Exterior car detailing in Medway

What is on a Medway car

Chalk, tar, salt and iron

Four things bond to paint in Medway, and a wash removes none of them. Chalk dust from the Downs settles as a film that feels like fine sandpaper. Tar from the A2, the A228 and every resurfaced estate road flicks onto the sills and the lower doors in summer and sets hard. Salt, from the estuary air all year and from the gritters between mid October and mid April, dulls the clear coat and etches where droppings have sat. And iron, the brake dust of the M2 and the Medway Tunnel, embeds itself in the paint and the wheels as tiny orange specks that turn to rust streaks. Run a hand over a bonnet in Gillingham after a rinse and you will feel all four.

The Exterior Detail takes them off in order. A proper wash first, then a chemical decontamination that dissolves the iron and the tar, then a clay treatment that lifts what is left out of the clear coat until the paint is smooth again, then a spray wax that gives the gloss back and buys a few months of protection. The wheels get the deep clean, inside the spokes and the arches, the exterior plastics are restored from grey to black, and the windscreen is compounded and protected so the wipers stop juddering. It is the job that makes a five year old car look sold.

On the drive, in a morning

It takes two to three hours on a family car and needs nothing from you but the drive and a dry day. In the terraces of Chatham and the flats at Chatham Maritime the kerb or the bay works if there is room to walk around the car; your washer parks their own vehicle and the only one that needs to be legally parked is yours.

When to book it

April, September and before you sell

Two moments in the Medway year ask for an exterior detail. The first is April, when the gritters stop and a winter of salt, iron and tar has bonded to the paint; a detail then starts the summer with smooth, protected paint that the next six months of sap and dust cannot grip as easily. The second is September, after the summer of chalk dust, tree sap and the beach at Allhallows, and before the salt returns. A detail in the autumn is also the right preparation for a ceramic coating: the correction is lighter when the decontamination has already been done.

The third moment is the week before a car is sold or photographed. A detailed car in the pictures sells for more than a washed one, and the before and after photos in your wash report are the proof a buyer wants to see. Rochester's festival weekends and the Dickensian Christmas on 5 and 6 December are the days to leave the car at home and let it be detailed rather than drive into town.

Medway cars, and the detail each one needs

Medway runs to 1.35 cars a household and 40 percent of households have two or more, and the detail work here splits by where the car lives. Cars on open drives in Rainham, Hempstead and Walderslade take the chalk and the sap; cars on the peninsula and at St Mary's Island take the salt and the gulls; cars that commute the M2 take the iron and the tar. The Local Plan's 26,176 homes by 2041 add a fourth: site dust on anything parked near a new estate, from Hoo to Rochester Riverside.

• Paint that feels rough after a wash: Exterior Detail, the decontamination and clay are what fix it.
• Brown wheels that no brush shifts: Exterior Detail, the iron remover does what scrubbing cannot.
• A car worth keeping for years: Exterior Detail now, Ceramic Coating after, two years of protection.
• A car kept clean every few weeks: Deluxe Exterior, the premium wash with the protective finish.
• A car going on sale: Exterior Detail the week before the photos.

More on this: what mobile detailing involves and ceramic coating in Medway.