Car Valeting Pro – Leeds, Harrogate & York

Autoglym seem to have been on a back foot some what when it comes to wax’s and clay bars but there new 100G Detailing Clay Bar seems to brong them back to the market even more so when you look at the Rapid detailer that they do.

I havent had any hands on experience with the Autoglym Surface Detailing Clay Bar, so i cant speak for how good or bad it is.

The only thing that concerns me is that it costs £16 and its only a 100g bar. Compared to a 3oz (85g) bar of Sonus Green Clay which is nearly have the price. 

I would love to try some Autoglym Detailing Clay and give it a full review.

Autoglym Surface Detailing Clay Bar 100g

Dodo Juice – Austintacious Wax has been released to celebrate 50 years of the classic British Mini.

This Dodo Juice wax is a limited run with only 539 pots been produced, that’s one pot for every 10,000 minis.

The Austintacious Wax is even more limited as it is layered inside the pot with red at the bottom followed by a layer of white wax then topped of with blue.

Each pot of Dodo Juice  Austintacious Wax is numbered at the factory to guarantee you have received an original Pot of this wax.

A few weeks back i was lucky enough to be able to have some pictures taken whilst i was working away on a Land Rover Valet. I have selected a few of my favourites and posted them below.

Car Valeting Pro Wheel Cleaning

A picture of me cleaning the tighter parts of the alloy wheel nuts with a pastry glazing brush.

Getting stuck into cleaning a wheel arch with some APC (All Purpose Cleaner) and a dustpan brush, which i have found seems to work best.

Car Valeting Pro Wheel Arch Cleaning 2

Giving the arches another going over after the Snow foam.

Car Valeting Pro Tyre Cleaning

Giving the tyres a good clean to remove any previous dressings and mud.

Bit of an action shot, as i foam the wheel arches.

Ok so this is kind of a review, I wanted a vacuum that wasn’t going to break the bank and that you could easily get replacement parts for like crevice tools and hoses the usual sort of stuff.

I really wanted a small cylinder style vacuum like a Dyson DC 22 or even the DC 23 but at £240 upwards they were ruled straight out. After talking to a few car valeters, they all recommend a Numatic Henry Hoover.

Ok so why a Henry there fairly cheap at £99 parts and replacements fairly cheap. Also hoovers used for valeting suck up pretty much everything so this ruled out a Dyson again because it would be rattling around in that clear cylinder. The Numatic Henry has a bag on the end of the waste hose and everything stay in there so no matter how big the item been sucked up is as long as it goes down the flexi hose its going into the bag.

After using my Numatic Henry Hoover for a few car valets now, i can pretty much say that it’s the best hoover i have used.
The suction is great and it has an optional hi power button which does give a lot more suction. Henry handles everything that is thrown at him with ease and I’m yet to see a job he can’t manage, and I’d definitely rank him higher than a Dyson Vacuum

When Valeting 4×4’s such as Land Rover Discovery’s, Freelanders or even larger estate cars such as Audi A6’s and BMW 5 series, You soon realise that washing the roofs can be a major issue.
After a browse around I found that Meguiars did a Telescopic Lambswool Mop Mitt. The Mop head its self is foam backed so very soft and features a removable mop so that it can be washed after every valet, you can also get additional mop’s for around £0 on eBay with the actually  Meguiars Telescopic wash mop costing around £20.

The head is multi angled which makes cleaning 4×4 roofs very easy, and cuts doing valeting time dramatically, since the pole is telescopic it extends to around 6 feet at full length, so you can usually get down half of the roof whilst still stood at the rear of a vehicle.

This was a worthy purchase and gets used on every large vehicle valet.

Autoglym’s Super Resin Polish is mass marketed and is probably one of the best known car polished in the market place. It is easily available to everyone and at reasonable prices. I can remember that Super Resin Polish was defiantly the first polish that I bought for polishing my first car which was a Vauxhall Corsa in Silver.

I have found in general that Autoglym’s Super Resin Polish tends to work best on Silver,Grey and Red paintwork.

The key with using Super Resin Polish is to make sure that you apply it in thin coats in small areas, making sure that you work the polish well. You will only need a pea sized amount for a 1ftx1ft area. Applying to much polish will leave you with a lot of dust residue when you are buffing the polish of your cars body work and you will probably end up washing the vehicle again. Applying the polish to thickly is often the case that puts many people of using Autoglym Super Resin Polish.

I often use it out in the field when valeting cars, as you get the feeling what works best on what colour and types of vehicle.

Super Resin Polish is full of fillers which will help fill and cover any minor scratches and swirlmarks which are caused usually by a poor wash technique. Filling any minor scrathes will usually take a few attempts with Super Resin Polish, but the result is worth it, make sure though that you protect your polished paint with either a carnauba wax or a paintwork sealent.

Super Resin Polish is worthy of been bought and definetly has some great advantages

I was a bit reluctant at spending £17 on a wheel brush, but i was also sick of using brushes that had short bristles which then  made cleaning wheels a long job. After some debating i decided to go for the EZ Detail Wheel Brush.

This Wheel Brush cuts wheel cleaning down in time dramatically, i have been massively impressed with it. Until the other day when the rubber tip came off the end, this renders the brush useless as its then very easy to mark or scratch someones alloy wheels.

I emailed the USA based manufactorrer of the EZ Detail Wheel Brush, stating that the tip had come off my brush.

This morning i was very pleased to find a small parcel from them containing 2 new tips and a tube of superglue.

The Knuckle guard on the brush is great, as i often find my self leaving a job with bleeding knuckles due you clipping the alloy wheels when cleaning them

This sort of service is in my eyes outstanding and will keep me buying their products and another EZ Detail Wheel Brush when this one dies as it gets used frequently with alloy wheel cleaner that can sometimes be acidic.

So a big thanks to the guys over at EZ Detail

EZ Detail Wheel Brush

I wanted to buy RainX but its so expensive for such a small bottle i decided against it. After speaking to Donna From AutoBright.co.uk, she said they did a product which was near identical to RainX called Water Slide P.

Here’s what they say about it
“Glass treatment that is fast drying, easy to use which creates an invisible protective shield using silicone polymers. Water, sleet and snow will slide off glass surfaces that have benefited from this treatment. ”

I noticed that frost didn’t affect my windscreen as much when it was treated with Water Slide P, Rain slides of the windscreen really quickly well, noticeably when travelling over 50MPH the rain just slides straight off and on to the roof and you can pretty much get away without using the wipers.

I found the best way to apply Water Slide P was to apply it to the entire windscreen and let it dry to a haze and then apply a second layer without buffing the first off and then wait around 5 minutes and buff the entire windscreen.

I have recently got all my insurance from Lloyd Davis at valeters-insurance.co.uk.
I would highly recommend them for insurance, as they where really swift at getting documents sent to me and very helpful explaining the minefield of public liability insurance and items worked upon.

Breifly: The Autoglym Magic Spong is ment to remove scruff marks from plastic trims.

Does it work well to for me it worked very well at removing scuff marks from a Mercedes kick plate, but the sponge didn’t fair to well and fell to bits on me.

Anyway check out the before and afters.

Mercedes Trim Before

Mercedes Trim Before 2

 After a few minutes work with some APC and elbow grease you get the end result

Mercedes Trim After

Mercedes Trim After 2