Proper clean and polish

[Ironballs]

Decided to give the car a good clean and polish after being holed up over winter in the garage and having had a filthy run up the A1 in the wet. First up were the wheels and decided to do it properly and removed them, broke the socket on one bolt and had to borrow the wrench from the scooby.

Pretty filthy with a lot of ingrained grime









A shampoo wash with a mitt only shifted some of the grime, so broke out the Mer wheel cleaner, rinsed and then sprayed Iron X all over to get rid of the embedded iron (quite a lot came out). Rinsed again, dried and applied a wheel wax.

Much better











Car was pretty mucky and I also took the opportunity to redo the boot release badge again as the boot was releasing whenever it wanted due to the wrong glue and too thin foam.

Before











After

Cleaned using the 2 bucket method and a wash mitt, dried with a waffle weave towel, used Megs paint cleaner, didn't clay it as I'd done that in the autumn, went over it with Autoglym super resin polish and then a layer of Pete's 53 wax. It could do with another 2 coats of wax and the roof needs some new proofing applying and I also need to clean and treat the windows, but the sun was out and we wanted to go for a blast....

[Alexdaredevilz]

I've not cleaned mine since November, what do I win?

[Ironballs]

Arm ache

[thainy77]

Good effort, i think dressing the tyres would finish it off nicely.

[scotty_d]

Get some megs tyre shine its worth it just for the smell.

[Ironballs]

The chap who owns cleanyourcar.co.uk now lives at the top of my road so I might go and see what he's got tyre dressing wise

[Noisy]

If taking the wheels off its worth giving the arches a quick clean and black dressing on them and the tyres, gives it the new car look.

Mines filthy if you want more practice.

[Mr M]

Looking good. Might be worth checking the exhaust box rubbers as your exhaust box looks quite close to the rear tray, and will end up resting on it and buring little marks into it. Just had to replace mine recently due to that

[tejr]

Whats this iron x stuff? sounds interesteing, where can I get some from?

[Ironballs]

The exhaust is resting slightly on the diffuser and has already rubbed a little away, will get it looked at at the next service.

I did think about doing the wheelarches but decided I couldn't be arsed! Everything else in the arches and underneath is covered in waxoyl anyway so it's not going to look showroom down there, I've opted for chassis protection over bling.

Iron X is a great product, it removes embedded iron and ferrous industrial fallout from your paint and wheels - though you do need to clean it off thoroughly once done. I tried it on wheels and bodywork and the amount it took out was immense, in some areas you can't really see the difference but in others it takes out stubborn dark or yellow colouration and leaves the finish pristine. It's not cheap, it's currently very popular and most places sell out fairly quickly, I got mine from here

http://www.cleanyourcar.co.uk/engine-and-exterior/...