How to get the BEST RESULTS before POLISH or WAX | Seminar Sessions

hello and welcome back to seminar sessions the series where we make car care easy today we're going to talk about preparing the paintwork so previous steps we've chosen the right accessories for washing we've done the actual contact wash and we've looked at wheels and tires now we're going to do the main focus and that's how to get the best out of your paintwork so once the car's cleaned and dried you then move on to preparing the surface first and foremost we need to remove the above surface contaminants and by doing that we use clay now we've got a number of clay kits which we'll come into in a moment but once we've cleared that upper surface we then move on to ultimate compound which is going to be removing any swirl marks or imperfections that are within the upper surface of the lacquer so the main difference between all of our clay kits is the size of the kit itself the clay is exactly the same so the starter kit is the quick clay kit which contains 80 grams of clay and the quick detailer which is basically the essentials you need to play then our smooth surface kit contains 160 grams of clay this is contained in a soap dish it also comes with a microfiber towel and of course the detailer to lubricate it then just in case you run out we've got the smooth surface replacement clay bar which is just a bar on its own so this is how the clay comes in a nice package typically 80 grams worth of clay obviously open it up if you can our advice is to keep it in half of it in the wrapping just to keep it nice and safe if you take it totally out some cling film or obviously the soap box this is how we keep ours once we've used it they just go inside they're nice and safe not picking any contaminants up so i've took some of that clay out of our box and to move it and get it ready get some heat into it [Music] get it malleable and knead it into typically a five centimeter-ish disc and this is how it should look so whilst we've needed our clay i'm just going to talk a little bit about the properties of it obviously it's like blue tack inconsistency it's quite malleable but the main ingredients in it are china clay so it's blended with some synthetics what's important to remember is that this isn't going to remove any swirl marks this is removing anything from above the surface that you'll probably be able to feel you might not necessarily be able to see it's not abrasive but it erodes the particles and contaminants into the clay itself the other main part of the kit is the quick detailer now a lot of people have asked and continue to ask whether they can just use water to lubricate the clay the reality is no water is very harsh you know it can cause marring and this is where some of the questions surround clay that mars paint a good quality clay and a good quality detailer the clay won't mar the surface so it's really important that you use something that's got the lubricity to allow the allow the clay to glide over the surface and do its job safely so with clay you need to pick out the area that you're going to work on let's just work on this area here so lots of detailer and it's just fingertip pressure only you don't need to be doing a lot of work the clay is doing it so i always go to left right and up and down now this is also one of the things that we say because you're not actually applying you're passing over the surface the only time we suggest to go in a uniform motion if you go in circles you miss bits with this you're definitely covering all of the panel [Music] [Music] so now we've played that section we've needed our new piece all we've got to do is just get rid of the excess detailer and you're good to go it's important to note that visually you'll probably not notice much difference in the appearance because what it's doing is removing everything from the upper surface if the car's never been played and never been compounded you may see some visual difference but we wouldn't expect it also another point we spoke about earlier on in the video you know there's no marring so a good quality clay with the right detail or lubrication um you won't get married so a nice top tip for clay as well because it's not abrasive you can use it on a lot of other surfaces across the vehicle you can use it on your windscreen you can use it on your on your headlights you can even use it on your alloy wheels what we'd suggest to avoid is the plastic textured areas because that's just going to grab the clay and make a bit of a mess but you can safely use it on all the other surfaces as well [Music] [Music] so we've now removed all of those above surface contaminants safely what we're going to do is look at anything that's below that upper surface so typically in the clear coat a lot of people talk about metallic paints and colored processes all modern paint surfaces have a color with a clear coat lacquer on the top and those imperfections are just superficial imperfections in that upper surface of the clear coat we've got ultimate compound that's clear coat safe you can either hand apply this or apply it by machine today we're going to hand apply it to show you how easy it is to get really good results at home obviously a machine polisher gives you something extra that we can create by hand that's a bit more heat a bit more consistency but it's an absolutely fantastic product to use by hand as well and that's how we're going to use it today okay so as we spoke about there's a couple of application methods that you can use for ultimate compound but today we're going to hand apply it so just giving it a good shake and use an even coat applicator pad and the reason why we're going to use this the microfiber will aid with the cutting process and plus you're going to start working this so it's nice and easy to get hold of is a good sized pad you don't need to use any lubrication that's probably enough i'm going to work on this area here and i would pre-tape this off just to give you some before and afters as you can see there's some swirl marks and some slight imperfections in there the way this abrasive works is a high concentration of small abrasives so when you rub it between your fingers it feels like a very mild cream rather than very dense rocks that are going to be aggressive against the paintwork now we'd expect we we're not a one-hit wonder we don't expect everything to be removed with one application they're designed for two or three applications so as you can see the products well lubricated so you don't need to have any water so once you've got it on the panel all you need to do is work it a few passes you can just see the panel flexing if i push really hard you'll see how hard i'm going you just need enough to make sure that you're you're getting behind the pad and working the product to its best ability don't be afraid of it you should see there's no dusty residues you can start to see the product flying a little bit that's a good indication that it's ready to take off simply use a microfiber towel [Music] that's pretty good going for first time round now there are a few imperfections still there there's just one application as we mentioned that their products aren't designed to be a one-hit wonder first application that's going to be majorly aggressive and potentially cause more damage so now you've seen the results that one application can do with ultimate compound that's pretty good there were still imperfections in there and again i'm going to go again with ultimate compound smaller amount of product now because the pad's primed now there's a common misconception about swirl marks and which way you should go but at this point that you've removed all the contaminants from above the surface of the lacquer we look at swirl marks as if they're round so people avoid going in a circular motion the reality is that our brain picks up a beam of light and brings it back to us if you're gonna mark the paintwork it doesn't matter which way you're going in so you can go whatever waveform's comfortable i like to do a mixture of both because then i'm working the product as best as i can so i go from left to right up and down and i feel like i'm giving the best opportunity for the product to do its job as you can see it's starting to break down again now so i'm going to buff it off and see what second application looks like now that that process has had a second application we're going to go ahead and take off the tape and we often get asked whether or not you know we we fill them or mask swirls or what what the ultimate compound is actually doing so as we take off the tape i'm going to use our glass cleaner which is an alcohol-based cleaner just to split over the surface that will give us a true finish of exactly what two coats hand-applied ultimate compound can do [Music] [Music] so we've now prepared the paint to our best possible ability and it's all about getting that depth of gloss so in our next video we're going to talk about the difference between polish and wax and how you give feed the paintwork to give you the best depth of gloss and then seal it in to protect but this week just as a roundup we've talked about preparing the surface so we've used our clay system along with ultimate compound and an even coat applicator pad just to get that surface looking the best it possibly can so we can stick the cherry on top next time round so thanks for watching if you've enjoyed the content don't forget to give us a thumbs up like share and subscribe if you've got any questions drop them in the comments box and we'll do our best to get back to you [Music] you

Channel: Meguiar's UK

Views: 36,711

Rating: 4.9788361 out of 5

Keywords: meguiars, meguiarsuk, meguiars car care, car care, auto detailing, car detailing, detailing, clay, clay bar, how to clay, how to use clay bar, what is clay?, how to remove swirl marks, how use ultimate compound, ultimate compound, car wash, detailing channel, meguiars clay, meguiars compound, ultimate, car detail, car care made easy, seminar sessions

Id: zOp0GWsZow8

Length: 10min 19sec (619 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 10 2020