Detailing Blog: The Exterior Freshen Up
Detailing the exterior of a vehicle, at least the Squeak Squad way, breaks down in 3 ways. A Freshen Up designed for upkeep, a Protection Detail made to protect the vehicles surfaces and done every 6 months, and finally a Correction Detail which removes scratches and swirls from the paint in order to restore a great shine and remove minor paint damage. The Correction Detail is usually done yearly. For now though, we’ll focus on the exterior Freshen Up. The foundation of any good detail.
The Exterior Freshen Up is the most basic level of car detailing. It is a maintenance process designed to keep the vehicle looking it’s best. The Freshen Up is a far cry from a Correction Detail in both amount of skill and effort as well as time to complete. A Freshen Up keeps the car looking great between details.
The most important thing in all of detailing is the prep work. The more thorough you do the preparations, the better results you will achieve. The first thing that needs to be prepared before any detailing process is all of the tools and equipment you will use to do what it is you’re doing, in this case an Exterior Freshen Up. For a Freshen Up, we’ll need the following:
1. 2 buckets
2. 3-4 oz. of Optimum No Rinse cleaning solution
3. 3-4 gallons of water per bucket
4. Utili-Mit washing mit
5. Spray bottle of Optimum No Rinse pre-diluted into quick detailer*
6. Microfiber waffle weave drying towel
7. Microfiber glass cleaning towel
8. Chemical Guys Fade 2 Black
*instructions for dilution ratio’s on Optimum no Rinse bottle
First thing to do is to put the Optimum No Rinse into one of the buckets. This will know be known as the wash bucket (it should be noted that there will be no suds as with traditional washing). The other bucket will be filled with roughly the same amount of water with no Optimum No Rinse and will be known as the rinse bucket.
The proper cycle for washing a vehicle is for the Utili-Mit to go into the rinse bucket, wrung out, then into the wash bucket, half wrung out, then onto the vehicles surface. Everytime the Utili-Mit leaves the vehicles surface, it goes through the same cycle before it goes back into contact with the vehicle.
When cleaning an area of the vehicle, clean a 2ft x 2ft area at a time and go in a up and down, side to side motion. The area of the vehicle you’re cleaning and how often you give it a Freshen Up, will determine how often you need to re-rinse your Utili-Mit. Once an area of the vehicle is clean, use the waffle weave (WW) drying towel to dry off that area. A vehicle breaks down into 4 areas for the Freshen Up.
1. Roof/Glass
2. Doors, fenders, hood and trunk ABOVE the body line
3. Doors and fenders BELOW the body line
4. Wheels and wheelwells
Always start at #1 and work your way to #4 when giving your vehicle a Freshen Up. By following this order, you’re starting at the cleanest part of the vehicle and progressively working to the dirtier parts. Also by cleaning from top to bottom and then the wheels, you’re keeping the flow of water down. Once an area is cleaned, there is no chance of dirty water running over it again.
Some area’s of the vehicle may require going over once or twice with a freshly rinsed Utili-Mit, this is perfectly normal. However, beware of rubbing too hard on the paints surface. Somethings just weren’t meant to come off during a basic Freshen Up. Tar is a good example of this. Yes, if you push hard enough, it will come off, but when you look at the same area you’ll almost certainly see a whole lot of little scratches in the paint where the force used to remove the tar caused damage to the paint. Buffing is required to remove those scratches.
It’s also worth noting that keeping the WW drying towel away from area’s that have not been key are very important to a good Freshen Up as well as keeping the longevity of the towel. This is especially true on the wheels with break dust. For this reason, use an A/P microfiber towel to dry the wheels. They are far cheaper to replace, and can be used for something no matter how dirty they get.
Apply Fade 2 Black to tires and wipe any excess off of wheels.
Lastly, use the Optimum No Rinse quick detailer and the glass polishing microfiber to clean the windows. The biggest trick to cleaning windows is to keep them clean. The longer you wait between cleanings, the harder it gets to clean. Secondly, use the least amount of quick detailer possible. Sometimes a good amount helps break up stubborned areas, but for the most part, less is better. It is easier to dry and thus eliminate streaking if there is less to dry.
As mentioned before, the preparations are the most important thing in detailing. A proper Freshen Up is the foundation for a good looking car and doing the Freshen Up properly not only keeps our vehicle looking great, but it is also the first step in preparing the vehicle for the full detail.
All of the equipment needed to perform a Freshen Up can be purchased through Squeak Squad for. Please Email Keith@Squeak-Squad.com for details.
In 2004, NCDübs came to life in order to bring together enthusiasts of VW and Audi within the North Carolina region.