To Polish or Wax?

Many do not know if there's any difference between polishing and waxing a car. This two terms have different meanings.

Polish is an abrasive cleaner for your car's paint while wax is just a protectant coat. Polish brings out the shine in your car and can remove embedded dirt or surface imperfections. Because polish is a mildly abrasive cleaner, it can reduce surface scratches, depending on the severability of the scratch.

It's time to polish your car when you have noticed discoloration in your paint (due to oxidation), or that glow in your car has dissappeared. And it's time to wax your car when it loses the ability to 'repel' dirt. You know this when everytime you wash your car, you feel the dirt is very tough to get removed. You can also tell that by how repellant to water your paint is.

Then there is this magic product called 'Gel, Bug & Tar Remover', which is a cleaner where you spray a small section on the stubborn dirt, let it sits for a while and allow you to wipe off the dirt easily.

Another less common product is a Clay Bar. It looks like a clay (something like playdoh), but very much harder. It picks up everything in your car's paint, wax, polish and dirts, but will not remove your paint. This is used only before polishing a car, but is considered a product which is quite difficult to use, and better leave it to the professsionals.

Rain-X which I'm sure most of you heard of, is a product that is to be applied to your windscreen or windows, or even your headlights/taillights to repel water. With this you can drive in heavy rain with very good road visibility. All you need to do is wipe a thin layer on your window, let it dry (it dries really quickly as it contains alcohol content) and wipe it off. My preferred method is to gently let running water through the windscreen, and gently wipe dry with a chamois. In case you don't know what a chamois is, it's a piece of special cloth that is very hydrophilic , and makes drying a car effortless.

So overall, the proper process to polish and wax your car goes like this: 1) Wash and dry, 2) Bug & Tar Remover to remove any stubborn stain, 3) Clay bar - optional , 4) Polish, 5) Wax.

You may apply more than one layer of wax onto your car, the more layer you apply, the longer the wax lasts and provide more protection on your paint.