Firstly Dan - as I have picked entirely the WRONG colour just like you have, it's not an easy one to answer....Don't get me wrong, our Nighthawk's look stunning when they are clean and polished..........for about 15-20 seconds, then the minutest bit of dust makes it look filthy!!!
Anyway, when I can can be bothered to do the car myself, I use a decent wash/shampoo formula (usually something like turtle wax shampoo), then once it's dry (takes about 3 seconds in this heat!!!), I go to work with my maguiars 3 stage wax/polish treatment...
1.Maguiars Paint Cleaner (Removes Swirls and those bloody irritating scratches made by the car wash when I CAN'T be bothered to do it myself!!!!)
2.Maguiars Polish (particularly good on Black cars)
3.Maguiars Carnauba Wax (Good protection, certainly required in the sun out here, and in the winter provides good beading too)
To apply all this I use a soft terry-toweling (?) cloth type thing, and to take it off, I use my buffing machine, which really saves time on the flatter, larger panels.......However, I still have to go back and do the finer fiddly bits that the buffer can't get into.......
All that takes me a minimum of 3 hours.....
