Detailing, inside and out

The foundation everything else sits on. A safe wash, full decontamination, and a finish that leaves the paint genuinely clean, not just wet-looking.

• Pre-rinse and foam, so the loose grit is gone before anything touches the paint.
• Contact wash with clean media and a two-bucket setup.
• Chemical decontamination for embedded iron fallout and tar.
• Clay treatment for whatever is still bonded to the clear coat.
• Protection: sealant, wax, or a full ceramic coating (Gtechniq Crystal Serum Ultra, System X, Ethos Graphene or Magnum) depending on the car.

Run that same wash on a car with bonded contamination still in the paint and you’re dragging grit across the panels. Decontamination is what makes the rest safe.

Interiors carry more of the day-to-day than paint does, and they’re where a car most obviously feels its age. A full interior means extraction through the carpets and fabric, steam into the vents and seams, and leather cleaned and conditioned properly.

Odour is a symptom rather than the problem, and stains vary enormously in whether they will come out at all. Both are worth understanding before you book.

Wheels take the worst of it. Brake dust is hot metallic particles that partially embed into the finish rather than sitting on it, which is why a hose stops working after a few months.

Wheels can come off for a genuine full-face, barrel and arch clean, then get coated so brake dust releases instead of bonding. Wheel faces need a coating rated for the heat they actually see.

Carefully done, with sensitive electronics protected first. Degreased, agitated, rinsed conservatively and dressed to a satin finish, not a wet gloss.

It matters most at sale time. A clean bay reads as a car that’s been looked after, and it makes any future mechanical work far more pleasant.

Not every scratch needs a panel shop. A surprising number sit entirely within the clear coat and can be machine polished out completely.

The quick test: run a fingernail across it. If your nail doesn’t catch, there’s a good chance it can be corrected. If it catches, it has gone through the clear coat and needs filling and paint.

A dash cam is only useful if it’s wired properly. Hardwired installations run power from the fuse box with cabling tucked behind trim, so there’s nothing dangling from the mirror and no cigarette lighter socket occupied.

We wire to the fuse box with the correct fuse tap and an inline fuse, and conceal the cabling behind the headlining and pillar trim, using the same careful trim removal we do for detailing. Front and rear installations both, with the rear cable routed cleanly, and parking mode wired up where the camera supports it.

Done well, the only visible part is the camera itself.

Yellowed, hazed headlights age a car more than almost anything else, and they measurably reduce night-time output.

We wet sand through grades, machine polish back to clarity, then apply UV protection. Without that last step the haze returns within months. The original factory coating is exactly what failed in the first place.

Selling

Detailing before sale is one of the few things that reliably returns more than it costs. Photos improve, inspections go better, and buyers negotiate less hard on a car that presents as cared for.

A pre-sale detail is a different job from a keeper’s detail. The goal is presentation now, not protection for five years, so the sensible spend is usually a single-stage polish, a proper interior and a good sealant.

Just collected a new car

New does not mean perfect. Transport film, dealer wash swirls and light marring are extremely common on delivery, and the best time to protect paint is before its first wash.