Car Care Tips
The best Repco products to keep your exterior clean
We detail cars across Brisbane for a living. This is the kit we would buy off a Repco shelf and, more importantly, the order you use it in. The order is what protects your paint.
Almost every swirl mark we polish out was put there during a wash
When we machine-polish a car, the damage we are removing is nearly always wash damage. Fine scratches in circles across the bonnet and doors, from somebody dragging a mitt over grit that was still sitting on the paint.
So the whole method below is built around one idea: get as much dirt off the car as possible before anything physically touches it. That is what the first step is for, and it is the step most people skip.
Six products. Most of them last a year or more.
Foam cannon pre-rinse, and why it matters more than anything else here
Bowden’s Own Snow Blow Foam Cannon · about $69 to $99 · fits a pressure washer
Bowden's Own Snow Blow Foam Cannon, about $69 to $99 at Repco. It fits a pressure washer and lays a thick layer of foam over the whole car.
The foam is not for show. It clings to the panels for a few minutes and softens the bonded dirt, and as it slides off it carries the loose grit down and off the car with it. By the time you put a mitt on the paint, the sharp stuff that causes scratches is already on the driveway instead of under your hand.
Hose the car down first, then foam it, then leave it four or five minutes. Do not let it dry on the paint in the sun. Rinse it all off top down before you touch anything.
If you do not own a pressure washer, a hose-end foam gun is less effective but still far better than going straight in with a bucket.
Wheels, while the foam is doing its work
Bowden’s Own Wheely Clean 500ml · about $20 to $29 · acid free, pH neutral
Bowden's Own Wheely Clean, about $20 to $29 for 500ml. Brake dust is hot metal that has embedded itself into the finish, and car shampoo will not touch it. That is why wheels go permanently grey-brown on a car that otherwise gets washed regularly.
Get an acid-free, pH-neutral one, which this is. Strong acid wheel cleaners work fast and will permanently dull machined, polished or anodised wheels, and that damage does not polish out. Not worth the risk to save a few minutes.
Spray onto cool, dry wheels, give it a few minutes, agitate with a soft brush, rinse hard. Do the wheels before the paint so the fallout and the splatter land on a car you are about to wash anyway.
The contact wash, with two buckets
Bowden’s Own Nanolicious Wash · about $17.50 for 500ml, $48 for 2L · 25ml per 10L bucket, roughly 60c a wash
Bowden's Own Nanolicious Wash, about $17.50 for 500ml or $48 for 2 litres. Australian made, pH neutral, and the best value on this list once you do the arithmetic.
It takes 25ml in a 10 litre bucket, which is roughly 84 washes out of the 2 litre bottle, or about 60 cents a wash. A supermarket shampoo at half the shelf price wants a good glug per bucket and works out dearer per clean.
pH neutral matters because a harsh shampoo strips whatever protection is on the paint. If you are going to the trouble of sealing the car in step 4, there is no sense washing it off every fortnight.
Two buckets. One with shampoo, one with plain water and a grit guard. Every time the mitt comes off the car it goes in the plain water first and gets rubbed on the guard, then back into the soap. Wash top down, rinse the mitt every panel. This single habit does more for your paint than any wax.
Seal it while the car is still wet
Gyeon Q²M WetCoat 500ml · about $31 · up to 12 weeks, 80ml a car
Gyeon Q²M WetCoat, about $31 for 500ml. This is the one that surprises people, because it takes about ninety seconds and does most of what a wax does.
It is a silica sealant you spray straight onto the wet car after the final rinse, then rinse off again. No buffing, no panel-by-panel work, no waiting for it to haze. Water beads off the car for two to three months depending on where it is parked and how often it rains.
It has to go on wet. It is designed to bond through the water film, and on dry paint it streaks badly and you will end up polishing it off. That is the single most common mistake with this product.
For most people this replaces waxing entirely. A traditional wax looks marginally better on a dark car in direct sun and takes an hour. This takes a minute and a half, and it is still there months later.
Dry it thoroughly, and do not leave it to air dry
Bowden’s Own The Big Green Sucker · about $31 to $44 · 70cm x 40cm, 1200gsm, holds 2.5 litres
Bowden's Own The Big Green Sucker, about $31 to $44. 1200gsm and big enough to do a whole car, which is the point: fewer passes means less contact with the paint.
Air drying is how you get water spots. Brisbane tap water carries dissolved minerals, and when a droplet evaporates in the sun those minerals stay behind as a ring. Left long enough, and especially on a hot panel, they etch into the clear coat and stop being something you can wash off. Then it is a polishing job.
So dry the whole car properly, and get the bits people forget: mirror housings, door shuts, around the badges, the tailgate seam. They hold water and then run it down a clean panel an hour later.
Do not use a chamois. A chamois drags whatever is left on the paint across it. A plush microfibre towel lifts the water instead. Wash it with no fabric softener, which clogs the fibres and ruins a towel in one load.
Tyres last, once the car is dry
Meguiar’s Endurance Tyre Gel 473ml · about $28 to $38 · one bottle lasts most people a year
Meguiar's Endurance Tyre Gel, about $28 to $38 for 473ml. It has been the default for years and nothing has really displaced it.
It is a heavily silicone-based gel, and that is both why it works and why people complain about it. The silicone is what makes it survive rain and a wash or two, where a water-based dressing is gone after one shower. It is also what makes it sling, which is the black speckles up the side of the car the next morning.
The sling is an application problem, not a product problem. Put it on thin with a foam applicator rather than squirting it round the tyre, work it into the rubber, and leave the car twenty minutes before you drive it. Wipe the tyre face with a cloth before you pull out. Done that way it does not sling, and one bottle lasts most people a year.
The whole wash, in order
1. Rinse the car top down. 2. Foam it and leave it four or five minutes, out of direct sun. 3. Wheels with Wheely Clean while the foam dwells, agitate, rinse. 4. Rinse the foam off top down. 5. Two bucket contact wash, top down, rinsing the mitt every panel. 6. Final rinse. 7. WetCoat over the wet paint, rinse again. 8. Dry thoroughly with the Big Green Sucker, including the shuts and mirrors. 9. Endurance on the tyres, thin, and leave it twenty minutes.
That is about forty minutes once you have done it twice, and it holds for two to three months.
Three things we would not buy
Wash-and-wax shampoos. They do not leave enough behind to count as protection, and what they do leave is gone by the next wash. Use a proper shampoo and seal it separately, as above.
Cheap all-in-one polishes. They fill swirl marks with waxes and oils rather than removing them, so the car looks corrected until a few washes take the filler out. Paint that genuinely needs correcting needs a machine.
A chamois. Still sold everywhere, still the wrong tool. It drags across the paint rather than lifting water off it.
Where this came from
We are a working mobile detailing business in Brisbane, not a review site. Everything here is what we use or what we tell customers to buy when they ask how to keep a car good between details. We are not paid by any of these brands and none of the links are affiliate links.
Prices were checked against Repco's own listings on 5 October 2026 and will move, and most of these go on special regularly. The links point at the product pages, which stay correct when the numbers do not.Product images are the property of their manufacturers and are used here to identify the products we are recommending. Bowden’s Own images courtesy of Bowden’s Own, Meguiar’s of Meguiar’s Australia, and Gyeon of Gyeon Australia. We are not affiliated with any of them.
What this method actually gets you
Real customer cars, washed and sealed the way described above. Drag the slider.
Before
After
Before
After
And this is what the sealant is doing
That is water sitting on top of a protected panel instead of spreading out across it. Every one of those beads leaves carrying dirt with it when the car moves, which is most of why a sealed car stays clean longer and washes faster.
A sealant off the shelf gets you some of this for a few months. A ceramic coating gets you years of it. The method above is the same either way, and the step that decides how long it lasts is always the last one.
Rather we just did it properly?
This kit maintains a car. A proper detail gets it to the standard worth maintaining, including the paint correction a wash cannot do. We come to you anywhere in Brisbane.