“What do you guys use?” is one of the most popular questions I get from customers in the store. And it can be a loaded question at times. Different situations call for different products but the marketplace has made many new products that have ended up being much more versatile that in years prior. A good polish like Sonax 04-06 or Americana 3000 can now be used to cut rather aggressively and some compounds like Sonax Cutmax can finish down with almost no holograms when used with the right pad. But another question that needs to be addressed is – What are we NOT using? The answer might surprise you. For one, waxes and sealants.
Wax is dead. This may seem like nonsense but it’s actually been on the way out for years. Having said that, you would almost certainly still wax your all original 39′ Ford with single stage paint, but, like everything else in our digital age, technology continues to evolve month after month and year after year. The products we’re using today aren’t the same we were using a year ago, and those aren’t the same as the year prior to that. We’re currently neck deep in a detailing revolution. On the protection side, waxes have given way to sealants, and sealants have now given way to glasscoating. Now for a while, if you had a truly glasscoated car there wasn’t much available to top coat the finish. leaving owners frustrated at not being able to go through their weekly waxing ritual with their baby in their garage or doing so anyway, and suddenly finding their car isn’t beading and acting like it did (until the wax would wear off in a few weeks anyway). The market heard this and responded with Sacrificial Coatings with are designed to work with a coated car and amplify its effects to add further protection and hydrophobic properties to the surface. The problem with these new products was two fold: ease of install, and cost. Many of these products that performed well we expensive and/or were exceptionally difficult to install without leaving streaks on the surface to level out after the fact. The easier the product was to install, the less time it would perform, until recently.
Fictech Car Gliss and products like it contain a small amount of Sio2 – the same product used in our glasscoating process. While these don’t replace a traditional glasscoating, it finally fills a void in the marketplace for a products with great protection, price and ease of install all in one. Just mist on like a quick detail spray and wipe down with your favorite microfiber towel and your good to go for months. Which is another thing you wont see us use – terry cloth towels.
Microfiber has been a mainstay for years now, but the most recent iteration of towels we’ve been using ha’ve been amazing. Griot’s PFM (Pure Freaking Magic) series has hit the scene in a big way. We resisted at first. The price was high, and we were making due with what we had. But after trying one out it was clear, these were the new go-to towels. The large gray PFM Terry Weave Drying Towels are a godsend. I keep one on my cart at all times. They don’t wear out like older waffle-weave towels and they absorb so much water! A quick once over and your done, just watch your emblems, as they can snag. Terry cloth is still great to use for hand polishing under door handles, or other hard to reach places, but microfiber is king.
The game keeps changing and for the better.
