runstang22

after cleaning, a regular terry cloth towel is good enough to dry it. As it gets moist it will be better at not creating dry bead spots. This works as long as you have a few coats of wax on the car. When the car is clean and still wet, take it for a trip around the block then dry it.
Before you take it to a detail shop at the dealer, who is gonna charge you over $100, think about investing in an electrical orbital polisher for $40 for a 7" and some 8" 3M waffle pads for about $30. Buy it all online.
Both Mothers and Meguires make good products for polishing and swirl remover.
I win awards at car shows all the time for my car and I've been doing this for several years. My dad who has over 49 years body repair swears by Farcla total car care for a polish. You must get a good swirl remover if you use that. Both of those will cost about $80 enough to do 2 cars, but I promise that you will like the results. You have to go online to get Farcla, it comes in from Europe.

iMuf

If you don't want to install swirls that means not touching the paint as much as possible. The best way to dry a car while not touching the car is....air. Metro is a great company that makes vacuums and blowers. And some that do both. I have one that does both and when I want to dry my car I pull it out and blow dry my car. The more you touch the paint the more swirls you will have down the road. when you do touch the paint you generally don't want to use anything that isn't micro fiber, be it your towels, wash mitt, etc.

Micro fiber actually picks up dirt and holds on to it way better then anything else. Chamois, sponges, other things like that will generally push dirt around rather then pick it up. Sponge works really well to clean wheels, convertible tops, or anything else where you can be a little rougher or need to be a little rougher. But on paint you want to be as gentle as possible.

Another thing to remember is never wipe in circles. Only go in straight lines. Circular, or pigtail, scratches and swirls are way harder to get out then straight line scratches. You can also see them at any eye level and in almost any light. Where with straight line scratches you have to be in just the right eye level with just the right light.

AJ06GT

I like grout sponges for washing cars. I'm kind of contradicting myself from earlier which is about how quickly I change my mind on detailing methods a lot of times, but if I do use microfibers I use brand new clean ones. I've recently started to drift away from them though as they hold too much dirt. I end up using only brand new ones and go through too way too many ($$). I've gone back to using a grout sponge more or a sheepskin mitt (especially with the new foam cannon I just got). You have to be careful with microfibers because they can pick up dirt and not let it go, meaning you're wiping all that dirt across your paint more. Keep folding so you're using a fresh part of the microfiber like I was saying earlier. A grout sponge with a two bucket rinse will rinse far cleaner than a microfiber will so you're pushing the dirt across the paint less.

For drying though, I do like microfibers/waffle weaves since I shouldn't be picking up any dirt after a good wash. A blower is good though, like you say, just be careful. I've seen those blow the end off before and I'd hate for that to hit my paint. Sometimes I'm a fan of the good ole high speed run down the road for a blow dry, but that rarely works as well as I'd hope, haha.

iMuf

It is very true that they hold a lot of dirt. But like you said as long as you keep flipping to a new side then you are fine. You want it to hold on to dirt, not to keep rubbing it into the paint.

evolution21

I use to work at a tire shop and we used Auto Magic. They have some pretty good stuff and they have just about anything you need to detail your car, just to bad I no longer work there as I was able to get samples all the time.
One thing is for sure, I'm never using towels again.