First thing ... throw away your sponge!

Second thing ... throw away your chamois! Unless you're me, of course, in which case you abhore drying towels and will be cold in your grave before giving up your Autoglym Synthetic Chamois :)

You can tell I like my chamois, but advice you'll read on detailing forums really is right - use two buckets and use a sheepskin mitten for delicate paints and a microfibre covered sponge for a slightly stronger bite if necessary.

While I am not sold on "grit guards", I find the two bucket method to be right - before returning your mitten or sponge into the bucket of suds, clean it out in a bucket of clean water. This is prevent the transfer of grit back onto the paint. Using either a sheepskin mitten or a microfibre sponge, my technique it to gently squeeze water to create a little wave ahead of the mitten or sponge that gently lifts dirt from the paint. Whichever drying method, I like to hose the paintwork down with gentle free-flowing water to remove as much standing water as possible.

So, shampoos:

• Finish Kare 1016
• Car-Lack68 Shampoo
• Swissvax Car Bath
• Dodo Juice Basics of Bling

Finish Kare 1016 has a slickness in the bucket, which translates as a very smooth finish on the paint, gives a good clean and leaves the surface with a fantastic gloss! Drying off is made easy too, since many shampoos leave a waxiness that drags the drying towel or chamois but not Finish Kare 1016 - this interacts with the underlying LSP to improve slickness and revive beading.

Car-Lack68 Shampoo is perfect for maintaining sealant finishes and leaves a creaking clean surface that re-beads as if it had just been sealed. Aside from that, two other shampoos that are very close in terms of performance are Serious Performance Ultra Gloss Shampoo and Duragloss 901, the latter of which has a gorgeous cherry scent :)

Swissvax Car Bath is a highly concentrated shampoo which requires little more than a teaspoon of product per bucket. Leaning towards natural ingredients with some chemical magic, this shampoo is perfect for maintaining high end waxes from Swissvax and also pure waxes from Dodo Juice. Similar, although not concentrated is Zymol Auto Wash - a no-frills shampoo with a heavy leaning towards natural ingredients.

At the other end of the scale, Dodo Juice Basics of Bling does exactly what you'd expect. It is a car shampoo - it will clean your car and do that with tonnes of luxurious suds to lift the dirt off the paintwork. Sheet rinsing is a easy and drying off with a thick pile towel is a sheer pleasure as the towel glides over the paintwork. Not interfering with the underlying layers, your wax is free to shine through.

Polishing your paint is the only way to remove paint defects, such as oxidisation, bird etching, scratches, swirls and water marks. Machine polishing is the most effective way and the most effective of machines is the rotary polisher. I use a Kestrel SIM 180, which is not an expensive polisher and has a good feature set. Personally, I found that polishing with a dual-action or orbital polisher took so long that all the fun came out of it and so took up the rotary more out of a desire to show off a kind of elite skill than anything since I was very happy maintaining good paint by hand.

I used the 3M Finesse-It III Paint Rectification System:

• 3M Finesse-It III Fast Cut Plus Polish (3M50417)/Green Pad (3M50487)
• 3M Finesse-It III Extra Fine Polish (3M80349)/Yellow Pad (3M50488)
• 3M Finesse-It III Ultrafina SE Polish (3M50383)/Blue Pad (3M50388)

Combinations of pad and polish and even a single drop of a different polish can make these products a most versatile set for all colours and paint types.

For older cars in dire need of a basic clean-up, I tend to adopt the Meguiars Mirror Glaze range and Soft Buff pads:

• Megiuars #83 Dual Action Cleaner Polish
• Meguiars #80 Speed Glaze
• Meguiars #9 Swirl Mark Remover

For a newer style of polish which can achieve very fast clean-up of oxidised and weathered paintwork while finishing out to a crisp finish I am using Meguiars new breed of super-micro abrasive polishes:

• Megiuars #105
• Meguiars #205

Other machine-orientated polishes I adore for specific jobs are from Autobright:

• Autobright Top Line
• Autobright Foam Pad Polish

Autobright Top Line is a cut below most defect removing polishes and a cut above most finishing polishes making it a most useful product indeed for cleaning up newer and well kept cars - essentially, a pre-wax cleanser.

Autobright Foam Pad Polish is simply a perfect finishing polish for machine use, filling the air with a gorgeous licquorice aroma and leaving the most deep finish you could imagine, with a long work time to really burnish in that finish. Imagine the finish jewelling away under the pad in your mind and as you lift the pad away ... it appears!

By hand, I have to recommend Autoglym Super Resin Polish - this is an all-in-one polish, which has a chemical cleaning action and can remove some oxidisation and water marks, a light abrasive and good filling agents for polishing and diminishing the appearance of swirling and light scratches and an acrylic sealant finish. Autosmart Platinum is another astonishing product for hand use and while it contains more modern filling agents which do not wash out as easily as Autoglym Super Resin Polish. For new and well kept paint that simply needs a little lift, I turn to Autoglym Ultra Deep Shine. Used as an all-in-one, this does just that - it delivers a deep shine, swirls filled and a layer of sealant left behind.

There is, of course, no reason why you could not use a finishing polish which will be rich in polishing oils, a dedicated swirl mark remover or even a pure polishing glaze:

• Meguiars ScratchX 2.0
• Sonus Professional Hand Applicator

For pads, I often simply use the 3M pads hooked onto a vectro hand strap but the Sonus Professional hand applicator has two firmnesses of foam for two grades of cut. When used with Meguiars ScratchX 2.0 to actually remove swirls, rather than mask them, the pad can be flipped over to the yellow side for a little more bite if necessary and back to the black side for improving the depth of finish.

You might well have gathered that all-in-one products have some chemical cleansers in there, but there are a good number of dedicated cleansers on the market and a couple that I keep in are:

• Dodo Juice Lime Prime/Lite
• Serious Performance Paint Cleanser
• Car-Lack68 Nano-Systematic Care
• Menzerna Top Inspection

Best used as a wipe-down after polishing to cleanse the surface back to pure paint or to help remove oxidisation by hand, these products do much the same job as any pre-wax lotions and prepare the surface to receive a wax or sealant.

I like to use Serious Performance Paint Cleanser when I am going for an all synthetic session on white and light coloured cars but prefer Dodo Juice Lime Prime/Lite as a precursor to a fine wax. The Lite version does not contain abrasives, which are sometimes useful if a little swirl mark removal is required as well in preparation for the wax. Dodo Juice Lime Prime and Lime Prime Lite, especially have some glazing oils which add to the depth of the final finish.

Car-Lack68 Nano-Systematic Care is worth a mention at this point. In fact, it is an all-in-one product that gives a light polish, cleanse and leaves behind a sealant layer and is much akin to Autoglym Super Resin Polish in many ways, without the resin fillers. Perfect as a preparatory layer to its sibling Long Life Sealant or prior to one of the Collinite waxes as a means of surviving the winter!

Of course, a simple wipe-down with isopropyl alcohol diluted half and half with distilled water will achieve much the same effect, as will a light spritz of inspection products, such as Menzerna Top Inspection.

Having talked about polishes and gone some way into discussing glazes with some of the cross-over products, what exactly is a glaze? Well, historically it was simply an oily finishing product often with some filling action that left a wet look on paint finishes with a deep clarity.

As discussed above, swirl mark removers often contain some kind of glazing action as do pure polishes like Meguiars #7 Show Car Glaze. Here are a couple of my favourite dedicated glazes:

• Chemical Guys EZ Creme Glaze with Acrylic Shine
• Autobright Purple Haze
• Meguiars #7 Show Car Glaze

The Chemical Guys EZ Creme Glaze with Acrylic Shine product is superb for using after all manner of polishes and really gives a dramatic improvement when following on from a hand polish and used as part of a series of layers that might follow on with a sealant, it is an excellent choice.

Autobright Purple Haze is a close relative of Autobright Foam Pad Polish and formulated for hand use goes a long way to offering that deep finish that can be left by Autobright Foam Pad Polish when used by machine.

Meguiars #7 Show Car Glaze is actually a pure polish, high in renovating oils and quite a unique product. It can be used as often as you like and after whichever layer you like to further deepen that finish. Used on the show car circuit to give a final wipe of deep oily wetness over the top of waxes at the show, such layers can also be locked in with another coat of wax over the top. This layering method is very effective as producing a dramatic depth of finish. The rotary equivalent of Meguiars #7 is #3 Machine Glaze - superb when applied by rotary and can be applied by hand, but not to the same stunning effect as #7.

Similar, is Dodo Juice Lime Prime Lite (as detailed above), which lends a very glossy depth to the routine but does contain cleansers so cannot be used in the same way as Meguiars #7 but is very similar in application and look on freshly polished paint.

With a normal laying approach following the polish, glaze, seal and wax order it is right to discuss sealants at this juncture although sealants are perfectly good without a topping of wax and vice versa. In fact, on white, light colours, light metallics, dark metallics and even black metallic a sealant will offer a wet look and help the flake in metallics really pop out. There are a number of hybrid products that are marketed as "waxes" which are in fact for want of a better word - sealants.

Traditional wisdom that said sealants wick water away where wax beads up really gets messed up nowadays, as does the saying that waxes produce depth and warmth where a sealant will be glossy and bright. I tend to use sealants on my white car, but love the look that a wax offers on my black car. Here are a few of my favourite sealant products:

• Duragloss 601 Pre-Bonding Agent
• Duragloss 105 Total Performance Polish
• Serious Performance Super Sealant
• Finish Kare 1000P

The Duragloss 601 Pre-Bonding Agent works together with a sealant like an epoxy to assist the sealant in bonding and strengthening the finish. Used with Duragloss 105 Total Performance Polish, even on white a deep finish can be achieved with some warmth that beads up as well as any wax.

Serious Performance Super Sealant is a perfect partner to their Paint Cleanser and works especially well, as Chemical Guys Jetseal 109 does under a wax, under a final layer of a glossy sealant, like Finish Kare 1000P.

Finish Kare 1000P is by far the best sealant I have used. Manufactured in paste form the finish is truly glass-like - not glassy as in bright, which it is, but glassy as in like when you look into a mirror and can see the structure of the glass as well as the reflection. It can give the appearance of an extra-thick layer of clearcoat! I like to use this after the Duragloss 601/105 Total Performance Polish combination for a perfect finish on white.

Just as I have found a small number of sealants which I regard as perfect from the vast array on the market, I have a small number of waxes which I like to use. One could say that a wax is a wax is a wax - it should not interfere with the finish and especially so following a machine polish, a wax should simply protect that perfect finish and while that purist apporoach is most laudable we might in fact want some effects out of our wax products.

One such effect is depth and another gloss. These nuances are discussed and debated at length on detailing forums, but the other thing I want out of a wax is ease of use and my favourites are kept in for all these reasons:

• Dodo Juice Supernatural
• Dodo Juice Supernatural Hybrid
• Dodo Juice Rainforest Rub
• Dodo Juice Orange Crush
• Autoglym HD Wax
• 3M Show Car Paste Wax

Before going into further detail about how I like to layer a paste wax over a liquid wax for a perfect effect, I'll just outline what it is I like about these waxes.

Dodo Juice Supernatural is my favourite pure wax - it is manufactured without scent and without colour with only two ingredients: Carnauba Wax and Beeswax. Simply put, the purest wax for the purest look. Dodo Juice Rainforest Rub was their first wax and after a couple of reformulations, the joy of using this wax is still there. Being a soft wax, it can be used as a quick lift to a Supernatural finish, or used on its own - the beading is staggering! Orange Crush is a deep, oily wax suited to single stage high pigment surfaces.

Dodo Juice Supernatural Hybrid does not replace Supernatural, nor supplant it. Supernatural Hybrid is Supernatural which has had its DNA bonded to a synthetic backbone of enhancement and fortification. Supernatural Hybrid is not so much a "paste sealant" but an engineered version of Supernatural itself. For looks it is sensational and the water behaviour, quite staggering.

Autoglym HD Wax is formulated for use in conjunction with Autoglym HD Cleanser or Autoglym Super Resin Polish. Delivering a good gloss and protection from the beginning, those looks remain with the wax throughout its life. As a "system" Autoglym HD Wax is best maintained with Autoglym Bodywork Shampoo & Conditioner shampoo and Autoglym Aqua Wax whenever a lift to the gloss and beading is required.

3M Show Car Paste Wax is pretty much my favourite engineered wax. It leaves a perfectly boosted finish which is bright, glossy and with some extra depth but not darkened.

Backing up a step, I like my paste waxes to be the final layer and to do that without interfering with the underlying layers. Liquid waxes are argued to last as long as paste waxes, but there is something in a paste wax that I just like to reserve for that last step protection product. What I want out of liquid waxes is depth and darkening ... and a couple that I really adore are:

• Autobright Carnauba Better Wax
• Meguiars #26 Hi-Tech Liquid Carnauba Wax

The Autobright Carnauba Better Wax is a buttery wet wax and everything you would expect out of Chemical Guys Butter Wet Wax, but buttery :) Meguiars #26 Hi-Tech Liquid Carnauba Wax has an astonishing darkening effect, but can be difficult to use at times - I find Autobright Carnauba Better Wax does everything I want at that stage, but keep coming back to Meguiars #26 Hi-Tech Liquid Carnauba Wax to see if I can really get it to work for me, especially after using Meguiars #7 Show Car Glaze or Meguiars #81 Hand Polish. Needless to say, Autobright Carnauba Better Wax is a ideal topper to Autobright Purple Haze, or indeed any glaze.

For the winter months, I have a couple of tins and a bottle from Collinite that I just love using:

• Car-Lack68 Nano Systematic Care
• Car-Lack68 Long Life Sealant
• Collinite 476S, 915 & 845

For the full run down on Collinite waxes, please see my weblog but what I will say here is that these are by far the longest lasting waxes available. Due to a high solvent content, these waxes are best used after a polish or an acrylic sealant or all-in-one polishing product for while I highly recommend Car-Lack68 Nano-Systematic Care (which is also retailed under the Klasse and Jeff's Werkstat labels) with an optional layer of Car-Lack68 Long Life Sealant. Perfect winter products!

I also use a small number of spray waxes and spray sealants which I like to be able to pop a quick spritz of bling onto a finish to really set it off in good light:

• Lucas Slick Mist
• Duragloss 951
• Sonus Acrylic Glanz
• Dodo Juice Red Mist

Lucas Slick Mist is a gloss enhancing spray with some light protection that may be used as "wax it wet" type products, incorporating a drying aid and offering a layer of sealant onto the paint in one step - very useful for the winter months. Duragloss 951 is the perfect maintenance spray for Duragloss 105.

Sonus Acrylic Glanz is the perfect maintenance spray for sealant finishes, although it can also be used over waxes, to leave the car with a staggering shine and astonishing depth! Formulated with a high concentration of Car-Lack68 LLS in spray form, Sonus Acrylic Glanz offers good protection and is an excellent choice through both summer and winter months.

Last of all, Dodo Juice Red Mist is a unique product which evaporates very quickly indeed so a refined technique is necessary, but the darkened and smoothed look is staggering! Beading is astonishing, too! I like to use this product in very good light to really crisp up an already perfect finish into an unbelieveable finish 8)

Whether used to assist drying, remove dust or fingerprints from a cherished finish or simply to pop a layer of bling onto a washed car, quick detailers are really useful and I tend to stick to just a couple, now:

• Serious Performance Quick Detailer
• Serious Performance Show Detailer

Both products are available in a strong concentrate of 500 ml which makes up 1 gallon of product. The quick detailer is a no-frills product. It has some light cleaning agents in there which help remove newly formed water spots and some lubricating polymers which make it ideal for dust removal, a drying aid and just to freshen up a surface.

The Show Detailer is just that - it is a different product altogether and high in shine enhancing polymers with some good anti-static properties, making it an ideal product for refreshing a surface with an eye-popping shine. Furthermore, it acts much like a "wax it wet" product when used as a drying aid although protection is not as strong as with dedicated spray sealants.

I have tried a lot of products in this category and keep coming back to Autoglym for their Vinyl & Rubber Care, Bumper Care and Instant Tyre Dressing products, but having found Autosmart TNT Treatment I have a product that I can use on all internal trim, external trim and tyres. While not lasting as long as the individual Autoglym products on the exterior, it is such an easy product to use that it remains a favourite of mine:

• Autosmart TNT Treatment
• Autoglym Bumper Care
• Autoglym Instant Tyre Dressing
• Swissvax Pneu
• Dodo Juice Tyromania

Autoglym products are straight forward and easy to use, needing no explanation as to application.

Swissvax Pneu is, for me, the museum quality product for car tyres. That clean, yet dressed look you see on museum pieces is very much the look of Swissvax Pneu. Being water-based, it can be used all the way up to the tyre tread without fear of losing traction, as is the case with silicone-based products.

Completely different, Dodo Juice Tyromania is a black wax, much akin to a soft shoe polish. Applied with the included sponge and worked into the tyre wall, this dresses and protects the tyre with a wax. Shine can be toned down by buffing with a microfibre towel.

For application of external trim and tyre products, I like to use foam. Take a conventional washing sponge and cut it into small sections suitable for application to the sizes of your external trim or tyres.

No contest:

• Dodo Juice Clearly Menthol
• Autobright Water Slide

Dodo Juice Clearly Menthol is a high alcohol glass cleaner that leaves absolutely streak-free glass without any effort. Spray onto a lint-free towel and wipe over the glass. As the alcohol evaporates, the glass becomes crystal clear.

Autobright Water Slide is a glass sealant. Applied to pre-cleaned glass, the sealant provides a water resistance which will leave your windscreen clear of water, often without the need for the wipers! Dirt in the water cannot adhere to the surface, and so the water slides straight off.

Again, no contest:

• Gliptone Leather Cleaner (GT12)
• Gliptone Leather Conditioner (GT11)
• Gliptone Gentle Leather Cleaner (GLIE10)

Aside from smelling like proper old-fashioned car leather, these products simply work. I like to massage the conditioner into the leather by hand rather than with an applicator - use latex gloves to protect against skin irritation.

For cleaning work, I use a pure bristle nail brish for heavy soiling and like a simple microfibre towel for light cleaning.

Once again, no contest:

• Autoglym Convertible Hood Kit

Autoglym Convertible Hood Kit will leave your roof protected and beading as well as your paintwork. Use once a year towards the end of summer and take care not to get the protectant on your paintwork unless you intend to undertake a strong cleansing or polishing session.