If one is detalling their old W116 for the first time in a few years, after washing carefully, start with a good clay bar. It is designed and formulated to remove the particulate debris and contaminants that washing and polishing can’t, Mothers suggest that their Clay Bar System will remove embedded grains of metal, tree sap, airborne environmental deposits and paint overspray.
Then go to use of a Pre-Wax Cleaner which removes oxidized paint, old wax buildup and other contaminants, cleaning and shining your paint. This mild polish smoothes the edges of larger imperfections and removes small scratches.
Next round of effort is to use a Sealer & Glaze fills and hides minor swirls and defects, minimizing unsightly visual imperfections. It should also contain a super-fine polish that further improves the paint surface.
Not mandatory, but nice to get to concours or show level: use a Pure Carnauba Wax is made with the finest Brazilian #1 yellow carnauba for superior shine and protection. It is non-abrasive, you can apply more than one coat to keep your efforts well protected.
Regarding Carnuba.. it's like the old Castrol ad, carnubas ain't carnubas. Mothers gives a good description:
http://www.mothers.com/01_mothers/01_mothers_02_carnauba.html
Making easy effort for all this, I used Mothers products and their 'Wax Attack' polisher, to apply the polishes on my car. It takes about 30 minutes for each application for a W116 using this and there is no physical strain, just glide the machine over the car paintwork. Wiping off is almost as easy, make sure you have lots of clean microfibre polishing cloths if you are going to do all three phases.
So within the space of a morning your car will be gleaming!
Then you can move onto polishing the chromework and glass; use a good chrome polish for both as it will take minor scratches out of the glasswork.
For the window trims, use Inox or WD40, they remove the oxidisation better than any metal polsh.
Grease-Monkey is excused because of Django.
