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On a recent YouTube video, someone asked,
hey Jimbo, do you have like a bullet point cheat sheet
for like top detailing FAQs that you get asked?
And I was like, no,
but that's a really good video idea.
And so that's what we're gonna be covering today.
Just some very common or arguably the most common
questions I get constantly,
even more so now with the product brand.
So let's just get right into it.
The first one is one of my favorites.
Do I need a two bucket method?
So if you watch just about everyone,
they use a two bucket method to wash their car.
So the idea is that you would pre-rinse the car,
then you have a dedicated bucket with a grit guard in both,
two buckets with a grit guard in both.
You would have your soap and water in one,
and then you would just have plain water
in that second bucket.
You would pre-rinse the car,
you would take your wash mitts,
dip them in the soapy water,
do say a panel at a time,
then before you re-put your wash mitts into the soapy water,
you would rinse them in the clean water bucket,
and that would free up debris.
Kind of the thought behind it is to reduce dirt
going back onto the paint, right?
So it became deemed as like the safer way to wash a car.
And what I have found, and is strictly my opinion,
is that the pre-rinse and doing washing your car
with the two bucket method,
not only does it add a lot of equipment,
it also adds a lot of time,
and it's in fact actually not really any safer,
because what I found in my personal testing
is that when you pre-rinse a car with just water,
it doesn't really do anything.
It gives you the illusion that you're doing something,
but it really doesn't do anything outside of
if you have heavy mud buildup.
But if you're going for just a regular,
it's been raining or you've got some weather
and your car's just dirty,
when you just rinse the car down,
it literally doesn't do much, if anything at all.
So, and that's not even talking about modern soaps
like the Super Soap or that really lifts away the dirt.
So, even if you were using a safer soap,
the two bucket method is just really outdated.
So, what I recommend instead is to pre-soak.
So, instead of pre-rinse, you're pre-soaking,
and we're starting to see a lot more people do this,
and it's becoming a lot more mainstream,
a lot more talked about, a lot more used,
because it's actually safer.
It actually is safer, you get the car cleaner,
and it is just simply more effective,
inefficient, and efficient than the two bucket method.
So, that's what I do.
I pre-soak, pre-foam, whatever you wanna call it,
and then I will let it dwell, I will rinse,
I will re-foam, and then only then,
if you need to, on the second foam,
you can do a contact wash.
So, personally, I don't even use a bucket.
I don't use any bucket, but if you wanted a bucket,
this is where you could do one bucket.
So, another question I get asked all the time,
going into number two, is how often should I wash my car?
Like, what is the optimum amount of time
in between car washes?
And this is extremely difficult to nail down,
because it really depends on a ton of factors.
How much you're driving it?
What is the weather like, where you live?
How are you storing the car?
Is it in a garage, is it in a car port?
Is it just sit outside?
Do you live by the beach?
Do you have moisture in the morning?
Do you live in the mountains?
Do you deal with all kinds of snow?
Is it a garage queen?
Is it a daily driver?
There's just basically a million questions
that can spawn off of that one question, right?
So, this is kind of what I've dumbed it down to, though.
If you have a daily driver, once a week is ideal, right?
If you have a garage queen,
I would say three to four weeks, right?
If you have a daily driver that you park in the garage
at night, you could probably get away
with like two to three weeks, right?
I always, always, always will wash
and put a fresh coat of paint protection on my car
before a road trip, or after like a gnarly rain,
or if there's a bunch of road salt on the road.
I will always, especially during winter time,
I always add paint protection,
just because for no other reason than it makes it easier
to wash the next go around, right?
So, my pro tip on this is don't wait until the car
looks totally thrashed, right?
Dirt does cause damage, and so not only is it unsightly,
but it's just not good for your car either, so.
Moving on to number three, do I need to clay bar my car?
So, what does a clay do?
Clay removes the bottom contaminants that soap doesn't.
So, the roughness in the paint,
if you have a light color car,
sometimes you see like little orange, red,
black, gray speckles in it.
You could do the classic like plastic bag test
where you take like a Ziploc bag and put your hand on it
and then feel the paint underneath it,
or feel the paint through the bag to see if it's rough,
but mainly you usually know if your paint is rough.
So, you definitely do not have to clay bar your car
every car wash, and in fact,
if you're using something like Tuffa Shell
as a paint protectant or the gloss boss,
you really don't need to clay bar your car very often,
maybe once a year.
Again, it kind of goes back to what are the elements
that your car is in, how often are you driving it,
and what are all those like, right?
So, again, it's garage that night,
or it's a garage queen or trailer queen even,
and you only take it out in the summer months.
All those things come into consideration,
but what I recommend is just kind of maintaining your car
so you don't have to clay.
Claying's a lot of work, or it can be a lot of work,
but here's a little pro tip.
If you use a clay mitt, it is a little bit less work,
and I actually have some videos on how to clay
with the foam, with the super-soaper,
so because the soap works so well at cleaning the car,
what you can do is the first pre-soak washes away
90% of the dirt, 99% of the dirt,
depending upon how dirty the car actually is,
and so on that second foam,
you could actually use the foam from the super-soaper
because it has so much lubrication
that you could actually clay, even spot clay,
when you're that second foam on the car,
and it's actually a quicker, more efficient way to do it,
so number four, what's the difference between a wax,
a sealant, a ceramic coating, what's the difference?
I don't know, there's so many options,
graphing, tri-fing, there's all this stuff,
but which one is ideal for my situation,
and that becomes the problem with doing an FAQ oftentimes,
is it depends on your situation and what your goals are
and what you're looking to get out of it,
so I'll break it down for this.
Wax is old school, you get that warm shine,
but you're honestly gonna get
three to four weeks worth of protection,
and that's about it, whether that's a high-end,
fancy, exotic, Brazilian, carnival wax,
or the turtle wax, graphing, paste wax,
you're gonna get about three to four weeks
worth of protection, it's just the nature
of the chemistry of a wax.
A sealant introduces in synthetic elements,
and that is gonna boost your durability,
I guess you could say, but honestly,
liquid paint sealants aren't even that good,
you're probably gonna get maybe six to eight weeks
worth of protection out of that,
so sometimes not worth the extra effort that they are.
Ceramic sprays, ceramic spray coating
are gonna be a lot longer,
you're usually gonna see the six month to 12 months,
they're much easier to apply than the old school waxes
and old school sealants,
I would just skip sealants altogether,
and then a wipe on ceramic coating,
small glass bottle is gonna be your best paint protection
outside of something like a clear bra or PPF
or anything like that, so something like Tuffa Shell
is gonna be a wax in every category,
and honestly in every way for the vast majority of people,
and so that is what I would definitely recommend.
So, number five, can I use dish soap or household cleaners?
Why? Why would you do that?
Like, why would you do that?
No, you don't need to use dish soap,
is it harsh or is it stripped?
Maybe, maybe not, but you know what it does do
is it dries out everything else,
dries out your trim.
Household APCs, they're gonna streak,
they're gonna damage, they're not designed for that,
so just always use products that are made for cars.
Why try to cheat it?
Why, you know, there's so many good options
for car care products, there's so many good options
for brands out there that are trying to help
that are selling you their products,
that demo how to use their products,
it's like, why go for the household cleaners?
Just don't do it, so unless you wanna strip
some old wax off your car, dish soap can do it.
I just wouldn't use it for regular washes.
Growing up, I did, and honestly,
after a couple years of doing it,
you start to see the color come off on your towels
and your paint starts getting dull,
so like, in a pinch, can you do it?
Yes, but honestly, why?
If you're listening to something like a podcast
about car detailing, you're in it,
you're in the thick of it, just use the resources,
you know, me, for example, I'll speak for me
instead of any other brand, like, all I do every day
is try to figure out how to make better products,
my current products better, and then create content
to give you more information about how to use products.
Like, I'm in it deep, and there's a lot of other people
just like me that are doing the same thing too,
and our sole focus is to make better products
to clean cars, right?
So, I don't think that Don is doing that.
They're focused on dish soap and how to, you know,
make it so that you could put a super dirty dish
into the dishwasher without having to scrub it,
and it comes out clean.
That's what they're worried about, right?
So, though it may work, though you may be able to do it,
my question would be like, why, right?
So, all right, off that soap box.
Number six, what is the best towel for drying,
or should I use a chamois?
Avoid bath towels?
They scratch, really bad.
Cotton towel scratch, really bad.
So, use high quality microfiber drying towel.
I like to excel drying towel, right?
That's what I like.
I like those big drying towels.
They work super good.
They're super plush.
They're edgeless.
They're high GSM.
They're just perfect for drying a car.
And you can use them to kind of blot them,
and you're gonna really, when you pair it
with a really good soap, and you have a clean surface,
it makes the drying process super safe.
So, you know, the massive drying towel gets, you know,
you could do probably three or four cars, dry it,
hanging out to dry, and because you use a super-sober,
your car's clean, you're not picking up any dirt in the towel.
You don't have to worry about a drying aid,
or anything like that.
Number seven is touchless,
is touchless car washing safe?
Yes, it is, if you pre-foam.
So, again, don't go for the pre-rents, pre-foam.
Soak a dry car in foam, rinse it properly,
and your car will be so much cleaner, so much safer.
This is great for maintenance washes,
especially on ceramic coated cars.
This is what all the cars that I ceramic coat,
I tell my customers to do.
I either sell them or give them a bottle
of super-sober to test out.
I tell them, hey, foam it dry, rinse it,
foam it again, rinse it, boom,
hit it with the massive drying towel, you're done.
And the feedback that I'm getting on it
from my customers that I've ceramic coated their cars
is they're amazed, they're like, this is so easy.
This is so much better than going to the touchless wash too.
So, touchless washes won't always remove heavy grime alone.
Again, going back to like,
if depending upon where you live, your situation,
the pre-soak and rinse is gonna get like 95% of the dirt,
right?
If you use deionized water,
it makes it even a little bit better.
But again, it gets a significant more amount,
a significantly greater amount of dirt and grime
off the car than rinsing and doing the two bucket method.
So, number eight, how do I avoid swirl marks?
Well, we pretty much have already covered it,
but pre-foaming, not pre-rinsing before touching the paint,
using clean microfiber towels,
one bucket with a grit guard works fine or no buckets.
I have videos on just using a microfiber towel,
dry the vast majority of your car with a blower,
don't use cotton towels, use something like the Riley blower,
compressed air, a leaf blower,
something to help you get the vast majority
of the water off the car.
Obviously having a paint protection on there
to make the water beat up is gonna help you to dry the car.
Making sure you keep your towels clean.
Some people like to separate their paint towels
from their wheel towels, that's a great tip as well.
That significantly helps with it.
But honestly, if you pre-foam, if you use deionized water,
that's ideal because they need to have to worry
about water spots.
So yeah.
Number nine, what's the right order?
Wash, clay, polish, protect, blah, blah, blah.
Can I apply the ceramic coating on top of toughest shell?
Can I put gloss boss on top of toughest shell?
Or can I put toughest shell on top of the gloss boss?
What is the correct order?
Here is the correct order.
You wanna wash the car.
Washing the car removes any loose dirt.
Then you wanna clay barter the car
because those remove the bond and contaminates in the car.
Those are the little specs
that are embedding themselves into the pores of the paint.
Then ideally, you may or may not need to do this part.
Clay bar and washing, non-negotiable.
Polishing, it's gonna remove defects, boost gloss.
Optional, kinda.
If you have a dark color car,
you're probably gonna wanna polish it.
If you don't, if you have a light color car,
you could probably get away with not polishing it.
Polishing just removes a lot of the imperfections
in the paint, not the bonding contaminates,
but like spider webbing, any scratches, stuff like that.
Then after you do that, you wanna protect it,
you wanna seal in those results.
If you do a small glass bottle wipe-on coating,
that goes first, that would be your base layer,
and then you can maintain it
with something like a ceramic spray,
like toughest shell, a quick detail spray,
a spray wax, any of the sprayable products
go on top of the wipe-on.
The wipe-on does not go on top of anything.
That's an easy way to remember it.
So you can definitely skip the polish
if the paint's already in good shape,
but if you're gonna do a small glass bottle wipe-on coating,
make sure you do that first.
And yes, you can put a wax on top of a sealant,
a wax on top of a ceramic spray coating.
I've done it all, I've played with all the combinations,
and you definitely can do it.
You don't need to overthink the moment.
You can use a ceramic spray one week,
and a spray wax the next, and it's gonna be 100% okay.
Final one, number 10,
do I need to polish before a ceramic coating?
Well, I think I did a whole YouTube video
just on this one FAQ, this one recommendation alone.
So the quick answer is not always required,
but it's usually recommended
because polishing removes the swirls,
maximizes bonding, and is gonna remove
any of those imperfections.
So if you have a dark color car,
an easy way to think of it,
if you have a dark color car like we've already talked about,
chances are you're going to be want,
you're going to want to polish it
because you're gonna be able to see some imperfections,
especially in direct sunlight.
If you have a really light color car,
white, light gray, silver, something like that,
you probably aren't going to need to polish the car,
but use your best judgment,
look at the car in direct sun,
and kinda say, hey, how am I gonna maintain this car?
How am I gonna run it through the tunnel car wash?
How picky do I wanna be about it?
What elements am I living in?
How am I gonna maintain it?
And am I up to maintain it?
If I do polish it, am I up to maintaining it
to make sure I don't completely ruin my polish job?
So if you are gonna polish it,
just use a one-step polish,
like the Picture Perfect Polish, it's quick.
You're gonna get the results that you want.
You don't need to do an IPA wipe before a ceramic coating.
In fact, I'm recording this podcast episode
right in the middle of doing a polish and coating job,
and I just finished all the polishing
with the Picture Perfect Polish,
and I'm about to end this podcast
and go put on the gloss boss.
So yeah, use the Picture Perfect Polish,
coating is quick and easy.
So those are 10 FAQs.
Let me know if I should do any more,
if I should do this again,
but those are the 10 that I thought about.
So hopefully that helps a lot of you,
and I will catch you guys on the next one.
See ya.
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