Check out www.meguiars.com lots of info (archive)

Don, I was just trying to get some idea of what others do. For me, the car is under cover but in open air garage, climate is hot and humid, I use Johnson softwax, surface prep is a wash with wash/wax product like Turtle or Indian Dance, wash about once every two weeks, wax about twice a year (once in autumn and once in spring kinda), not sure about acid rain (not too much I think) but lots of pollution - the kind that gives people asthma and breathing problems. Anyway, there's very little rust on cars in HK, because no snow, no salt, and nice cars usually have chauffeurs who wipe clean the cars every day, though only with water. I wash my own 535i in the apartment parking area, and other owners think I'm crazy to be out in the sun sweating away...and when they see me waxing the car, they think I've gone bonkers, because the chauffeurs never wax their cars; probably have a no-wax clause in their employment contract - far too strenuous.
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Difficult question and I'm not sure any answers you get will help you. Why?
1) is the car garaged or left in the open?
2) what is the climate?
3) what kind of wax was used and what kind of surface prep was done?
4) how often do you wash the car?
5) when you wash it, what do you wash it with? Some washs are strip more wax than others.
6) how do you decide when it's time to wax again?
7) how much airborne polution/acid rain is there in your area and is the car exposed to it?
All of these factors will affect how long the wax appears to last. I'm sure the answers will be different in each case and may not even reflect the enviroment your car is in.
Don

A lot of posts and pics of nicely waxed cars here. I wax my 1988 535i E34 (same model as 1989 in USA - I guess BMW used Hong Kong as test market) with Johnson Wax softwax, and because HK is so polluted, dirty, rains a lot, after the first rain or first wash job in 1 - 2 weeks, the wax job is basically finito. How often do you guys wax your car(s) and how long does the wax job last? Or how do you wash the car and maintain a nice looking wax job?

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