Great topic!
First, I think this is entirely dependent on how severe your sickness is. By sickness, I mean, how light of a swirl-mark will you pick up on when it is inevitably introduced into your clear-coat by the wash/dry process?
If you're like me and OG Boss Kayger, the answer is all of them. We see and lose sleep over all of them. When we get gas at night under massive LEDs and see the love marks, we cringe. When the sun hits the hood just-so, we plan our entire weekend around correcting the issues.
So, that said, if you're similarly afflicted (like the Obsessed Garage fella), then you'll do/try/experiment with lots of things to reduce the inevitable damage you're doing by washing and drying your car.
How one washes a car would depend on the situation: maintenance, removing a lot of dirt, winter salt, spring pollen, water-less situation, rinse-less, etc...
Rabbit-hole, it most certainly is! Let's agree up front that whatever is working for you and your car is the right way to do it. Some try to make this topic religious like oil type and approval. Washing a car is too joyous to ruin like that!
Here's how I do it currently:
Equipment:
- Karcher power-washer, Obsessed garage wand/hose/attachments/gun/etc...
- 3 buckets - wheels, soap, rinse, with grit-guards
- Microfiber wash mitts
- Various brushes for wheels/tires
- Ego leaf blower
- MF drying towels
Chemicals:
- P&S wheel cleaner
- Degreaser/all purpose cleaner
- Sonax bug-off
- Any good car soap (Meguiar's, P&S, 3D, I'm not picky here).
- Optimum No Rinse (amazing product)
- Some drying aid (Beadmaker, Sonax Brilliant Shine, Nextzett something-er-other)
Process:
- Wheels/tires/exhaust tips
- Rinse
- If VERY dirty, pre-treat with degreaser OR solution of Optimum no-rinse
- Rinse again if that step was needed
- Foam (this is to lift and remove more dirt)
- Rinse
- Wash panel by panel, north to south, rinsing the mitt between panels
- Rinse
- Blow-dry the big stuff off plus crevices
- Dry the rest with MF towels and drying aid
- dress tires/plastic
- clean glass
Result:
Full disclosure: my car has 174k miles on it, currently has minor swirls, and also some paint/rust issues, so these distance photos don't tell the whole tale.
mb
- Marc
When I was living with my parents I could spend all the time in the world doing my cars. Also because it was city water I really didn’t have to worry about using too much.
Now tho I’m in the country and have well water, so I need to be mindful about how much I use. Also because of this, I have high calcium in the water and get spots like crazy, so a deionizer is next on my list. Adam’s has a really cool one I should have picked up on Black Friday. It has a switch so you can decide when you want to use the deionizing filter (if that’s what it’s called). So the idea is that you wash your car with the filter turned off, just regular mineral filled water, and then when you want to do a final rinse you turn the filter on. So the last water to touch your car has been filtered out and you don’t get spots and still save water.
I do the two bucket method of course. Just griots garage stuff. I’ll do a big wash at the beginning of the spring using their high gloss wash. Then clay bar using speed shine as a lubricant. After that another quick wash and then I bust out the polishes- everything from the BOSS line. I use a GG orbital with 3 and 6 inch plates to cover all size surfaces.
Then I wrap up with their ceramic spray wax. This coming season I’ll be trying out Adam’s ceramic coating with graphine so I’ll see what all the fuss is about.
To maintain cleaning (when I have time to do that) I do GG rinseless wash best of show detailer.
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They are. You can DIY and it'll be cheaper. That's what I plan to do, but never got around to it lol
Yeah the BMW cleaner is Sonax basically.Originally Posted by Fried_Chicken
Yeah I have been working on reducing the amount of time I'm washing my DD. I still do the 2 bucket method because I go a long time between washes now, so the rinse bucket gets pretty dirty. I use Bathe Plus as my car soap, it has some sealant properties mixed in. Then I use Meguiars Hybrid Ceramic Wax as a drying aid to seal the rest of the car. First time application, you wanna do it with a dry car, after that, drying aid every wash (at least for me cause I wash every 6 weeks, normally you would do every other wash or so). Just disregard their instructions cause it's a waste of product. For the wheels, I use a boar's hair brush at the end after I'm done with the car so I could reuse what's left of the soap bucket. Use the HCW on that too. If I'm feeling fancy, I will use PERL on the tires. But usually for the DD, I'm like fuck the tires lol Sometimes, I don't even wash the wheels lol
Then when you go to wash the next time around, you'll see like 80-90% of the dirt just wash off with water (using the jet on the hose nozzle) lol and the water basically beads off, then repeat.
Right now I just use the two bucket wash method with some meguiars stuff
I know I could drastically increase the quality of my washing but that would involve buying probably a few hundred dollars worth of equipment (power washing gear, orbital buffer, air jet drying equipment, some other stuff)
2005 BMW 330i ZHP - BMWP calipers/intake/strut bar/shifter, M3 CSL front/M3 rear rotors, Coby wraps interior, BBS CH wheels, Eagle Eye LED tails, LED fog lights, GC coilovers, Sprint Booster/sport button mod, 4.5 LCM w/ programming, Xtrons 9inch HU, BSW stg1, dynamat, M3 sedan dead pedal, oCarbon CF interior trim, CF seat backs, 2x2 CF MTECH2 diffuser, CF cabin filter cover