OTC Detailing

Today, we will show some products you can find over the counter that will polish up your old hazy yellow headlights to clear shine.

First things first. Let’s name the products we will be using:

A Terry cloth to apply the product initially and then a microfiber towel to wipe off leftover / excess product.

The process is extremely simple from this point on if you’ve used the powerball before. If you haven’t, then no worries. The learning curve is pretty quick. I won’t go into setting up the powerball with a drill, as this video does a great job explaining it:

Firstly you need to wash the headlight as you don’t want to be polishing dirt particles! You will just be rubbing in a mess and making the powerball dirty. Once you have attached the powerball to the drill, you can get a nice polished headlight in about 30 seconds.

Before doing any of this work on your car, you will want to tape off the surrounding painted areas of your car with a tape that will not damage your paint. The video at the bottom of this post shows the headlight masked off and how you should do it. Now on to the instructions.

First, apply the Megiuars PlastX on the Terry towel and then spread that out onto the headlight. We don’t need a lot here so remember to put enough to cover the headlight so the powerball has something to work with.

Now we simply run the mothers powerball over the headlight until you do not see the PlastX product anymore. Take the microfiber towel at this point and wipe off any product left. Now you will see a dramatic improvement.

If you still feel its not clear enough you can polish the headlight further by doing a second application.

Let’s see some before and after pictures of my car’s headlights on my Integra:

Before:

After:

If you do look close enough you will see some pitting left over. That cannot be completed with this method and would require the headlight to be wetsanded first and then polished using the same method as above. The reason is the damage is in the Plastic of the headlight and it needs to be smoothed out. For that case, you may want to use the Meguiars Professional Headlight Restoration Kit.

For a video of another Mother’s product with basically a mini powerball type of material made for your headlights watch this:

Using the larger powerball is essentially the same method shown in that video, just that the powerball is much larger.

Good luck and hope everyones night time visibility just got better.

For those that don’t know what a clay bar is and you love making your car look super clean, you need to know right now! A clay bar is the best way to get rid of the dirt and embedded contaminants in your paint you cannot see. Try this as a test: Grab a plastic bag, and rub it across your paint. If you haven’t used a clay bar before, then chances are you will feel a very gritty surface. It will almost feel like you are rubbing your hand against sandpaper (well not quite). How can that be you may ask? You wash your car once a week. Well everything and anything can get stuck into the paint and regular washing just will not take that out. A clay bar will run over this and “pick up” all of the contaminants that will not be removed from normal washing. Now that we have a basic introduction of what a clay bar is, let’s see the offering from Meguiars.

My first experience using a clay bar was with the original Smooth Surface Clay Kit provided by Meguiars. Since then, they have further improved it and it is now titled “Meguiar’s G1001 Smooth Surface Clay Bar“. They also include some nice freebies like their Cleaner Wax, and a Full sized supreme shine microfiber towel. Nice to haves and try out. Of course it also comes with a lubricant spray. You need the lubricant spray as you DON’T want to drag a clay bar across a non lubricated paint surface! Make sure the surface is not dry or else you WILL cause hazing and scratches onto your paint.

Onto the actual product from Meguiars. It does very well for an over the counter product that you can pick up in stores. Being a OTC product, they are generally more mild than products you can find elsewhere. That being said Meguiars offers a phenomenal product to the consumers. If you do the job right with the clay bar, then you will see how quickly the clay turns into a nice brown color from all the deposits in your paint. After every run of a panel on the car, you will want to flip the clay over and flatten until you get a nice new clean surface. This will let you pick up even more from the next panel you work on.

I don’t have an actual picture of my claybar after using it but found a sample of a used clay bar online that done its job (especially if it hasnt been clayed ever or in years):

Used Meguiars Clay Bar

Mine turned into this many times over when I used the Meguiars clay bar. The true test if the clay bar did its job? Test using the plastic bag method.

The Meguiars clay bar definately shines as after going over my entire car which was never clayed in the 8 years it was on the road, it felt silky smooth after and was ready to be waxed. The shine afterwards was just incredible as it truly had a clean surface for the wax to be applied on.

I highly recommend the Meguiars clay bar for those into their cars and wanting to put the effort into making their car shine even more. It does take time but the final outcome is great. Meguiars you’ve done an A++ job with getting this product on the market.

If you like to try it yourself, you can buy the product from Amazon or a few other providers.

The OTC Detailing blog is all about detailing products you can buy Over the Counter, hence the OTC short form. For Canadians this means going to your local Canadian Tire or NAPA and for Americans can also go to PepBoys or Autozone.

What you will normally find over the counter? Products from the following manufacturers:

• Mothers
• Meguiars
• Turtle Wax
• NuPolish
• Black Magic
• Simoniz

Mothers and Meguiars would be the top two followed by Turtle Wax also being a popular brand to pick up locally. You will be able to find detailing products in the stores such as:

• Carnauba Wax
• Synthetic Waxes
• Polishes
• Scratch Removers
• Swirl Removers
• Paint Cleaners
• Rubbing Compound (harder to find)
• Clay Bars
• Tire Shine
• Tire Cleaner
• Rim Cleaner
• Plastic Polish
• Trim Restorer
• Chrome Polish
• Car Wash Soap
• Microfiber Towels
• Wax and Polish Applicators
• and more…

Availability will of course depend on where you live and what the store likes to carry.

Stay tuned for write ups on the various car detailing products you can find local over the counter.