Information kindly supplied by Rich at Polished Bliss.

"I had the pleasure of working on a new Leon in black magic a few weeks ago (scratch removal), and I have to say, lovely motor and superb colour - the flake in the paint is spot on. To keep it in great condition, I can't stress enough that you need to perfect your washing technique - black shows every single little mark, so poor washing technique is a one way ticket to swirl city. At the very least you should follow the method laid out in our wash guide to the letter, and use a good shampoo with a high degree of lubricity - Poorboy's Slick n Suds is ideal in this respect. If you have a pressure washer (or plan to get one), a foam gun attachment is an excellent tool worth buying. This will enable you to apply the shampoo in the form a foam, which will sit on the paint and work away for ten minutes or more before you even need to take a mitt to it. The technique goes like this...

(i) powerwash the car down on a medium setting (ii) swap the lance for the foam gun (filled with a 1:4 mix of shampoo to water) and foam the whole car (iii) have a cup of tea (leave the foam to dwell for 5-10 mins) (iv) swap back to the lance and rinse off on a medium setting (v) swap back to the foam gun and refoam the car (vi) wash down bodywork with a Meguiars Lambswool Wash Mitt, rinsing the mitt thoroughly after each panel in a seperate rinse bucket (vii) rinse whole car off using a hose with no end attachments (viii) dry everything off with a Poorboy's Waffle Weave Towel. Then use the normal two bucket method (one suds, one rinse) and a Meguiars Microfibre Wash Mitt to wash the wheels (you may or may not want/need to use a Meguiars Wheel face Brush as well) and inside the arches (if you can get your hand in!) - rinse down with the hose and dry off with the waffle weave. This wash routine is quicker to implement than it sounds, and is the best way I've found of minimising the potential for inflicting surface damage when washing. Needless to say, I will include this in the wash guide in the future, but we've been a bit rushed off our feet over the last few weeks!

Ok, onto products that will keep it looking amazing and help protect the paint against the elements. There are two options I would recommend. The first is Poorboy's EX-P (two thin coats) followed by Poorboy's Natty's Blue paste wax (two coats). This will give a rich, wet glossy look, but the metallic flakes will still sing out in the sun. The second is Menzerna FMJ (two to three coats). In my opinion there is no finer product on black, and on black metallic the flake just explodes out the paint when the sun peeps out, and the depth and clarity in the reflections is breath taking. I did a Cupra R with this a few weeks ago, the full details were posted on here, in a thread called LCR Restoration in the show us your car section. There is a also a thread called Example of a Full Detail - C2 Part II - scroll to the bottom to see awesome images of our FMJ coated C2.

At this stage, you won't need to think about clay bars or polish for another 6-12 months, but both of the above suggestions have obvious and effective hand polish choices for when the time comes.

There are a fair few folks from Edinburgh on here who can do a mean detail, but I don't think any of them detail professionally. I have started detailing professionally in the last couple of months, and now have clients as far away as Glasgow, so if you are happy to cover petrol, I would be happy to travel down to spend a day working on your car and discussing techniques and products. If you are interested, drop me an e-mail using the following address and I'll send you through a price list and details of the services I offer.

[email protected]

Hope that helps,

Rich

Richard Cooper www.polishedbliss.co.uk "

Hope this is of some help to all that struggle to keep their Black Magic paint in top condition.

spot on to Rich again

...and in your spare time you sell Sand to Dubai!!!

...and in your spare time you sell Sand to Dubai!!!

Yes and this summer i'll be selling you some water.

Ok dumb question first, whats one of these? - Poorboy's Waffle Weave Towel

And have you got any links for this? - Menzerna FMJ

If you go onto www.polishedbliss.co.uk and have a look at the products page you should see everything you need to know in there,

The waffle weave towel is instead of chamois, IIRC this can hold upto 40x its weight in water and you can probably dry off one car with one towel without wringing, and as the towel has a "waffle weave" any particles picked up when drying are directed away from the contact surface to reduce the chance of abrasions to the cars surface.