Car Care Advice

Maintaining black paintwork can be a bit of a handful. Black cars show the dirt, so you have to wash them often. They also show swirl marks really badly, and unfortunately, washing results in swirl marks… it is inevitable I’m afraid.

As we always say, you cannot remove dirt without agitation… what this means is that you have to use a wash mitt, brush etc. to move the dirt and loosen it. You cannot simply point a hose pipe (or pressure washer) at it and expect it to fall off. The problem is that when you agitate the dirt on your paintwork it will scratch it. And it’s these tiny scratches that you see as swirl marks.

So if you have a black car, the first thing to do is be we aware that you are going to have to take your wash regime seriously if you want to avoid swirls. (In fairness, most people couldn’t give a monkey’s about avoiding them. After all, walk down any street looking at the cars and swirl marks are the norm.  It’s only those of us who want our car in show condition that would worry about it).

I personally wouldn’t have a black or dark coloured car without a paint sealant. A sealant makes the paintwork slightly harder, reducing swirls, and it also makes it smoother meaning that dirt has less to cling to… which means less washing, which means less swirl marks.
When washing, you want to move as much dirt as possible before going anywhere near it with your wash mitt. Start off my soaking the car with water using a hosepipe or similar.
There are soap products on the market (for trade) that will remove most dirt without agitation, but these are strong soaps and they streak. They can even cause damage to metal trim such as that found around windows. But you could find a fairly strong soap, just keep in mind that it will require more rinsing. You can get a pump up spray from the garden centre for about £10 that would allow you to apply your soap without having to sponge it on.

A little trade secret here is not to be fooled into thinking that more bubbles means a better soap. It doesn’t! Try and find a low foaming soap, they usually work better on cars and have the added advantage of letting you see what you are doing. Unfortunately, most retail products produce loads of bubbles — they make them that way because that’s what the public expects.
A pressure washer is very useful at this stage. Although the kind you get in B&Q are not much good as they are all pressure and no water volume. A commercial pressure washer like the kind you find at a service station will put out about 5 times more water which is what you really need to  knock all that grit off. So it might be worth going to the garage for your initial wash. Go around the car paying special attention to the lower half. The aim here is to knock as much of the dirt and grit off as you possibly can.

The nest thing you may want to do is go around the car with a traffic brush…
“A brush?” I hear you say, “Are you mad?”.
The kind of brushes that you can get from Vikan or Arnold are really soft like a baby’s hair brush. Trust me, you would have no problem taking one of these into the shower with you… which is the test to go by. If you don’t want swirl marks, don’t use anything on your car that you wouldn’t use on yourself.
I suggest using the brush because it can get into the areas where a wash mitt won’t go. And if you use it gently… just a tickle, the bristles will push past grit rather than pushing down onto it. And of course, it won’t trap dirt, especially if you do this under running water.

Once you have done this, pressure wash the car again taking care to get the dirt our of all those corners and hard to see places (or else you will pay for it later), and then you can go over it with your wash mitt working from the top down.
We always tell people to use plenty of water, but it’s all the more important with black cars — you want to wash the dirt away from the car, NOT scrub it off.

The afore mentioned sealant is going to help keep the swirl marks at bay, but an extra coat of wax will add to this. It’s good to keep the car well waxed because the glossier the car is, the less often it will need cleaning and the easier the dirt will come off. Little and often is the key here.

…and yet, chances are that you will still get swirl marks. I know that this question was about removing swirls, but I’m not going to cover that yet, because once you have a few, the best thing to do is to hide them. As I said, they are inevitable, so it’s best to learn how to live with them or otherwise you’ll be trying to remove them every time you have washed your car. The best way to hide them is to use a wax product that contains diffusers and fillers. To some degree, most retail products have them, but some like AutoGlym’s Ultra Deep Shine contain a lot, and this product is fantastic on dark coloured cars. It doesn’t usually make them invisible, but it does reduce them and make them far less noticeable.

As for removing swirl marks? Don’t try!
If you can’t live with your swirl marks, then get a professional to remove them. Don’t think its going to be something you can do yourself. A hand polish won’t do it, to remove them you will need to buff the car or machine polish it — that’s all fine and dandy, there are plenty of enthusiasts doing this with their Porter-Cables, and I’m sure they manage fine. Removing the swirl marks is the easy part. The problem is that you are then left with buffer marks, also called holograms. These are really fine scratches, even finer than swirl marks.

I was talking to a fella not so long ago, he said he machine polished a black car and got it ready for the customer to pick up next morning and it looked wonderful. But the next morning the car looked dreadful and was covered in these smudge-like marks. This is a typical story that I hear often. Two things happened overnight. Firstly the light changed revealing holograms he couldn’t see the night before. Secondly, the product he used evaporated or at least settled. The polishes and compounds he had used (which were of the finest quality) contain siloxane as a lubricant. But it also filled the buffer marks effectively hiding them. Less than 12 hours later the buffer marks re-appeared.
Of course, you can just hide them using the kind of product I mentioned earlier, but it seems that the kind of people who want to buff their own cars want perfection, and if the light is harsh, you will be able to see the holograms. You will end up chasing perfection forever… that way lay insanity.
You are unlikely to ever be able to see buffer marks on a silver car, but black and dark coloured cars are another story. The only way to completely remove them is to use progressively finer polishes and pads. This takes a lot of equipment, a lot of money, lots of time and lots of skill. It’s a road only the very most dedicated enthusiast should start down… some things are just best left to professionals.

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