After getting the F355 back from its annual maintenance I like to spend an extended session washing and polishing the car over the holiday break. This sets up protection nicely for the year I find.
I start by washing the car with Dodo juice Born to be Mild Shampoo.
I use a Mint Microfibre Wash Mitt. Back when I first got the car I didn’t know better and used a ‘cheap’ sponge and chamois, both of which have left micro scratches on the paint work.
After a thorough clean, I pull the car inside and break out the random orbital polisher.
When I first got the polisher I was pretty afraid of using it on the F355, so I experimented on my daily driver. Once I was confident that I wouldn’t do too much harm, I moved onto using with the F355.
After watching many, many Youtube videos on polishing cars I was prepared to do the full paint correction process. If you have never done this then there are multitude of options with polishes and pads, all of varying ‘cuts’. Best practice is to start with the least aggressive and only use a more aggressive polish or pad as needed. This can be a quite time consuming, and I will also admit, frustrating process. You want to ‘cut’ the paintwork back only enough to also remove all the scratches and marks. Doing this on the F355 is a bit ‘botty’ clenching I must say.
Another thing that I didn’t initially appreciate is how fatiguing using a polisher can be. The polisher itself is quite heavy, ungainly and noisy. Manipulating through various polishing attempts across the whole car wears you out pretty quickly along with all the bending through different heights on the car. During my first attempt at this, I did use a more aggressive polish and pad to remove what I could. Doing so ended up with some red paint transfer onto the polishing pad. Not unexpected but also not something that I felt confident going further with. That’s why I can still some evidence of ‘improper’ washing early on in the paintwork even today.
In the end, I decided that was good enough and that I’d live with the miro scratches, even though the perfectionist in me wanted to do it ‘properly’. From that point forward I’ve decide to only ‘seal’ the car annually. I do this by using a polishing and Menzerna Power Lock Polymer Sealant. At the end of the day, if I had an infinite amount of time and energy, I’d certainly do a full paint correction and then multiple layers of protection but that would take days not hours!
After all this, I give he car a once over with Permanon Goldline PSI+14.
Permanon is an electrostatic polish which means that it bonds to the paintwork thanks to electrical attraction. It can also be safely applied to all surfaces including rubber, glass, plastic, etc. Getting polish marks on the seals of the car I find really annoying and hard to avoid when using traditional wax polish, but Permanon overcomes that. Permanon also works well in protecting the rims from brake dust as it has a boiling point higher than any brake dust that tries to attach itself to the rim. You can read more and see a cool video of how well it works here:
https://www.permanonfinishes.com/product-page/permanon-psi-14-gold-line
Permanon is my go to polish after every normal wash. It is easy to mix, goes a long way, can be sprayed on after the car is rinsed but before dried, and as I said can go onto any surface without worry. I’ve used it for years and recommend it highly.
So once a year I’ll give the F355 a deep clean, then run over it once with a random orbital polisher and a polishing pad with Menzerna Power Lock Polymer Sealant. I then finish it off with Permanon which I’ll continue to use after every wash throughout the year. That seems to work well for me. As I said, I’d love to have the time and energy to be able to fully correct the paintwork and apply multiple layers of polish but in the end it is simply too exhausting. I may get someone to take on this complete task somewhere down the track but for now, the car is clean and ready for 2021!
Love the F355 