I'm looking to clean my little van for the first time and I was wandering what the best cleaning products are and what I would need...

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A lot of people on here use clay bars but I use 2 bucket method, demon snow foam, dodo juice born to be mild shampoo and dodo juice red mist spray on wax. A wool mitt and a few microfiber clothes. Should be a good clean and hardly any swirl marks :)

I have always been a fan of Meguiars products, I used it on my 17 year old toyota conquest and it made the car paint look brand new for at least 4 months, they are not cheap, but you can see the difference and to be honest I tend to polish my cars every 6 months or so with the three step application and it works.

After washing my car I use these.

Product one removes dirt out of the paint and it does, amazing to see how much dirt gets trapped inside the paint

Product two Polish gives a great wet look to the car

Product three wax, this protects it from the elements.

using a DA power system def makes things easier, be prepaired to have stiff arms when just using the wax on wax of method from karate kid.

There are many waxes and polish liquids, but try and get the best your pocket can afford, remember that it does last a long time if you are only doing your own car twice or three times a year.

http://www.meguiars.com/international

Meguiars is the way to go. I bought a starter kit for £26 .clay bar,shampoo,detailer,compound and polish. Car looked brand new.

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You can also take products from another brand. I am not against meguiars but you pay a lot for the name. Like Clarcy2013 I use a lot of DoDo Juice products. I use some ValetPro products too because they are quiet cheap.

If you really want to give your car a nice clean, you should use a claybar with claylube. This will remove a lot of decontamination from the paint. Just be sure you use enough claylube. And if I were you, I would also use the two bucket method to really clean your car without doing swirls in the paint.

To the topic: The polish should be the best for the damages in your paint. I can not say what cut it should have. But if you are going tu use an excenter machine try orange pads from Lake Country and the Menzerna SF4000 polish. The Fiesta paint is really soft so it is best to use a hard pad wit a finish polish. But if there are bigger damages you have to use polish with more cut, just try which cut works best.

Beware detailing its a slippery slope... A couple of weeks back I bought a couple of bits and after my delivery today:

However, that being said, my first detail I did this to wonderful results:

- Rinse car with hose

- Wash car with washmitt etc. (DoDo Born to be Mild)

- Clay bar with lube (I used meguiars quik clay starter kit as it was first time - Brilliant and so easy)

- Rinse and wash again

- 1 Coat of DoDo Juice Need for speed (it's an all-in-one paint cleaner/polish/wax)

- 2 Coats of DoDo Blue velvet

Took 2-3 hours but was like a different car afterwards (and that's saying a lot, my car is from 1997!).

That was all following the guide on this very forum here:

http://www.fordownersclub.com/forums/topic/8406-detailing-guide/

As you can see I got very carried after after this but that itself did a great job and it was my first time ever!