Mobile car detailing in Molonglo Valley.

Sun, and nothing in front of it

The street trees went in with the streets. They are still young, and they do not shade a driveway yet. That cuts both ways. There is far less sap, lerp and bird mess here than in the older parts of town, so paint is not getting fouled every week. What you get instead is sun, all day, with nothing in front of it. Flat panels take it first: bonnet, roof, boot lid. Once the clear coat has gone flat, washing is not what brings it back.

Where the van sits

Blocks across Molonglo are small and the houses fill them. Some streets load from a rear lane rather than the front, so tell us how yours works. It decides where the van sits.

Paint correction and ceramic coating both need a garage or covered space, and a full day of it, dry and lit. A carport is not enough. There are apartments and terraces out here as well as houses. If your car lives in a basement bay, we can work down there wherever there is a tap, a power point and the complex's okay.

Wherever we end up we need an outdoor tap, a 240V power point and hard standing to work off. We bring the rest. We cover Denman Prospect, Whitlam, Wright and Coombs.

The window where a coating does most

A lot of the paint out here has never had a bad year. That changes what a coating is buying. On a car that has been through years of brush washes, the correction has to happen first, and that is a full day before the coating starts. On paint still close to original, the spend goes into the coating instead of into undoing damage. Three years from $997. Seven years on a large 4WD, $1,597.

New is not the same as perfect. Cars come off transport and out of dealer washbays with marks already in them, so we put a light across the panels before quoting, not after.

Parts of the district are still a building site. Earthworks and truck traffic put grit in the air, and it settles and stays. That is what the monthly plan, from $90, is for. Upkeep, not rescue.