Exterior Detailing in Grafton, Wisconsin

From our shop

About 30 minutes

Price

Quoted

Key stage

Solvent + clay

Local factor

Parking lot film

Sealant transfer

Large surface lots get seal-coated on a cycle, and freshly applied sealant is soft for days. Tyres pick it up, and it transfers onto the rocker panels, the lower doors and the wheel arch lips as a thin tar-like film.

It is not water-soluble and it is not detergent-soluble, so every wash leaves it in place and the owner concludes the lower panels are just permanently grey. They are not. The film comes off with a solvent stage — the same one that handles road tar — and the paint underneath is usually fine.

This is the most common thing we find on Grafton vehicles and the most common thing owners have never had explained to them.

Runoff film in the low spots

A lot drains toward its low points, and the low points are where cars park. Oil, coolant, brake dust and general drip-down from hundreds of vehicles concentrates there, and every tyre that drives through it throws it onto lower panels.

That produces a greasy road-film layer that holds dirt and dulls paint, and it bonds progressively if it is left. It is a decontamination job — degreaser, iron remover for the brake dust component, then clay — rather than a wash job.

Hours in full sun

A car sitting stationary in a lot for hours takes direct sun on the same panels every time, and on the same interior surfaces through the same windows. On paint that accelerates the bonding of whatever is on the surface. Inside, it is where dash and leather UV damage accumulates.

Exterior protection after decontamination changes the first. For the second, interior protection applied before the damage is the only real answer, because chalked dash plastic does not recover.