I own a
- black 2009CTS-V,
- pearl white 08 Tahoe LTZ and
- 08 GSXR 1000
I am currently using mother clay bar, Meguiar's #7 and #26 and Meguiar's spray wax.
Those are all pretty good products, the #7 is completely non-abrasive so that means it has no ability to remove swirls and scratches, just mask the very lightest of them. The M26 is a non-abrasive pure wax, so it has no cleaning ability either, they are both great for finishes in excellent condition.
I am looking for some higher end products. I have always had a hard time getting all the swirls out of black vehicles and make them look as shinny as I like.
Everyone has problems with swirls when it comes to clear coat paints because while they tend to be harder than old fashioned single stage paints, they still scratch very easily and because the clear layer is on top of a layer of black or colored paint, the swirls show up very easily to your eyes.
Even if you polish them all out or pay a Professional to polish them all out, you then have to wash them very carefully or you'll just put them back in again. This means you can't take the cars to any type of car wash, you have to take ownership of the car wash process and only use high quality wash mitts, high quality car wash solution and good technique.
I also have not found anything to really make my Tahoe just wow me. I am looking for the best products and steps to use on newer vehicles.
You can't get a lot of depth out of light colors but you can get a lot of gloss and shine out of them by getting the paint as smooth as possible and then using a premium quality wax or paint sealant.
The trend for the last 20 years has been for car owners, (enthusiasts), to step up to machine polishing using tools like the Porter Cable Dual Action Polisher, not old fashioned orbital buffers like you can buy at K-mart or rotary buffers like body shops use but like this,
These tools are lightweight and use a Velcro backing plate that enables you to switch out and use different foam buffing pads depending upon what you want to do to the paint.
Maximizing the clarity and gloss on any of your cars will best be done by machine but you can do it by hand also. Here's a comparison that shows the time difference in working by hand or machine for just the hood of a black Lincoln.
One half of the hood by machine took me 30 minutes from machine cleaning, machine polishing and machine waxing and the other half of the hood by hand took me 1 hour and 30 minutes and a lot of passion behind the pad. See this article,
Man versus Machine
So take some of this information in and let us know if you want to do all your work by hand or if you want to move up to machine polishing and then we'll make some product suggestions that will help you maximize clarity and gloss on the clear coat finish on all your cars.
Also I need a good leather cleaner that won't effect the suede in the seats. I have only used some OTC leather cleaners that left my seats looking way to shinny for me.
There's nothing on the market that I know of that you can use safely on suede, that's just the nature of that type of material. Most people buy a car with suede material and love the look and feel and when they find out it's almost impossible to work on, as in clean a stain or apply some kind of protectant they're usually let down.
The suede used in cars is either Alcantara
or like Alcantara and here's two specific pages on washing and removing stains out of this type of material.
General washing instructions
Stain Removal
The stain removal link does a good job of breaking down stains into either Water-soluble stains or Non Water-soluble stains and the remedies.
Still doesn't read like it's easy and you have to be careful so anyone reading this thread and trying to remove stains out of Alcantara use your own judgment when following the instructions from the above website or any website.
As for the shiny portions of your leather we can help you with that but you have to be careful you don't run your applicator pad with leather protectant onto or even next to the suede portion as suede stains easy with ANY products.
