General Car Washing & Maintenance Detailing Tips

We wanted to provide you with a few basic car care tips to help you keep your vehicles looking their best, while maintaining that all important layer of protection (waxes, sealants, coatings, etc), and avoiding harmful practices that can actually lead to causing damage in your vehicles paint, often referred to as micro-marring. We’ll focus on the best practices for hand washing and caring for your vehicle first and then we’ll cover some other topics as well such as automated car washes and the products we recommend AND where and when to use them!

Hand Washing Your Vehicle

We have found there are many misconceptions and assumptions when it comes to the proper way to wash and care for your vehicle. We’re going to outline the proper steps to follow to wash your vehicle as well as provide you with some helpful tips along the way. With a properly maintained vehicle, washing it really should be an enjoyable experience, even if you don’t like cleaning things. We swear!! If it’s not, give us a call and we can get it there for you. The truth is, your vehicle’s paint and finish is probably heavily contaminated, making it difficult to clean and rough to the feel. We can make cleaning your vehicle feel like a dream compared to that.

• We recommend you use a two-bucket wash system, one wash solution and one clean water to use for rinsing your wash mitt.
• We recommend the use of grit guards in each of the buckets to reduce the amount of loose dirt suspended in the wash solution and water.
• We recommend you only use a clean, high quality, microfiber wash mitt.
• We recommend you wash and dry your wash mitt after every use
• Use only a pH neutral car wash/shampoo, we recommend IGL Wash*
  • IGL Wash is available for purchase in our online, as well as in our Facebook, ordering page.
• Rinse your vehicle thoroughly prior to washing it to remove all of the loose dirt, dust, and debris. This will help you avoid introducing micro-marring during the wash.
• Start at the top of the vehicle and work your way down saving the bottom of the vehicle for last, then wash the wheels. Or better yet use a separate wash mitt for the wheels!
• Use long, even, and smooth overlapping back and forth motions when you are washing the vehicle, avoid the circular motions and follow the contours of the vehicle.
• Rinse your vehicle thoroughly!! Make sure you get all of the hidden cracks and crevices or you could end up with soapy water drip and\or water spots.
• Dry your vehicle thoroughly after you wash it and anytime your vehicle becomes wet to avoid developing unsightly and sometimes difficult to remove, water spots.
• We recommend you only use clean, high quality microfiber towels and/or the use of a forced air drier to dry your vehicle.
  
• We highly recommend the use of IGL Enhancer as a drying aid* to achieve a completely streak free finish every time
  • IGL Enhancer is available for purchase in our online, as well as in our Facebook, ordering page.
• Don’t forget to wipe down your door jamb area, this is another great place to use IGL Enhancer to assist with cleaning the door jambs and giving them a nice glossy look and feel as well!
  • Bonus points for popping the hood and trunk and doing the same with those jambs too!!
• Or you could always just call us, Horizon Detail, at (773) 817-4713 to do it for you!!

*See below for some helpful tips using these products and techniques. (IGL Wash, IGL Enhancer DA, IGL Enhancer QD, IGL Enhancer Sealant)

A Quick Note On Washing Your Vehicles…

While it is always, always recommended you hand wash your vehicle following the steps outlined above. Always. We realize it might not always be possible. (Queue Chicago winters.) In these cases we recommend you use a hand washing service that strictly adheres to the steps outlined above (like us), or that you use touch-less car washes to rinse your vehicle of excessive dirt, road grime, salt, etc. We HIGHLY recommend you AVOID automated tunnel washes that have any component that comes into contact with your vehicle. The very act of coming into contact with your vehicles finish can and will cause marring in the paint. This is typically found in the forms of swirl marks and are much heavier and far more difficult to correct and remove from the paint later. ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS avoid the scratch-o-matic tunnel washes. They might be cheap, but they’re a great way to put some unwanted scratches in your vehicles finish.

Product Usage Tips and Tricks

We have a wide range of really awesome car care products available to you. We actually make available a lot of the same products we use to work on and maintain our clients vehicles, to you. We offer the complete line-up of consumer available products from IGL Coatings. Below we’ll cover a few of our favorites that are sure to blow you away. Both in terms of how easy they are to use, and also in how amazingly effective they are.

IGL Wash

• IGL Wash is a pH neutral and eco friendly vehicle shampoo
• IGL Wash is one of the most effective car washes we’ve ever used
• IGL Wash is highly dillutable. At a ratio of one ounce of IGL wash to 100 ounces of water, IGL Wash is an extremely cost effective vehicle shampoo

IGL Enhancer

• IGL Enhancer is our absolute favorite product ever created
• IGL Enhancer can be used in all of these ways and more
  • As a drying aid
  • As a quick detailer
  • As a basic sealant with durability from 1-3+ months depending on how it’s applied
• IGL Enhancer utilizes the same basic technology as IGL Premier as the basis for it’s protective qualities delivering a superb, long lasting protective barrier, that looks absolutely stunning, against the elements

IGL Premier

• Ok, did we say IGL Enhancer was our favorite product ever made? Let’s give credit where credit is due…Enhancer couldn’t be Enhancer if it wasn’t for IGL Premier.
• IGL Premier is the industry’s best silica based sealant. Offering incredibly durable protection (up to 6+ months) against all of the elements, it’s a wax and sealant replacement you can trust to protect your most prized possessions.
• With IGL Premier, a little really does go a very long way. Premier is one of the easiest to apply silica sealants on the market. You simply mist a high quality MF towel and massage it into the panel until the haze disappears. That’s it.
• IGL Premier is layerable after an hour. That means added protection and insane gloss. The likes of which we’re guessing you haven’t seen. Unless you’ve had your vehicle detailed by Horizon Detail. In that case you have definitely seen some pretty serious gloss.