We are going to talk about decontamination today at Grand Sport Detailing. In Car Detailing, good preparation is key to good results. Decontamination is a major part of the prepping and detailing process. 

Contamination usually happens with a combination of a car that hasn't been detailed for a long period of time and also lacking of any form of paint protection. As you drive your car everyday, your car is exposed to road grime such as industrial fallouts, brake dust, tree sap, the list goes on. Washing your car regularly is a good idea but how ever it will not remove contaminants that are bonded strongly to the surface. We call that above-surface imperfections and below-surface imperfections are imperfections such as swirl marks, light scratches etc because they are literally, below the surface of a paint work. ​Hence why paint protection (in any form) is important.

Build up of contamination can cause your paintwork to feel rough, similar texture of a sandpaper and might even look less glossy and dull. 

You can decontaminate your car in two ways, chemical and mechanical (physical). Usually good detailers will use a combination of the both. 

Chemical Decontamination is used when a car is protected with Ceramic Quartz Coating or when the car is mildly contaminated (eg. Brand New car)
​
Types of Chemical Decontamination:

• Iron Fallout Removal - Such as CarPro's Iron X or Gyeon Iron 
  
• Tar Adhesive Removal - Such as CarPro's Tar X or Gyeon Tar

In a perfect world, contaminants wouldn't be an issue on cars. In reality, they are very normal and they are ways to reduce the chances of contaminants building up on your car's paintwork. 

Low cost solution: Washing and waxing your car in a regular basis would be able to reduce contaminants from building up your car over time, and also make sure to check regularly for contaminants with the hand or plastic bag method and use a clay bar treatment if necessary and these products are usually widely available at local auto store.

Medium cost solution: Bringing to a reputable detailer on a fortnightly or monthly basis for a maintenance detail. A good reputable detailer knows if your car needs a light or heavy decontamination and they usually have high quality waxes or sealants in their arsenal. We do have maintenance detail packages for your car care needs. Be sure to get in touch with us if you need to get your car detailed regularly.

Medium to High Cost Solution: Ceramic Quartz Paint Protection Coating. Also known as glass or nano coating. A good coating does provide a long term protection permanent protection that doesn't wear off while washing, self-cleaning effects from their very hydrophobic nature and also its inability for particles to adhere to the surface, hence a extremely low chance of getting contaminants build up on your car's paintwork. If a coated car is regularly maintained properly, not only your car will look as good as it just has been detailed from Day 1, also your car will be contaminant free at all times! We do offer ceramic coatings coatings for both brand new and used car. 

We hope this article helped you to have a better understanding on decontaminations. Feel free to contact us about anything questions you have regarding to detailing.

How water reacts on a vehicle's paintwork is definitely one of the hottest topic in the automotive detailing world. To the untrained eye, it might look the same because both water behaviours do have the "water repellency" effect. 

However, there are two main kinds of water behaviour that automotive paint protection provides: Hydrophobic and Hydrophilic. How different are they? To simplify it, hydrophobic allows water to bead into a sphere of water droplets while hydrophilic allow water to sheet off the surface instead of beading into a sphere of water.

Hydrophobic types of paint protection has been very popular and most paint protection coatings on the market promotes hydrophobic water behaviour.

Here's an example of how hydrophobic coating reacts to water: 

The pros of a hydrophobic types of paint protection is that they promote a strong self-cleaning effect, dirt and grime are less likely to stick on to the coated surface and it makes washing the car a lot easier. 

However, there a couple of cons of hydrophobic coatings. If they are not dried properly after a car wash, or rain, it will form hard water spots from the minerals build up on the water droplets and these water spots can be a problem for certain areas that rains often. 

Here's a video example of hydrophobic coating water behaviour:
Video courtesy to Project Detail in Sydney.

Hydrophilic is the opposite of Hydrophobic. Hydrophobic simply means that the surface is "afraid" of water and hydrophilic simply means that surface "loves" the water, therefore instead of water repelling the surface, it sheets off. 

Here's an example of how hydrophilic coating reacts to water: 

We hope to provide you with more understanding of the differences between hydrophobic and hydrophilic types of paint protection. Feel free to contact us if you have any questions regarding.

Car Detailing is a very broad term. To individuals, it might sound like it's just getting a car properly clean. While to some, it actually means that every single little detail of a vehicle has been looked after.

Unfortunately not everyone knows what a proper detail is, and the mindset behind detailing is very outdated to the general public. 

At Grand Sport Detailing, we are here to discuss the most common myths surrounding car detailing to give you a better understanding of what it is. 

Myth: Car wash, cleaning, detailing are exactly the same. They are just different names and their job is just to make sure a car is properly cleaned. 

Fact: Services car wash cafes provides are completely different to what actual professional details provide. A proper car detailing is about 85% more than just a normal car wash you would get at a hand car wash cafe. 

Compared to a proper detail, a normal car wash takes up about 15% of the whole picture that a professional detailer do. After a car wash, we follow up with a full vehicle decontamination on the paintwork that safely removes very fine above-surface contamination that can't be removed by a simple 2-bucket method wash. Not to mention these very fine above-surface decontamination cannot be seen with our naked eye. Our ultimate goal, is to now only wash and clean the vehicle but do so in the most gentle manner to avoid instilling imperfections in the paint such as swirl marks, marring and micro scratches from quick and improper washing done by automatic car wash and hand car wash cafes. We would then dry the vehicle with soft microfibre drying towels and air blow dry instead of using the (in)famous chamois "shammy".

After all that, we then follow up with an extensive paint polishing to remove below-surface contaminations such as blemishes, minor scratches, swirl marks etc to refine the paintwork to be close to brand new condition, or sometimes even better. After all those steps, we then apply a premium last step product (aka LSP such as waxes, sealants, and paint protection coatings) for short or long term protection. 

Myth: Hiring a professional to buff my car is not necessary. I can just buy some products at the local auto store and polish it myself by hand. 

Fact: Back in the 1960-70s era where base-clear coat paint system hasn't been introduced, this myth used to be a fact. Vehicle's paintwork back in the day are all single stage paint and paint oxidisation is a major issue with those paint systems. Oxidisation can be removed by polishing with hand with the right products. In recent years, after base-clear coat paint system introduced, base-clear coat paint is way too hard and it is impossible to hand polish to achieve half-decent result. Products you find on the shelf of auto stores are mainly glazes, waxes or sealants which contains fillers and resin that does not contain any abrasives to level the minor scratches and blemishes out. They simply 'fill' or 'mask' the imperfections so it looks good for a short period of time, but the effect is not permanent. Even if they do contain abrasives such as Meguiar's Scratch X, Ultimate Compound just to name a few, hand polishing with them does not remove imperfections like a machine polisher would.

Paint Correction (aka cut and polish, buffing, polishing etc.) performed by professional detailers are permanent results that will not be washed away or come back after a week or two. Treat it like a brand new paint. 

A weekend warrior or car enthusiast might see the value of buying equipment themselves to polish their cars to save money. We respect the enthusiasm but however keep it in mind that the cost will be equivalent or even higher than hiring a professional detailer and the results won't be as good compared if a job is done by a professional detailer. Machine polishers, compounds, cloths, chemicals and miscellaneous products such as masking tape's cost will be about to $1500 to $2000. Not to mention you'll need to learn how to use them properly in order to achieve good results. 

Myth: ​Modern clear coats are design to resist UV and it can protect itself, especially modern german ceramic hard clear coats and self-healing technology. Getting a detailer to apply a good paint protection would be a waste of money and I don't see a value in that. Paint Protection are rubbish anyway. No paint protection product can resist bird poo baking under the sun on paint. Just buy a $10 wax and apply every month, that's the best protection you can get. 

Fact: Clear coats are only designed to resist UV to a certain extent. Long exposure to the sun's UV rays (especially in Australia) will lead to clear coat fading and failure. While European, luxury and high end vehicles certainly have better quality paint, it is by no means impervious to UV, swirls or scratches.

Waxing your car is a good way to protect to some extend but not all. We did several test with conventional wax, sealant and coatings. Wax does not protect your car from chemical etching such as bird/bat poo, sealant does a okay job as long as it haven't been sit on the paint surface for too long.

Meanwhile Ceramic Quartz Coatings were resistant to chemicals of pH 2-13, UV and even physical resistance such as micro marring and very light swirl marks. Coatings are usually considered as permanent due to their inability to be washed away from regular washes and they require proper preparation stages for the coating to perform well.

Myth: Paint correction is exactly the same as cut and polish. It's just an marketing term detailers use for huge price markup. 

Fact: Cut and polish is not just using a paste/liquid compound that you apply using a foam hand applicator and "polish" the paintwork that many people still assume. These paste/liquid cut and polish compounds are generally not designed for clear coat finishes. They work on oxidised single-stage paints that came out from the factory in the pre-1980s. Going all the way back, cut and polish actually means you "cut" back the paint with fine grit sand paper and polish the sanding marks out with a rotary with a lambswool pad to refinish the car. Typically these combination restores the paintwork back to how it looks like when its new, therefore the popularity of the term. In the modern detailing world, a proper cut and polish is equivalent to Stage 3 to 4 Paint Correction where we wet-sand, heavy levelling with a rotary, level and finish it with a DA such as a Rupes random orbital polisher which it would be a week worth work.

Myth: Detailer X charges me $200 cheaper than Detailer Y. The quality is no different as from other detailers that charges more. What a deal!

Fact:​ We always hear about new detailing businesses that charges at a low rate and gets themselves busy. We respect that because we understand that a good detailer has to start somewhere.

But when comes to quality and results, its a whole different story. Good detailers charges more for a reason, a good detailer has more experience and attention to detail. To produce good results, a detailer needs to spend more time looking for little imperfections and taking extra steps in their work to achieve another level of perfection which cannot be learned overnight.

Furthermore, as a detailer progresses, they ideally invest more money into better equipment, more intensive techniques and better products. A detailer with a workshop, also has fixed overheads which are often larger meaning that his prices and work must reflect these costs.

We hoped we helped you to have a better understanding of what a proper detailing is. Feel free to contact us for any questions you might have by clicking here.