You’ve just picked up your brand new car and you want to figure out how to protect your brand new vehicle. I’ll go and say it out right away, don’t opt for any of the services that the dealership offers you in terms of car care or paint protection. These services are highly overpriced, and in my opinion, you can do better. If you want to hire someone, you have many businesses who will do the work for less and of higher quality.

If you want to do the work yourself, it’s a much more rewarding experience to perform the work all on your own. You’ll probably spend more time and care since you’ll be working on your own vehicle. It’s not terribly difficult to care for your own car, but there are certain steps you need to take to ensure that you prep and detail your car properly.

The question that is always asked is, can you repair crow’s feet? The short answer is no, you cannot just repair it. Typically people ask if they can repair crow’s feet with the idea that it could potentially be polished, filled in with something to improve the appearance, or basically do some quick fix to resolve the issue. This is simply not possible as crows feet is the phenomenon where the clear coat has delaminated from the underlying base coat. The only way to fix crow’s feet in car paint is to sand down all of the loose clear coat, and to repaint the panel.

A popular detailer on YouTube, Scott HD, has done an upgrade of the Bauer long throw polisher from Harbor Freight. He basically swaps out the grease with a lithium grease, and then changes out the backing plate with a more useable 5-inch backing plate made by Rupes. He has done some tests that show that the upgrade results in less vibration. These changes makes for a nice upgrade for the budget Bauer Long Throw Polisher from Harbor Freight.

The short answer is YES, using dishwashing soap is likely okay to use to wash your car. You’re going to get different answers depending on who you ask. Much of the information around this subject is due to the marketing indoctrination saying that you must use a dedicated car wash soap. Reasons given for doing so include: using a non-car soap will damage the car’s paint, a pH-neutral soap MUST be used otherwise it will also strip existing protectants, and dish soap will strip the car of its existing wax/sealant/coating. I don’t believe these claims to be true and I set out to test if a dishwashing soap is ok or not to use wash your car.