Hey Jules, not sure only a noob guide, there are some decent tips in your write up even for the car washers with experience
I shamefully admit that i don't wash my NHB one as I should and also not as often as I should.
Here's what I do.
Park car in shadow. thoroughly wet car with hosepipe to get rid of dust etc.
Bucket of warm water with Meguiars NXT car shampoo(used gold class shampoo before). Wash from bottom to top with meguiars mitt. Had lamswool one before, now got the white one.
rinse off with hosepipe from top to bottom.
Dry with Meguairs water magnet towel.I use a mini squeejee like the window cleaners for all the windows before going over the paint with the water magnet.
After that I do the wheels. I spray with a non acidic wheel cleaner and use a wheel brush before finally rinsing off with hosepipe. The use meguiars tyre dressing product to get those shiny.
And that's about all I do
Only one bucket, not two. no grit guard in bottom of bucket either.
It goes ages without a polish or gloss enhancer and don't think i've ever put a real wax on in 4 years, just polishes.
When i do polish it (just done it last week and it's very shiny now!) I use meguiars gold class.
One of the reasons that i polish so infrequently is quite honestly I find the gold class a pig to get the results I want. I find that i have to put quite allot on to get decent coverage and therefore when I want to take it all off it's really difficult. I've also had the effect where under bright sun you can see swirls from the polish like it's had too much polish put on it and not all taken off. That's why i'm afraid to use polish much.
As you can imagine I have quite allot of swirl scratching on my paintwork and on NHB you can see really well unfortunately in bright days and under artificial lighting. I've hankered after a PC for ages in the hope I would be able to remove this swirling. If I did I would certainly have to put a correct cleaning regime into place to avoid me scratching and swirling the paint again....