Join up here www.detailingworld.co.uk (put me down as your reference if you do - same username as here).

There's a mountain of information for newbies to detailing from the basics right up to pro level stuff, so you're bound to find out plenty of info.

There's nothing like a good machine polishing session to really bring out the gloss and remove years of swirls / scratches etc. and it only really needs doing once properly, so you might get one of our members close to you to do it for you, or even one of the pros?