How to Detail the Exterior of Your Car (COMPLETE GUIDE)

what's going on guys welcome to another episode if you guys are staying up to date with my channel and the Audi you guys will know that this thing is disgusting we detailed the inside now it's time to detail the outside I'm gonna begin by cleaning up the dirtiest parts of the vehicle and then working to the cleanest parts so because the only part of this vehicle that's really been detailed is the wheels the door jambs and the interior the dirtiest part at that point is then going to be the engine bay so if you're ever detailing your car that is pretty much the first place you want to address so after the engine bay is cleaned up we're gonna move to the wheels and then after the wheels are cleaned up we're gonna go to the exhaust and then finally the paint now the paint is the most sensitive area out of all of this so if you can address the dirtiest parts first and then work to the not so dirty stuff you'll be good because at that point you're not gonna be introducing any of this really disgusting stuff into the clean areas I hope that kind of makes sense but the first step is going to be changing out of your clean clothes because you are 100% gonna get dirty in this process if your engine bay looks like this one you're gonna get dirty so I'm gonna change out of this white shirt and I'm gonna put some more grubby kind of stuff on so I'm not gonna get covered in crap okay so I'm back and I don't really care about this shirt so we can get dirty now if you guys have been staying up-to-date with what we've been doing I've been including links in the description box for everything that we've done to this Audi so far so if you guys bought the same kind of stuff that we use to clean up the wheels and you guys bought the same kind of McGwire's super degreaser to clean out the inside of the car you'll have everything you need to clean out the engine bay now for the engine bay it usually is quite dirty it's quite disgusting and quite neglected now because of that we can't just use a regular car soap to clean out the engine bay so because the outside of the car always gets hit with rain and dirt and all that stuff it's usually not that bad but any areas that aren't exactly exposed or aren't exactly high-traffic areas they get accumulation so the engine bay is one of those areas along with the underside of the doors along with the door jams so you can use this super degreaser to clean out and remove all of that stuff so we're going to be using this along with most of the wheel cleaning brushes that we use to clean out the wheels they do a very good job of getting in some really weird areas we can really push them down in some hard-to-reach areas and then we'll do a very good job at cleaning all the grind to begin with the engine detailing procedure what we're first going to do is we're gonna get everything wet so if your horse has a missed option on it I would use that so that you're using a small volume of water to get everything cleaned you think want to want to use your McGuire super degreaser and spray it down on everything now if you can also spray it into your brush it's going to make the cleaning much more effective now if your engine has leaks if it has some other fluids that are coming out of it more often than not the engine is going to be more greased up and disgusting than an engine that doesn't leak now the reason being is because that fluid is gonna want to attract and hold onto dirt or as something that's dry isn't going to want to do that so if you have to switch up the brushes that you're using to get some more harder to reach areas so that you'll be able to also get areas like the sides of the engine bay the front of it and also the back side of it they're usually pretty hard-to-reach areas but if you have a variety of different brushes you can get that cleaning procedure done rather easily for the stuff on top I like using a soft bristle brush so that you can get all the small intricate areas like in between the brake lines and stuff like that and you can do a very good job of cleaning out the small areas so because everything on top is what you see most that is the most important part of it so if you can remove all the dust that's like in between stuff you're gonna get the engine bay looking a hell of a lot cleaner and it's going to look detailed rather than just clean now another brush that you probably have at home that can be really handy for this kind of stuff is a toothbrush if you have an old toothbrush lying around you can use that for this engine detailing procedure however once you're done agitated everything you can grab your hose and then rinse it down now depending on your engine bay you might be able to have cleaned it in that first shot but if not you can use the exact same procedure where you spray down the degreaser on to the engine agitate it with a brush and then rinse it down again if your engine is very dirty so as soon as you're done and you're content with the results you can then go ahead and dry the engine now it's important to dry it before you go and drive the vehicle again because anything that's wet is going to want to cling on to any kind of dust or dirt and then at that point you're making your engine dirty again so if you have options like a compressor or a leaf flow or something like that it'll do a very good job at removing all that water however you can get by by just using a couple towels and even a hairdryer or any other option that you guys can think of you don't really need to get anything really hot you just want to blow all that water out or absorb it so that it's not left on the engine after you're done cleaning the engine you should see a huge difference just from that alone from before to after so if you have any dirt if you have any grime or anything that's just sitting on top you can clean it up and you can make the engine look like it's well taken care of we're going to repeat the same kind of procedure for the engine bay for the wheels so that we can clean them up so first off you're gonna start off by spraying everything down with water so that everything is wet now any light dirt or anything that's just sitting on top of the surface should rinse off by doing that single procedure right there following that we're gonna be using a dedicated McGuire's wheel cleaner to clean up the wheels so if you have dirt or if you have brake dust or even any kind of discoloration or dirt that's on the wheel this dedicated wheel cleaner it should break down all that grime and it should make it so that we can clean it off very easily depending on the wheels that you have you're gonna be using an assortment of different brushes so no matter what wheel I ever have to clean I at least have to use this one brush and this is a soft hog hair bristle brush from Wheel Willy's it does a very good job at cleaning up the surface of the wheel and it also does a very good job of cleaning the tire itself so it's strong enough to clean up all that grime but it's soft enough to not damage the paint on the wheel now following that you're gonna be using a different kind of brush to clean the barrel of the wheel so for this Audi I'm gonna be using a easy detail brush like this however this company also sells other different brushes that you guys can pick up to get different jobs done so depending on the application you would want to use a different brush because I have a couple cars I actually have all of these brushes here at home because they're so good and so handy to get all this stuff done now you can also use these brushes to clean out your engine may your fender liner the undercarriage so these brushes are very handy also when you're not just cleaning wheels after all that brake dust is knocked off of the wheel and then absorb into the solution we're going to rinse it down and just rinse it off you're going to want to get everything from the face of the wheel to the tire to even the barrel so that none of that wheel cleaner is sitting there or left to dry on the wheel now to do all four of these wheels it should you about ten minutes depending on how dirty they are however you use the proper tools and the proper cleaners to get this done it'll take no time at all and you'll be able to see the amazing shine and glow of that nice-looking wheel the paint on this Audi has definitely been neglected it is a hundred percent seen better days now just because it looks like this doesn't mean that the paint is exactly trashed so what we have here is the top part of the clear coat that just has a couple imperfections in it the substrate and the paint itself is an actually pretty good condition it just means that we have to put a little bit of work into it to get it to shine again to begin I'm gonna use some concentrated McGuire's hyper wash in my adjustable cleaning gun you really don't need to put too much of the concentrate into the reservoir because it can be diluted with just that little bit of soap that's in there you can fill the rest of the reservoir with water now grab the top part of the cleaning gun and thread it onto the bottom after that you can attach it to the nozzle that's included when you buy the foam cleaning gun now at that point you're basically ready to knock off all the loose dirt that's on the paint what we're going to be doing in this step is just pre rinsing the vehicle to get as much of the stuff that's on top of the paint removed so if we can remove all the stuff that's just sitting on the paint it's gonna make our cleaning step easier because when we break out our wash mitt we're not going to be pushing all of that stuff into the paint and grinding it into it now if we weren't to do this step if we were not going to do this what we would actually encounter is we would see more scratches in the paint after we clean it than before so by taking the time to do this properly and pre washing the car you're gonna be preventing the paint from getting more damage and more scratched during this whole cleaning step so pretty much all that you're going to be doing for this step is you're gonna be printing down the entire vehicle and spraying it in soap you're gonna begin at the top and you're gonna try and work your way around to get the entire thing covered now if you can also let this sit for a minute or two it's going to make it so that the stuff that's embedded or stuck to the paint is going to want to come off a lot easier this hope does a very good job at stripping back all the stuff that you have on the paint now an alternative to the hyper wash if you want you can use regular Dawn dish soap or Palmolive dish so whatever kind you guys like however it has to be the unscented version now once you do that once you spray the entire vehicle let it sit and then after that rinse it down now that's going to complete the pre-rinse step and it's going to clean out the entire surface that we're going to be working with so once we have to do the proper cleaning step where we clean the panel it's going to make it so that half of that stuff that's on there now is all gone following the pre rinse comes the wash itself so we're going to be using the exact same foaming cannon that we were using before however in addition to this we're also going to be using a wash mitt to clean up the paint so at this step we're gonna actually be touching it with our bare hands we're gonna be actually putting pressure on the paint to clean it up so the technique that I like doing is I like spraying the whole panel down with soap and then afterwards I like spraying a little bit of soap in front of the wash mitt and then glide it over the paint now the reason why I like doing that is because I can always have the pad fully covered with soap it's fully lubricated and there's not gonna be any chance of me scratching the paint because the wash mitt will get too gummed up or covered in dirt so if I have a lot of stuff if the car is very dirty I'll spray in front of the wash mitt to clean everything up now at that point it's gonna be super safe it doesn't matter what kind of car you're working with it can be a super car it can be whatever car it's going to give you the safest clean possible doing it this way so if you want to protect your paint and not make it look bad this is the technique that I would suggest doing there is an alternative method called using the two bucket method however I still find that that quite isn't as effective as this now every time that I do make a pass over top of the paint I look at the wash mitt itself to inspect it to see if there's any dirt now if it is pretty contaminated or if it does get really gross I'll just spray it down with the wash soap and then repeat the entire procedure until the entire car is clean now at this point there isn't going to be much that's going to be left on the car so because we started off with working on the top of the vehicle and worked our way down the paint itself should be very clean now just something to note is that the lower portions of the car are going to be dirtier than the top parts and the reason is it's closer to the ground it's closer to the wheels and that's where most of the stuff gets thrown up to so just take note of that when you guys are actually washing the car you need to put a little bit more time and attention into that area so you don't introduce swirl marks or scratches into the paint you can choose to just leave your car like this and even on so that will do a very good job to clean the car however we're gonna be going a couple steps further to actually refine the scratches and make the paint look brilliant again so because the paint still does have imperfections in it it has scratches it has stains on the clear coat we're gonna remove all of that stuff and give it an amazing shine that's gonna be like nothing else even though the paint has been cleaned there are still contaminants that are going to be stuck to it that need a little bit more persuasion to remove it you can use a clean sponge or a piece of clay I find that the sponges pull off finer contaminants from the paint but if it's heavily contaminated I find they don't do as good of a job as the old school clay bars you can choose for yourself which one you want to use as every single car is different so it really depends from car to car regardless though we need to fully strip back and remove all these surface contaminants before we start polishing the paint you're gonna want to repeat this exact same procedure that we're doing to the hood to the entire vehicle now the reason why you want to do that is because you don't want to have those surface contaminants being pulled up and make the polishing step a little bit harder because we didn't remove it now so if you can remove all those contaminants now you'll be making the paint super smooth so that if you get your hand and you apply it and rub it onto the backside of the paint you won't be able to feel anything if you can still feel something you need to clay it more so that we can strip all that stuff back because the Audi was extremely neglected you'll see that the paint looks in this kind of really bad finish so it's really strange because all the water and all the contaminants that have ever beat on this clear coat they haven't ever been cleaned or restored or refinished so that you get that nice optical clarity out of the reflection so because this has been so neglected for so long after we clay it we can see that the paint doesn't necessarily look so good but that's not a problem this is just how it's going to look when you're doing this procedure now if you have a car that isn't quite as neglected as this you're not gonna have to see this ugly shine to it so what I'm going to be doing is I'm going to be using a dual action polisher along with a polishing pad and some polish to clean all this stuff up so off camera I went ahead and just detailed a small section of the hood to see how the polisher and the compound how it would react so because every single car is different every single you coat every paint it's all different so you have to do a kind of test area to see how that little sections going to work you can pretty much base the entire car off that little section so once you have an idea as to how it's going to work and what finish you're going to get afterwards you can continue and do the entire painted surface of the vehicle so I began using my roofs lhr 15 polisher along with a McGuire's microfiber polishing pad so because the paint looks this bad I'm going to be using the microfiber version of the polishing pad and that's only because it's going to be able to pick up a lot more dirt and it's gonna be able to pick up a lot more of that ugly clear coat that's left on top of the paint now after this is done we're going to be able to move down and refine this even more by using a different pad to clean all this stuff up so if you can tell there are some Holograms in the paint which are basically little scratches that are still left in the clear coat now to refine those we're going to be using our McGuire's and 1:05 polish the same polish we were using from before however we're going to be changing out the polishing pad that's on the polisher with a foam polishing pad instead of the microfiber one now this foam one is a lot softer on the paint and it's going to give us an amazing beautiful clarity out of that paint the reflection out of it is going to be unbelievable and it's very important to do that step because if you were to only just go ahead and use the microfiber pad and only polish the paint with that you will still have some scratches left in the paint now they're going to be super fine they're not really going to be really big however they're still going to be noticeable especially when the Sun hits it when I see detailing videos on the internet I'm kind of skeptical on how the paint looks at the end because a lot of people can make any kind of paint look half decent or a polished even though it's not really polished the way that I look at the paint in the way that I inspect it to make sure that the paint is crystal clear there's no scratches left or anything is I play around with lighting so if you can bring the car inside you can bring the car outside and also if you can use a flashlight or any other kinds of light to reflect it off the paint and have that light bounce back into your eyes you're going to see if you have scratches in the paint or not now it doesn't matter if they're deep it doesn't matter if they're very very my new but you will be able to see all of those scratches in the paint that step I think is the most crucial part of all of this because if you can't exactly see the scratches that are on the paint it's gonna be difficult to remove them so that's why taking your time to actually inspect the paint is very important hopefully after all of this you guys would be able to take some of these tips from this detail and apply it to your car hopefully you can make your car look just as good as this Audi with the paint cleaned up and polished up with the Maguire's polishing pad the microfiber one we're gonna follow that up with the foam polishing pad now the reason is because we're gonna be able to remove many scratches even more by using this kind of procedure so take a look at this line right here so right here is where I polished up the paint I use the microfiber pad and I also use the foam pad so take a look at the reflection that you're seeing here okay now if we go over a little bit you'll be able to see the reflection of just the polishing pad the microfiber one so you can see that there are still scratches in the paint and we need to refine those scratches even more to something like this now the way that we do that is with right here we've got our pad right here and we're gonna be using the same m2o five compound it's crazy how the paint after just the microfiber polishing stage how it looked really good but it was only when I brought the light up to the paint that you saw the defects well the same thing goes for after you're polishing the paint with the foam pad the foam pad paired with the m2o five will remove those Holograms or micro scratches that are in the paint however if you don't use the foam polishing pad paired with the m2o five for long enough you will still have some of those scratches left in the paint now don't be worried it just means that you need to put a little bit more work into that section of paint until you get the amazing reflection that you're looking for if you guys are looking for a video that's gonna be completely regarding polishing paint what to do what products to use what to buy you guys can check the link in the description box because I made a video a while ago just regarding that if you guys are new to the paint correcting stage or even if you guys want to learn an extra something or two you guys can click that link that's in the description box and it's going to teach you guys a decent amount after going ahead and polishing the car the paint looks so much better than before now what's nice about this is that the car doesn't look like a five hundred dollar piece of junk anymore we removed all the surface contaminants and most of the imperfections in the paint now if you want you can do the exact same procedure to the windows and all the glass that you have on the car so if you have surface contaminants like this and you can actually see the water spots and stuff like that you can polish the glass with the same kind of polish and pads that we were using for the paint but you can also purchase ones that are intended for glass so when we were working with the paint we use the polisher we used a pad and we used our polish similarly to do the same procedure and clean out the windows what we're going to be using is a griot garage garage garage however you want to call it this company here they have a pad that's meant specifically for windows and they also have a fine polish if your windows aren't too bad you use that but if they're very bad you use this right here this is for glass that's heavily marked with water spots so I'm gonna be using this guy right here with this pad on our polisher so we don't need this pad on the machine we're gonna take this one off replace it with this and then get working on the windows to take care of the glass you're going to want to do the same overlapping passes just like how we were correcting the paint polishing glass is going to be a lot more forgiving than polishing paint as the clear coat on the paint is a lot softer versus the hardness of glass with that being said you can also use a household drill or even you can do this procedure by hand to get this done however I wouldn't suggest doing either of those methods to take care of the paint now when the contamination on the glass is removed you can buff off any excess polish with a microfiber towel you can tell when they're done by how the glass reacts with the water now I have it on the passenger side yet however you can see how the water reacts and how it streaks on top of the minerals and the deposits that are on the window when you use a microfiber towel and wipe it you're also can be able to notice those same streak marks and the same discoloration when you use those wipers at nighttime when it's raining now notice the driver side the window stays crystal clear when the water is wiped off the surface it's going to do the exact same kind of thing when you're driving you're not going to have any streaking and it's going to be a lot safer I find that this is one of the most important parts of an exterior detail as you'll be increasing visibility and clarity out of the windshield making the car safer to drive now once you're done you'll see all the grime that's lifted off with a windshield because it's now on the polishing pad you can see how much crap we actually removed what's cool about this product is that you can not only use this on your windshield but you can also use an unpacking your windows like the front and rear windows and also if your car is equipped with a sunroof you can use it on there as well to remove any kind of contamination or grime that you have on the surface after you go through all of that effort to make the car look at this nice and clean it's not a half bad idea to go ahead and put some sort of protection on the vehicle if you want the paint to last a long time if you want the glass to stay crystal clear if you want those tires to look super black there are a bunch of different products that you guys can use that are on the market to serve that purpose now if you guys are familiar with this channel you'll know that I am a firm believer of ceramic coatings now if I was going to be keeping this car for a long time this was my vehicle what I would do to ensure that it gets the best protection possible is ceramic coatings so you can apply some to the paint to fabrics to leather and to even glass so you can use any of these products to get by and that will give you the best form of protection against all the elements now even if you don't want to spend that much money there are still great options like regular waxes that you guys can buy at your local store for cheap rain-x for the glass these are great products that keep the car looking good and be for the glass it'll make it so that the water will be dried off and you won't even have to use your wipers it makes you driving it in any kind of wet condition a lot safer alternatively there are also other products that you guys can use if you wanted to say protect your dash if you want to dress up your tire if you want to restore old trim you guys can use products like this as well however what I'm going to be doing today in this view is a little bit different so my little brother came across a product that is very good I've tried it on a couple different cars and I love how it turns out you don't need to put a lot of work into it to get it so that it's well protected and it takes two seconds to apply this on your vehicle so what I would basically do is once you have it like this rinse the entire vehicle down now it doesn't matter you can also apply this coating on a car that is not fully polished like this but what you would do is you basically give the whole car wash and then you would apply this on the car now I'll show you how exactly to do that so once the car looks this great you're going to need two things to apply this you're first going to need a hose and after that you're going to need this product here from car pro it's called hydro Oh too light it's a wipe less silica spray so what you do with it is well you put this aside for now but we're gonna grab the hose and rinse the entire vehicle down so everything is wet so once everything is dripping wet just like this what we're going to do next is grab our spray and literally just spray this over everything now what's going to happen notice that you start seeing it bead what you're gonna do this for a couple panels at a time make sure you cover everything and then once you're done all that you do is rinse it off and I'll show you how incredible the paint looks and how it reacts with the water afterwards it's really that easy of a coating to apply you literally just spray it on and then rinse it off with water now you can repeat this exact same procedure to the entire vehicle so if you want to protect your paint you want to protect your windows you want to protect your side mirrors you can protect everything by doing this exact same procedure so it's a really nice product it doesn't last as long as a ceramic coating however how the water reacts with it is very similar to a ceramic coating a ceramic coating costs a little bit more than this product and it takes a little bit more work to apply however this here is a much easier option to get pretty much the same kind of thing now as I said it doesn't last as long but you can see for yourself how awesome the water reacts with the paint you can see that it basically just glides off and doesn't ever want to actually stick that also makes the drying procedure a lot easier so if you have water on your paint you can use a towel you can use a leaf blower you can use an air compressor you can use whatever you want but the water just wants to fly right off because this coating is between the water and the paint so after putting in all that awesome work this is how the Audi looks now it all depends on how much time and effort you guys want to put into your car but for my job what I did here I spent a couple days detailing this only because I also had to get camera angles and I just show you guys everything that I'm doing so it took me a couple days to do the inside and out but if I were to do this like on the side if I didn't have a camera or whatever I would probably be able to get this done in a matter of a day day and a half at most but look at how awesome this thing looks this doesn't look like a $500 beater at all so the car is fully cleaned it was clayed it was polished and it's now protected now you guys can also choose what kind of layer protections you want on the car that will ultimately make a big difference as to how long it's gonna stay looking like this but look how good it looks now if you guys have also stayed till the end of this video you guys are in you guys are going to be in for a little treat and I'll show you why probably no matter of about five seconds once I get to the other side of the car so the car looks great but as you can tell one second one second do you guys see the little treat yet what is that what is that that's Lucas car that's gonna be for a different video but because you guys have stayed this long into this video I want to show you guys a little bit of that's you know a little bit behind the scene thing that wasn't really planning on showing for this video but it's here Luke we got a new car but the Audi looks amazing I have to say so it all depends on how much work you guys want to put into this so if you guys want to do a simple wash to make your car look better awesome do it by all means take care of it that way but if you are OCD these are some of the steps that you guys can do to make a $500 car not look like a $500 car so I've got to say I'm pretty happy that I'm done working on this thing because it has taken a little bit of work to make it look this nice it does mean that this car is no longer than eating work however even at the end of the day I didn't make this a show car so like there are still a couple imperfections like on the bottom of the door there is a little bit of rust showing same thing with the back side of the fender but it still looks so much better than how it looked before this doesn't look like it's neglected it doesn't look like this was mistreated and if even if you go to the inside of the car it doesn't look like oh my life it doesn't look like little kids have absolutely destroyed the interior even though there were kids in the back so if it all depends on how much work you guys want to do but these are just some results that you guys can get now if you guys remember the before was actually pretty disgusting the paint was very scratched there was a lot of contamination on the paint and it just goes to show what you can do at the end of the day it doesn't really matter what kind of car you have it can be a cheap beater it can be a really nice car but if you don't take care of it it's not going to look like a nice car so even if you buy a car for $500 this just goes to show that you can take care of it and you can make it look like it's worth so much more now I guarantee let alone fixing the mechanical parts of this car aside I will easily be able to get more than my money back when I go to sell this thing so because it looks nice and it looks shiny it looks like it's well taken care of it looks like someone has definitely put in the time and effort to keep it looking great as you can tell however that just means that it will benefit me more than the previous owners so because they didn't really take care of it and they neglected it that just means that this is an area that I'll be able to sell this for a little bit more money now the car aside if you guys want to find out any more of the techniques or procedures that I used for this video you guys can find more information the description box I have other videos that I've made that are going to be a little bit more in-depth than what I did today however there's more information down there so be sure to check that out anyways guys if you liked the video share it give it a thumbs up anyways guys thank you so much for watching I'll catch you in the next [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: milanmastracci

Views: 180,864

Rating: 4.878675 out of 5

Keywords: milanmastracci, ceramic coating, paint, calipers, brakes, detailing, exterior detail, complete guide, how to detail the exterior of your car, how to detail your car, polish, engine bay detail, engine bay cleaning, cleaning, how to properly clean your car, audi, full detail, meguiar's, mothers, rupes, lhr, mark ii

Id: WszSORGbHm0

Length: 28min 5sec (1685 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 27 2018