Exterior car detailing in Hillingdon

Stage by stage

What each stage removes from a Hillingdon car

1. Detail valet. A pre rinse, a two bucket wash and a careful dry, so the stages that follow work on clean paint rather than grinding grit into it. On a car from under the approach this alone takes off the loose half of the airport film.
2. Decontamination. Two chemicals. The iron remover turns purple as it dissolves the brake dust that the M4, the M25 and the A40 have fired into the paint and the alloys; the tar remover lifts the black freckles the A40 and Uxbridge Road resurfacing leave on the sills. Neither involves rubbing, which is the point.
3. Clay. A clay bar worked over every panel with lubricant, lifting what the chemicals left: the bonded remains of the airport's oily film in Harlington and Hayes, lime sap in Northwood and Eastcote, and the alkaline cement dust that the Yiewsley estates, Hayes Village and the Hillingdon Hospital rebuild are putting on cars this decade. This is the stage that turns sandpaper paint into glass.
4. Deep wheel clean. Faces, barrels and the arches, with the iron remover doing the work that a brush cannot. Wheels that have been brown for a year come back silver.
5. Plastics restored. Faded trim and bumpers brought back to black rather than grey, which on a five year old car is most of what makes it look sold.
6. Windscreen compounded and protected. The wiper haze and the baked on film polished off, then a glass protectant, so the low sun on the A40 and night driving on the M4 stop being a strain.
7. Wax. A spray wax over paint that is now smooth, so the next month's airport film and the winter's salt sit on the wax and rinse off instead of bonding.

Where and when

Drive, bay or undercroft, three times a year under the approach

Ruislip and Ickenham are drive country and the easy case: the washer's van on the road, the car on the drive, room all round. In the HY and UX permit zones the car stays in its own bay and the washer parks legally nearby; Hillingdon's permits are virtual, so the visit touches nothing. An allocated space under a block at the Old Vinyl Factory or in Yiewsley works if the washer can get all the way round the car and the bay is dry. The one condition everywhere is a dry day, because the wax has to bond to dry paint, and your washer will move a booking rather than wax in the rain. Water and power come in the van.

Away from the airport, the detail has the usual two dates: spring, to lift a winter of salt, iron and tar; autumn, to lift the summer's sap and site dust and send the car into the gritting season waxed. Under the approach there is a third, midsummer, because the airport film does not stop for the weather. And for any car about to be sold, photographed or handed back, the week before is the one date that always pays. The clocks went back on 25 October, so the 10am window is the one that ends in daylight; the washer starts with the valet while the light is best for seeing the paint.

Hillingdon cars that book the detail

• Grey bonnet in Harlington after a Sunday wash: the detail for the airport film, three times a year.
• Brown alloys on an M4 commuter from Ickenham: the detail; stage two does what scrubbing cannot.
• Cement film on a car near the Yiewsley sites: the detail, because a dry cloth on alkaline dust scratches.
• Lime sap baked onto a Northwood roof: the detail; the clay lifts it and the wax keeps it off.
• A Ruislip car going on sale: the detail the week before the photographs.
• An Eastcote keeper: the autumn detail, then the ceramic coating on top.

More on this: what a mobile detail includes and ceramic coating in Hillingdon.