Hi guys, for the winter I'd recomend a few good coats of a sealant too. Be that zaino z5 or z2, collinite 476 or 915. Another few to consider are werstatt acrylic or fk1000p. If it was me on a red car I'd probably recommend zaino z5. Multiple coats thought. For all out and out durability i'd say the fk1000p will get the top spot though. It's a fanastic paste sealant that one ;)
I try to look after my car and love it shiny but this polish, compounds, sealants sounds really technical! :(
Any one able to give me some advice on winter paint prep I understand haha. I have some swirl marks appearing, normally wash once a week and rinse my mitt frequently throughout the wash so i assume its my polish application that im cocking up?
Thinkin of claying (Virgin) before the winter...
I'm no expert but in simple terms:-
Polish is slightly abrasive and therefore ideal for removing swirl marks etc... with some care, this can be done by hand or with a machine. Polishing is ideally done after claying the surace to clear it of sticky contaminents (dont be afraid, its dead easy, get the Megs Kit it works really well).
Sealant is the next level and is used as the name suggests to seal in the ploished surface, i use Jet Seal which is easy to apply and leaves a great shine with 2 coats applied
Wax is your final layer to face the elements, you can spend anything from £10 to £3000 on wax, though a £20-£30 one will generally be good quality, Dodo Juice stuff gets a good write up and is around £30, otherwise the others mentioned in this thread will be good too no doubt.
You can skip the sealant and do a Clay followed straight away by wax and it will be fine, though if you do apply some sealant you tend to find the wax lasts better too and contaminents have a tougher job sticking to your paint work and the shine will last better.
The good news is that once you have clayed the car and re-waxed you can just keep topping it up once a month or less through the winter, you can normally tell it needs doing again when the water beading stops being so good, if you wash your car weekly in the winter it will help a huge amount!
I hope this makes sense, dont stress about it too much, if you give your car a good layer of wax even without the claying you'll be doing more than 95% of the population, cleaning your car and maintaining the paint is about the only thing you can do that actually adds value come sale time,
R