Decontamination
So you’ve washed and clayed your car. Your arm feels like it’s going to fall off from rubbing that damn claybar in every nook and cranny on your car. Your paint looks gleaming. It’s clean, right?
Probably not.
Hidden within the paint are millions of iron particles just waiting to start causing rust spots. They’re like little ferrous ninjas, hiding and biding their time, laughing at you. They need to die, agreed?
So you might be thinking that this is a problem for older cars. Your car is brand new, just picked it up from the dealer yesterday and you ordered it from the factory. It’s fine, you say. No. Cars sit on railyards between the time they are finished and the time they are shipped. They then often travel by rail to a truckyard, then by truck to your dealer. All of these places are high in iron fallout. The trains themselves kick up tons of it, the factories likely spew it out, and even most car brakes kick out metallic shavings into the air. I highly recommend EVERY new car be treated for iron contamination, at least once. After that, if you keep up with maintenance very well, you might be fine to do it once every few years.
Well how do we remove them? It’s actually super easy and one of the cooler processes in detailing. First you’ll need an iron decon product. Iron-X is basically the gold standard, but others exist. This is the Iron-X process, in a nutshell:
-Wash, clay, and dry car
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Work in shade, outside of direct sunlight!!!
-Get yourself a bucket of clean water and a detailing sponge
-Spray your Iron-X on a section and let it dwell for a few minutes (don’t let it dry)
-Take your damp sponge and massage it into the paint.
-Let it dwell for another minute or so before liberally and thoroughly rinsing it off the car
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Wear gloves when using any harsh chemical such as Iron-X. It smells like crap, you don't want that on your hands.
On lighter colors, you can see the Iron-X turning purple as it reacts with the ferrous contaminants. On darker colors, it’s still doing the same thing, it’s just hard to see.
