scratches.
A contact wash means you’re actually touching the paint with something like a wash mitt. It can be safer if the car is already very clean, because there’s less grit to scratch the paint.
A foam cannon is a tool you hook up to a pressure washer to spray thick, soapy foam on your car. The foam helps keep the paint wet and slippery so you can work on it without scratching.
A clay bar is a special strip you rub over the paint to pick up tiny dirt and grime that regular washing can’t remove. You need it to be slippery with lubricant/foam so it doesn’t scratch the paint.
Term
clay mint
A clay mint is basically a clay product in a small block shape used to clean the paint surface. You use it with foam or lubricant so it glides and doesn’t damage the finish.
The two-bucket method is a safer way to wash your car: one bucket holds soap, and the other is used to rinse your mitt so you don’t drag dirt back onto the paint. That helps lower the risk of scratching.
“Super Sober” sounds like a specific car-wash/foam product the host is using. The point is that it stays on the paint longer, helping you clay without the surface drying out.
A rinse-less wash cleans the car without doing a full rinse like normal washing. It can be convenient, but it may not remove all the embedded grime that claying targets.
“Foam on paint” means you put a foamy product right onto the car’s paint. The idea here is that the foam helps apply protection/wax while you’re washing, so it can be faster than doing everything separately.
A drying aid is a spray you put on while the car is still wet. It helps water come off more easily and can reduce water spots, making it safer to dry without scratching.
Tuffa Shell is a product the host uses during drying. They say you can spray it while the car is still wet to help water come off and to add a ceramic-type protective layer.
A ceramic spray is a quick spray that leaves a protective coating on your paint. It helps water bead up and makes the surface easier to clean, kind of like a faster, spray-on version of ceramic protection.
“Water beat” is shorthand for “water beading,” where water forms droplets on the paint instead of spreading out. Strong beading usually indicates the surface has hydrophobic protection (like wax, sealant, or a coating), which can make drying easier and help keep the finish cleaner longer.
The host frames “the future of car detailing” as moving toward faster, more chemistry-driven processes rather than labor-heavy steps. This reflects a broader trend in detailing where products are engineered to combine cleaning and protection more efficiently.
LIVE
One of the big myths that I think still gets talked about and mentioned and it always gets kind of every time I see it being mentioned.
It's mentioned so passively because it's so obvious like, duh, everyone knows is that you can't get great quality results detailing out in direct sunlight or out within the elements.
And this still, even in the modern era of detailing with all the great chemicals and brands that we have access to, people still mention it like, oh, you can't do that outside.
You can't like do that in direct sun.
And that's just simply not true anymore.
Not only have the chemicals gotten better, our methods have gotten better, and our techniques have gotten better.
And we've been able to kind of adapt with outside elements because so many people have to do that.
And so in conjunction with that, I think one of the best services that you could either do for a client or do for yourself that is kind of has a very, very large impact.
I would argue that it has probably the biggest impact second to like a paint correction.
It's just a very simple wash clay and wax or wash clay bar and seal.
I think it is one of the most attainable services to do on your own car if you're looking at getting into detailing.
And I think if you're, you know, mobile detailing or detailing as a business, it's actually one of the best services to offer because the client can feel the results right away.
They can feel a silky smooth car after you clay it and they know or they could see it if they have like a light color car and they could see the specs in their paint.
They could see the specs in their paint.
They could feel the roughness.
It's something that you could use to educate your customer.
It is a gauge of you actually doing something right other than just cleaning a surface.
It's oh my gosh, it was rough.
Now it's smooth and even protected and the water is going to be right.
So I think one of my favorite services to offer as a mobile detailer or even at a shop was just a very simple wash clay wax.
It's usually the customers looking for this service are very cool customers.
They're not too nitpicky.
They know they kind of have a problem.
They want to get the problem solved, right?
They're not nitpicking too bad about it.
And so and even in my detailing business, I found this service to be a very good profit center if you could be very efficient with it.
And so what I wanted to talk about today is how you can be ultra efficient doing a wash clay and I'll leave it open ended.
Whether you want to wash clay and wax your car, whether you want to wash clay and add a paint sealant to your car, whether you want to wash clay and add a ceramic coating to your car.
The claying process in the middle will basically strip everything off your car, prepping it perfectly for whatever type of paint protection you want to put on your car, which is definitely something you want to do.
You don't want to just wash clay and nothing because that leaves your paint kind of just exposed.
So all the stuff that you just removed, you're just leaving your paint wide open for that to come right back.
All those embedded contaminants, the fallout, the rail dust, whatever you want to call it will just slowly embed yourself, bed themselves back into your painted service.
So you definitely want to do some sort of paint protection.
What type or what level of paint protection you want to do is obviously, you know, there's a million different factors that go into that.
So it's completely up to you.
I'm going to show you and kind of walk you through the easiest way to do it or the fastest way to do it.
And definitely a way that's easy for beginners.
I know there's kind of as a little side tangent, there's a lot of debate and debacle if a clay bar or clay towel scratches the paint, you know, scratches the surface of your paint.
It can, it does, maybe, and it also doesn't.
It depends upon the clear coat of the car, the color of the car, whether you can even see any marring that may be happening.
But the gist of it is that you want to make sure that when you get to the claying process that the surface is lubricated enough, whether that's a quick detail spray,
some sort of lubricant, a car wash soap, some sort of lubricant to make the surface slick so that when you're gliding that clay,
whether it's a synthetic clay towel, clay mitt, clay disc, clay sponge or a clay bar, whatever clay material you decide you want to use to,
it can slide across the surface so you don't get what they call clay skids.
You don't want the clay sticking at all.
So the process is very, very straightforward.
So I like to start by foaming a dry car.
Foaming a dry car, as we know, is much safer.
It gives you a much better result than just pre-rinsing with a steady stream of water.
We know that.
I'm very, very happy that that is becoming very common now.
I'm very happy because it is, it gives you a much better wash experience.
It's much, much safer and you actually get the surface much, much cleaner.
So I will take a dry car.
I will foam the whole entire car with the Super Sober, obviously, and the foam is breaking down the dirt on the surface of the car.
It's separating that road film from the surface of the car and removing a lot of that dirt and debris and junk.
That's kind of just on the surface.
We're not quite getting to the embedded stuff yet, but it's just on the surface of the car, right?
So that first foam, the reason why you want to do it on a dry car is you get the most concentrated amount of product onto the surface.
If you were to pre-rinse first, you have water there on the surface and it's essentially diluting down the product on the surface of the car.
So I opt not to do that.
Again, a caveat being if it's July or August, you live in Arizona, you could fry an egg on the hood of your car.
You may want to do a steady stream of water just to cool down the panel first that the car has been, like, sitting out.
You might want to cool down the panel first and then let the water dissipate a little bit or dry up a little bit and then go into your foam.
But the pre-rinse is not you thinking that you're removing a lot of the loose debris on the car.
The pre-rinse or the water rinse is just you cooling down the panel.
And then you're going to foam a dry car.
If you use something like the Super Sober, I let it dwell for three to five minutes because that foam is actually doing something.
I know for a long time there was a debate over foam.
Foam is just theatrics, just, you know, it's stupid.
It doesn't do anything.
But for my product line, the foam is actually doing something.
It looks pretty.
It's awesome.
It's high suds.
But the foam is actually functional.
It's functional foam doing something on the surface of the car.
So the longer you can let it dwell on the car, the better.
The better being the cleaner the surface is going to become.
Now, another special thing with the Super Sober is that as long as the soap is on the car, it can actually dry on the car without creating any water spots.
It's after you've rinsed the soap off that you could potentially run into water spots if you don't have something like deionized water.
So the process is I'm going to foam a dry car.
I'm going to rinse all that foam off at that point.
That car is very, very clean.
It is cleaner than doing a pre-rinse and a two bucket wash method, right?
So I am going to foam again.
I'm not going to dry it yet.
I'm going to foam again.
And now that I know the surface is squeaky clean, I can actually use this second foam in a couple different ways.
I can then do a contact wash if you want to use a mitt on the surface of the car.
And this is a much safer time to do it because the surface is virtually clean, right?
Depending upon the condition of the car that you started with.
If you don't want to do a contact wash, this is a perfect time to do your clay.
So as you can see, I'm doing it in direct sunlight.
I am just running my synthetic clay towel over the surface of the car.
I'll link the clay towel that I prefer down below.
But just in that foam, because the foam is so thick and it dwells for so long,
because it was designed that way, because the longer the foam dwells on the car,
the more cleaning ability it has, the more work it's actually doing and not you having to do the work.
But it lasts a long time on the surface.
It doesn't dry up instantly.
The day I was doing this, it's like 80 degrees outside,
and that foam is still just cleaning and lasting forever on the surface, and it's super slick.
So it's allowing me to clay the car all the way down, clay the entire car at once.
And if you need a little bit more foam or it starts to dry up,
again, as long as the soap is on the surface of the car, you're not going to get water spots.
So if the foam starts to dry up a little bit and you need more foam,
just keep your foam cannon handy, your pump spray handy, and kind of refoam that area down
to get, you know, make sure you have more suds on the car.
But you could literally go around the whole entire car on that second foam with a clay bar,
clay towel, clay mint, clay, whatever, and clay the whole entire car on that second foam.
So think about this versus traditional methods of pre-rinsing the car, doing a two-bucket method,
drying the car, and then going into your clay, you might be an hour and a half in
before you even start claying the car at all, whereas with just the dry foam, rinse foam again,
you're claying within, what, 10, 15, 20 minutes of even starting the car, right?
And then once you've clayed the whole entire car, and you can kind of spot check,
you can usually feel when the surface is clayed enough, you can kind of spot check yourself,
rinse a section if you need to, and see how it's going, and then, but you can,
that foam from the Super Sober will cling for so long that you can literally clean a whole
entire car, you could clay a whole entire car with the foam still on it.
Then from there, you can rinse the whole entire car.
This is also great because if you do the traditional methods of like washing the car,
drying it, using a dedicated clay lube, you usually have to rinse the car again,
or do a rinse-less wash, or you usually have a lot of that contamination buildup on the car still,
and so by claying in the second foam, you still have to rinse the whole entire car,
you're essentially just shortcutting a step, right?
So you're rinsing the car to rinse the foam off, but you're also rinsing all that contamination
that didn't get picked up into the clay towel, you're rinsing that off as well,
and then you're ready to dry.
So, you know, you can, this is where you have a few different options.
So what I was doing for this particular car that I was working on is that I was doing,
I was trying the new Wax and Relax products, so this is a great opportunity.
You rinse the car is wet, you can refoam with something like Wax and Relax,
which is a foam on paint, or a paint protectant, a wax, foam on wax,
which is a great opportunity to put that product on the surface.
We're still in pre-sale, so if you want to pick up the newest product that I have,
you can use Code Relax for 20% off, I appreciate the support,
the pre-sale is going phenomenal, actually a little better than I thought,
and so that would be a great time to add on that foam on paint wax, paint protectant wax.
If you wanted to, you also have an option to use Tuffa Shell as a drying aid,
you could do that, or you could dry the whole entire surface,
and then you could spray Tuffa Shell, which is my ceramic spray,
you could spray your favorite spray wax,
you could bring it in and do a wipe on ceramic coating if you wanted to do that.
That's where I talked about in the beginning, your options are, you know,
you have a zillion options that you can just decide based upon what is best for the situation of the car.
So again, you could do the foam on wax and relax, which would be my favorite,
that's what I did for this truck, you could do Tuffa Shell as a drying aid,
so while the car is still wet, couple sprays per panel and then dry the car.
But again, this is so much faster, if you're doing a detailing business,
you could get this done in an hour, do an hour and a half,
and your customer will be incredibly excited.
It's a great way to increase your revenue.
It's a great service to offer, people recognize it.
If it's your own car, this is a perfect way to, you know, an intro into detailing.
This is a perfect way to get confidence in your detailing ability,
because you can feel the difference, you can see the difference,
it's going to be a lot shinier.
But I do think my new product, the Wax and Relax, is a perfect place for this
if you want to do it even quicker, because you're literally foaming a dry car,
you're rinsing it, you're going to foam it again, you're going to do your clay right then,
you're going to rinse it off, you're going to apply Wax and Relax,
it's going to take one minute to apply Wax and Relax to the whole entire surface of the car,
glass, paint, trim, everywhere, rims everywhere, rinse that off,
and then you dry it and you're ready to go.
And in fact, Wax and Relax makes the water beat so good,
you could literally just blow dry the car,
and you're going to get the vast majority of the water off the car.
And it's literally that simple.
Within an hour, hour and a half, you can get this whole service completely done.
So I think this is a cool way, this is a cool viewpoint into where I think the future of car detailing is going,
where the future of chemistry is going and chemicals are going.
I think for so long, I've been kind of burnout on lack.
What I felt like was a little lack of innovation and kind of stagnation in the detailing industry.
And so though I never wanted to have my own product brand,
it's given me an outlet to do these things and kind of put my money where my mouth is of like,
you know, if I'm complaining that no one is innovating,
but I don't have a way to innovate or I don't have an outlet to innovate,
I'm just chirping, right?
And so I think having my own brand and then releasing new products like the Wax and Relax
is my way of, you know, kind of my outlet, kind of showing what I think can be done
and try and do accomplish that.
And so I think the Wax Clay Wax is a perfect service to do, whether you're doing it yourself.
It's a perfect service for the Wax and Relax product
and Tough It Show and the Gloss Boss and all the paint protection products.
So again, we're in the middle of our release for the Wax and Relax product.
So if you want to pick that up, I will make sure to link it below
and you could save 20% on that product if you use code relax at jimbosdetailing.com.
And with that, I will catch you guys on the next one.
Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. See you later.
About this episode
Debunking the idea that you can’t detail in direct sun, the host lays out a simple, high-impact wash + clay + protect workflow. Foaming first on a dry car helps keep the product concentrated and can even provide chemical dwell time, while rinsing with deionized water helps prevent water spots. Claying is framed as the key prep step—done with enough lubrication to avoid clay skids—then protection goes on immediately for fast, glossy results.
Most people think you can't wash a car in direct sunlight without causing water spots, streaks, or frustration.
That used to be true.
In this video, I show you how to wash, clay, and protect your vehicle outside in direct sun using a modern process that takes about 20 minutes from start to finish.
We'll foam a dry vehicle, perform a pre-soak, clay the paint using a clay towel, apply protection using Wax N Relax, and dry the vehicle—all without needing a garage, canopy, or perfect weather.
This is the same process I use to make detailing faster, easier, and more enjoyable while still achieving amazing results.
