Question of the Month
Below you will find a collection of our previous Questions of the Month
Question 1:
What is a clay treatment?
Clay is an engineered resin compound that removes contaminates that are bonded to the surface of your car's paint, glass or wheels. We glide the detailing clay along the surface of your vehicle's paint and it grabs anything that protrudes from the surface. This can include: brake dust, industrial fallout, acid rain deposits and rail dust. In short, detailing clay removes the things that washing alone cannot. As an added bonus, claying increases your paint's gloss and ensures our paint sealant lasts for longer by creating a perfect surface for the sealant to bond to.
Question 2:
What is a paint sealant?
At Performance Auto Detailing, we use synthetic paint sealants exclusively to protect your vehicle. A paint sealant is a smarter and more durable alternative to car wax. Unlike wax, which only lasts about a month, a paint sealant provides protection for many months, while still adding amazing depth and gloss to the paint. Sealants are typically made up of high-tech polymers that bond and cross-link together, forming a protective barrier on your paint. This protective barrier shields your paint from harmful contamination and UV rays. As an upgrade, we also offer a silica paint sealant. This sealant is composed mainly of modified silicon dioxide, also known as quartz. It creates a glass-like look on your paint and excels in dirt repellency and hydrophobicity, keeping your car cleaner for longer and making it easier to wash! With the introduction of paint sealants, waxes have become almost entirely obsolete - they take longer to apply and don't last near as long! Click here to view our previous Question of the Month.
Question 3:
Why do I need to wax/seal my car?
Many people assume their vehicle doesn't need to be waxed or sealed because it has a clear coat, but this is far from the truth. Modern clear coats are quite durable and provide great UV protection for the paint underneath. Clear coat, however, is simply paint without color, and the question then becomes, what is protecting the clear coat? In the old days of single stage paints, the solid colors would tend to oxidize quickly, and require some machine polishing to bring back the color. Since clear coats oxidize at a much slower rate, many have begun to believe that it is no longer necessary to wax or seal them, which is why we see many 3-5 year old cars on the road looking terrible. Instead of the paint color oxidizing, the clear coats of modern vehicles begin to fade and oxidize, leaving them looking old and uncared for. When this happens, your only option is to repaint the vehicle, which costs thousands of dollars. That is why it is important to keep a coat of sealant on your vehicle at all times. We recommend that all your vehicles receive our Signature Detail package at least twice a year to keep the vehicle's clear coat fully protected and looking brand new! If you sign up for our maintenance program, your vehicle will receive a coat of spray sealant that will boost the existing sealant protection on the paint during each wash, giving your vehicle the maximum possible protection at all times.
Question 4:
Do new cars need to be detailed?
YES! We frequently get calls from customers who have purchased a new vehicle or are about to. When we ask what service they are looking for, the typical response is, "Well, it's a brand new car so it won't need more than a wash." Unfortunately, this is not the case. Despite being new, it is very rare that a vehicle makes it out of the factory or dealer without swirls and minor scratches. It is also very common for dealers to induce this damage during their post-sale detail. For this reason, we advise our customers to pass on the complimentary dealer "detail" and bring their vehicle straight to us. Doing so can save you hundreds of dollars in costly paint correction services. We offer a variety of services to make your new car look the way it should - ranging from slight polishing to remove paint imperfections to paint sealants and paint coatings for protection. We also caution our customers to avoid the dealership new car "protection" services. These are often extremely overpriced and are no more than an over the counter wax application that lasts a few weeks. We can protect your new car at a fraction of the price while providing results that last using our superior methods and professional products. A proper new-car detail and regular maintenance details are crucial to protecting your investment and keeping your car looking just as good as the day you bought it for the length of your ownership