Maintaining A Ceramic Coating Is Just As Important As Who Installs It - Full Wash Process

you are one of the biggest deciding factors on the durability and lifespan of your ceramic coating you are just as important as who actually installed your ceramic coating what products they use what process they use because if you are not maintaining your vehicle you are not going to get the lifespan you're not going to get the durability and you're not going to get the performance of the ceramic coating that you just spent tons and tons of money on so this is going to be a full reference guide a full how-to hand wash your ceramic coated vehicle and maintain it so this is a two-part Series this is part two of two the first part I did a full wheel cleaning video I wanted to split these up so you guys can quickly go back and reference the products easily and the actual process so welcome back to another out of spec detailing video Let's jump into it [Music] if you're on this channel you are likely a detailing nerd or a fanatic and that's why I am trying to show you the absolute ultimate way to wash your car and these are all the tools and products I recommend doing so so below me I have a three bucket method you may have heard of a two bucket method in the past which is having a Clear Water Rinse and a wash bucket fantastic what I would like you to add in though is a specific wheel bucket and I want to talk about why well wheels and brakes are a very very grimy area full of lots of contamination that can actually cause damage to the paint so it's very very important to keep this bucket separate to not use this as one of your rinse or wash buckets very very critical to keep these separated now I like to have my buckets labeled and color coded when I'm working quickly on a car I need to know which bucket is which not have to look at the label sometimes a rinse bucket can get very foamy and and soapy as they're washing the car and you may start dunking you know Rags or wash mitts into the wrong bucket so really important to take care of that we're going to talk about this whole process on how this works later on in this video but starting with the buckets I like to have a little bit shallower smaller wash buckets rather than the huge five gallon ones I also like that these are clear these are made by Chemical Guys links are going to be all in the description below now inside these wash buckets here I have something called a grit guard these are also made by Chemical Guys and I prefer these over the original grit guards for a couple reasons one I feel like they're a lot nicer made but two is they can keep a lot of contamination out so essentially what this grit guard does this sits in the bottom of your bucket and here you have a barrier where when you come in rinse your wash mitt in the bucket all the dirt falls to the bottom what this does is not allow it to be consumed in all the water it sits below here kind of acting as a water break so we have one of these in the rinse and one in the actual wash bucket now inside here this is another absolutely critical thing is what are you going to be touching your car with well I use these um microfiber wash mitts here and I actually wash these every single time I wash cars so they go directly in my washer I typically don't dry these I let them air dry but I like to keep these nice and neat I typically replace these about every three to six months depending on how dirty they get I wash a lot more cars than you guys are likely going to so very important to do so I like to also have these a little bit color coded so everything matches here I typically have two of these and then I also have another color that I use on the lower sections but that is something you can use as your discretion now talking and moving over to pressure washer let me move you guys around and talk about what you're going to need to wash your car let me just quickly show you how these grit guards look in these buckets before we talk about pressure washers so I've obviously got them color coded on here they sit at the bottom help keep all the dirt down there but I also really like having these wheel dollies it really helps with not dragging buckets around I like to keep things nice right but nonetheless let's move over here so what I would recommend you have is some sort of pressure washer now this is my crazy insane pressure washer setup but one of the best of the best in the absolute world this is heavily heavily inspired by obsessed garage you know Matt Mormon put this whole set up together and this stuff is just incredible so this is a cramsla pressure washer it is a cold water pressure washer I use no heat here at the shop as far as water we've got nice hose reels all the extremely nice hoses but you can go to Lowe's Home Depot buy a good pressure washer setup buy a decent hose like this get all your connector fittings ready to go I'm going to talk a little bit about this stuff over here and you should have a very very nice setup this is a CR spotless system here what this does is allows me to rinse the car off you know and not get a ton of water spots in it because it takes all the minerals out of here with the meter on here this is just the crazy amazing way to go if you have the ability to do so now talking this we have nozzles over here this is one of my favorite ones you can see it gets beat up this is two years of abuse and washing I don't even know how many cars but this is made by MTM Hydro this is the SGS 35 my favorite one and kind of that blue I just love blue here really really nice now on this one I typically like to use these 40 degree tips sometimes I will come over here and use these 25 degrees they're typically green 40 degrees are typically White NOW another awesome product you're going to want to have is some sort of a foam Cannon there's a lot of cheap ones out there they may work for you they don't work for me I use these products every single day multiple times a day so really important this is the pf-22 made by MTM all stainless on here that is the way to go you'll notice my whole setup I don't have any brass fittings at all we have everything in stainless other than the actual cranzla itself this is the only stainless connections I have on here so really really nice um now let's talk process now I have already done the wheels I'm going to leave a link in the description below so typically what I would do when I start washing the car I'm going to go through clean the wheels get them all cleaned up and I'm going to leave them wet and I'm going to actually start on the full washing process here now that process does take a little bit of time maybe your car is pretty clean and you just want to clean up the wheels you're good to do that but this is kind of full in depth now really detailing it so let's just quickly take a look around the car unfortunately it's in a little bit dirty condition this is driving me nuts we've got some Bird bombs on here so want to be mindful getting that off it's been quite messy around here lately you can see all the crud and grime we have and all the nooks and crannies here wheels are a little bit filthy other than that other one up front and we've got kind of water spots everywhere so if your car is in this condition I really recommend doing a hand wash a lot of the times though with ceramic coated Vehicles you can get away with using a foam Cannon rinsing them down and then drying it off one thing I want to be mindful of when drying if you are not fully hand washing it with the mitts and you just are rinse sing it off there's a likelihood that you didn't get all the grime off you've got contamination on there and when you go to dry it you can actually introduce some scratching in there so just be mindful of that I prefer you guys to use you know do a full hand wash on the car do a towel dry on it and use something like the blow car dryer now what I do probably twice a week is I'll foam my car down I'll rinse it down and just use a blow car dryer but notice I'm not touching it with a drying towel so keep that into consideration really want to drive that point home very very high likelihood you can introduce scratches that in that way so I'm sure you guys are going to ask what is your preferred car shampoo car soap well I use three of them pretty religiously here at the shop now I want to talk about a few of those things so as far as maintenance details what I really like to use is this this is Adam's graphene shampoo now this adds a little bit of protein protection to the paint it also is super super slick it is quite expensive though I think it's three or four times more per gallon than the car shampoo is this absolutely necessary to use every single time absolutely not my kind of preferred what you should do is if you like Adam's Car shampoo get that you can use it in the foam Cannon you're good to go that way you have one product to use but if you're like me a little nerdy I've also got cars that come in here that I don't want to add protection on right so I don't need to do it every single time there's cars that come in for paint correction and ceramic coating to begin with I don't want to put protection on there only to take it back off use expensive soaps so typically what I use in here is Chemical Guys snow foam in the actual foam Cannon and then in my wash bucket I'll use Adam's Car shampoo but today we are going to stick with graphene shampoo in the wash bucket and in the foam Cannon so let's get these filled up and ready for washing [Music] I always like to start out with my actual wash mitts in the rinse bucket really important to do so there in the wash bucket here this is our graphene soap I'm going to put about six pumps of this and they're typically about half an ounce so that's three ounces of Adam's graphene shampoo love having this on there you can get very accurate measurements not wasting product but should be good to go this stuff now is really interesting though it doesn't foam up quite as much as something like Adam's Car shampoo or even what's in this up here which is the chemical guys honeydew snow foam also another point on buckets you want to ensure that you're cleaning these out every single time you don't want to let a lot of dirt sit in these so be mindful of that what's nice with these gamma seal Lids is after you rinse them out you can seal them up with an actual integrated top again links in the description below to everything here let's get our foam Cannon ready to go then we're going to actually start rinsing this foam it down and start our hand wash first step of your maintenance detail now if your wheels are extremely dirty and you are wanting to clean them do that first so go in clean all the wheels like I said leave them wet but we are ready to go on the paint we've got our buckets filled we've got our foam Cannon ready to go and our pressure washer on now some of you might ask do you like to rinse first or do you like to foam the car down let it sit dwell and then rinse it back off well it depends if your car is super dirty if it's got you know just Grime and grime and grime that it really needs a lot of lubrication I would foam it down first now typically like on my car it doesn't get extremely dirty so what I'll just do is rinse it down foam it once and then go in on the hand wash method like I said before though if it is extremely filthy foam it down let it sit rinse it re-foam it and then start your hand washing process but let's get it into rinsing this down [Music] [Applause] [Music] so we've got our first rinse done and like I said before this car was not super super dirty so we got most of that grime off now it is now safe to foam down the car and start touching the vehicle as far as the wash mitts but keep that in mind if it's super super dirty I want you to foam at first while it's dry let it sit rinse it re-foam it and then start this process [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so we've got the car foam down now and we are now ready to go on there with our wash mitts so you always start from your rinse bucket what I want you to do is start top to bottom least dirty to most dirty so let me show you this process you're going to take it out of the rinse bucket you're going to squeeze it out come into the wash bucket and then you're going to start washing the top of the vehicle and I'll show you what I typically find as a good amount of panels to do per wash mitt so you want to be gentle with this you don't want to be scrubbing it you're coming in here just trying to agitate it you're not trying to like really scrub that stuff that's how we add scratches so be mindful of that glass you can kind of get after um compared to the paint obviously but just keep that in mind so now if I were wanting to come down in this area and flip this over and I'm going to come back into my wash bucket here so I'm going to go into rinse I'm going to use my other wash mitt same process I'm going to start here on the half of the hood when I do half the hood I'm going to flip over go quarter panel do the top areas first come maybe halfway down we don't want to get super far down come back into our rinse bucket and repeat that cycle over and over around the car down here on the doors I like to use straight lines not you know coming in here like this scrubbing it just straight gentle lines not putting a ton of pressure on this you notice I flipped so two doors right there come back into our rinse bucket yet again get our other wash mitt and then I can work this rear quarter panel here in the back insides of your cars lower sides of your cars are always going to be the dirtiest area so now I'm going to take this and hop over the other side [Music] like I said before I always leave the back and the sides of the car absolutely last so down here let me show you what I typically do like on my model 3 here so again top to bottom and then I'm going to rotate I'm going to do the lower because this part is going to be really gross here okay and I haven't done that side piece yet so now let me show you so I'm going to come in here get the rest of this bumper only working down being very gentle that's it I'm going to flip this over because I can already see that picked up a ton of dirt and do the other side back into our rinse bucket and then finally we're going to hit the lower sides on the doors so I always here like to start on the back come down I'm going to flip we're going to still go from back pick up come back down get this lower area hopefully you can see how much dirt and grime we're picking up now if we were to do the lower part first come up here and scrub this we're introducing contamination to this area that was already clean increasing our risk of scratches thank you [Applause] [Music] [Applause] the car is now hand washed and very very clean so next step is drying now a few options you have here you can either towel dry it which is my preferred method and then come back in with something like I showed you earlier with the blow car dryer getting all the nooks and crannies all those seams blown out with water so you're not getting water dripping everywhere or you can use the blow car dryer to dry the whole car as you can see this thing is beaded up like crazy even after a year and a half of uh abuse I would say this thing has 18 000 miles on it now and honestly the coating looks as good as it did the day I put it on but here's what I like to do so I've got my preferred drying towel this is made by the rag company again Link in the description below and I've also got waterless wash here this one is made by Adam's polishes in a Geon bottle but what I like to do here spray the waterless wash on here this is going to give it a little bit of a drying Aid and I'm not not coming in here to scrub I'm literally holding the towel on as lightly as possible just so it's not falling off the actual panel so you see that I've folded it up here this is a huge drying towel so I've got this one side ready to go when it starts getting to the point where it's not picking up water flip over to another side I typically use about two of these towels per car just kind of dependent I have actually different colored towels for maintenance details as I do for cars that are coming in for ceramic Coatings just to keep the cleaner ones for the maintenance details but you can see there how much water this is actually picking up and again this is my preferred method here you guys can go in and blow dry it to me what typically happens is the blow dryer takes a lot longer this is a quick way to pick up the maximum amount of water so if you're working outside it's a little bit Breezy or windy that's going to dry up things now obviously in here it's a little bit different we've also got the CR spotless so I'm not worried about water spotting but it is a very very critical step if you do drying wrong you can add a lot of scratches in this is where you can get a lot of water spotting if your water is particularly bad where you're washing but just keep that in mind and be mindful of it so the nice thing about using it in this method here so I've used these two sides here now I can flip this over this is dry and ready to go it's also contamination free not worried about adding scratches back in so I can see here that it's starting to streak because the towel is getting too full on that side now it's time to flip over and I can continue going here so here on the door you can dry the whole door all the way down so what I would recommend I have a dry side here so I'm going to take it start from the top I'm going to gently just be very gentle with this we're not trying to wash the car right here just trying to pick up the water so all the way down we're not going to use that side again now flip to the back side come in do the same thing maybe hit this mirror here first and the side is really completely dry at this point well this thing is looking quite spectacular nice and dry really really looking good but what I want you guys to notice is look at all the water in these areas especially areas like here on the cowl it's going to hold water in all these areas door handles everything like that you can even see water in here and of course on the wheels so this is where I would like you guys to have something like this now there's two versions of this there's a smaller version that I believe retails for around a hundred dollars and then this bad boy this is a big horsepower and really really good air dryer so the cool thing about this there's a lot of people who say oh come in here and use compressed air or a leaf blower couple things I don't like about that they're not filtered this is filtered which is really cool so the filter sits on top here you can see it in there you're not sandblasting your car that to me is just silly to you know if it's a little Dusty out it's picking up all that dust and basically being a sandblaster on there air compressors also have a lot of rust that sit in the bottom when not properly maintained so keep that into consideration something like this is just incredible so let me show you how this works and how effective it is at getting water out of all these little nooks and crannies [Music] thank you [Music] [Music] so I now spent a little bit of time drawing everything out everything is ultra Ultra dry besides one area and that is door jambs before we get into that I want to talk about these wheels so I coated these actually two weeks ago I think I showed you a nice little before and after on the previous video cleaning these but I actually I foamed these down did not touch them rinsed them and they look absolutely pristine so I only actually hand cleaned that wheel that is why ceramic coatings on wheels are just incredible that little bit of dirt and grime that was on there was basically 95 of it was able to come off that quickly but let's jump in here and talk about an area that often gets missed and that is door jamb so as you can see especially here in the model 3s they hold quite a bit of dirt in here because there's no Rubber seal so it's really important to come in and wipe these areas down I'm going to show you typically what I like to do on these so I do these on all four corners also don't mind all the the dog slobber in here my dogs love to make this thing messy but as you can see all this dirt and grime if that builds up over time that can be a nightmare to clean it is really a pain in the butt so I do it on all four I do it in the trunk and on the front of the model 3 but let me show you the process of cleaning one of these door jambs so in here all I'm gonna do I'm going to come in with this waterless wash again and a fresh microfiber towel I'm going to spray a little bit of this in there and I'm just going to come in here and lightly wipe this away again be gentle with things you don't want to sit here and scrub it that's how we introduce scratches so then you can flip this over come in here and dry that up and look at how nice and clean that door jamb is doing now so I'll come in here and clean all down even this side on here as well as over here on the door so again as easy as spray this down a little bit this adds a little bit of lubrication here gonna come in wipe this area get around this seal keep everything nice and clean flipper over dry it out this area guys often gets missed and I put a little bit of protection on these when I actually detail the cars it gets a little bit of a spray sealant if you will helps keep the dirt and grime to a minimum I typically don't ceramic coat these because they're really really tricky to get in all of these little nooks and crannies and not get high spots on it so really really important stuff there so I hope this was a good cohesive video for you guys for you to Simply understand what a maintenance detail really looks like now I want you guys keep this in mind this whole hand wash clean the wheels every single time is not super necessary often what I see myself doing is you know every week maybe twice a week I foam the car down in here rinse it off and use the blow car drive now again I want to drive this point home it's so so important you do not want to use a towel dryer if you are not hand washing the car if you are hand washing it you are fine to use towels but if you're using a towel you're picking up still a lot of contamination so I think every so often it's good just to rinse car down foam it and dry it with a blow car dryer or something similar like that it will need hand washes over time so just keep that in mind typically what I see and this is called a clogged coating what you're going to see most in the winter time is basically like on this car you're going to get this wake that comes down here and it's going to start sheeting water it's not going to bead quite as well that doesn't mean your coating has failed what that means is you've got a lot of contamination on the coating there it's got a film over it so it's not letting the coating react to the water so typically you know say you just foam it and rinse it and you still have that kind of area where cheating water that means it's time for a hand wash so keep that in mind really really important to understand that your coating has not failed if you get in there decontaminate that area unclog the coating and it has started to start sheeting water your coating may start failing so keep that in mind the Coatings that I use here are warrantied Coatings so something to take into consideration there make sure who you are having ceramic coat your cars that they are vetted they've done a lot of things because I've seen some very very sketchy stuff in my time but nonetheless make sure you guys are keeping your cars clean maintain them but also go enjoy them you know you're going to pick up stuff here and there don't freak out over it but if you keep your car nice I mean this car is a prime example 18 000 miles and it literally looks so so new I get asked all the time did you just buy this it's like no it's got 18 000 miles on it so you know if you'd maintain them they're going to look nice for a long long time if you guys have any questions or products you may be interested in links all in the description below leave a comment let me know what other kind of videos you guys would like to see but thanks for joining another out of spec detailing video we'll see you very very soon bye-bye [Music]

Channel: Out of Spec Detailing

Views: 11,630

Keywords: wash, detail, clean, protect, drive, car, truck, ev, suv, asmr

Id: EeEkCTuuPkE

Length: 27min 59sec (1679 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 08 2023