Instruct me oh wise ones....what should I buy/use?

[alphazulu]

Greetings fellow car lovers! I'm about to delve into spending a day with my car. I wanted to receive some feedback regarding the products I was going to use and if I should get some other stuff along the way.

Anyways, for starters I know I'm going to need to clay the car. The hood and roof feel a bit rough. I've had the car for a little over 6 months and before I took delivery it sat at the dealership for almost a year. So it definitely needs to be clayed.

I just purchased today a brand new bottle of Ultimate Wash and Wax, Smooth Surface Clay Kit, and Ultimate Liquid Wax. I also have a bottle of the Ultimate compound that I purchased a while back.

My question is the order in which I do this and do I also need to purchase the paint cleaner and polish? Or would I just be fine with the ultimate compound?

What would be a good plan of attack as far as order in using the products?

I would assume..

Wash + Dry
Clay bar
Paint Cleaner
Compound/Polish
Wax



Thanks for your input.

[Murr1525]

Re: Instruct me oh wise ones....what should I buy/use?

Are there any swirls, etc to fix up, or all in good shape?

[ffboy]

Re: Instruct me oh wise ones....what should I buy/use?

Ultimate compound is the strongest consumer product megs offers, so you may want to do a small test spot if the paint responds well to it. If not, meaning if the paint is to soft you may need to move down a step to something like swirlx or ult. polish to remove/prevent marring of the paint. If its too hard, you may need to just work the ult. compound just a bit more to effectively remove any stubborn imperfections. Oh and meguiar's 3rd(?) step in paint care is cleaning, so this includes removing paint imperfections like swirls or light scratches. Ultimate Compound/swirlx falls under the paint cleaner category.

Ideally:
1. wash
2. clay
3. paint cleaning (ult. compound/swirlX)
4.polishing (deep crystal pure polish/megs 07 show car glaze) optional
5. Protecting (ult.wax, nxt or gold class)


The wash and wax is more for maintenance in between waxing to extend your current wax protection. SO using that before any claying/cleaning/polishing may not be beneficial or a bit wasteful. You will just end up removing the wax content left by the ult. wash and wax. I'd stick with gold class or deep crystral car wash