Carwash

We have a "green" car wash place available to us. Biodegradable soaps, less chemicals, etc. Yes, we use it. It rains 9.5 months per year, and I'm not standing out in the rain washing the mud off the car every week.

This one, we stay in the car, put it in Neutral, and let it be rolled through. Don't have to turn the car off.

 

Even if you hand wash cars very carefully, you will still get some swirl marks in the finish. Experts agree it's almost unavoidable. I don't worry about them.

But those big brush car washes apparently will give you a load of heavy swirl marks and those look terrible in the light.

For hand washing without a hose, the word is - Optimum No Rinse is the way to go. I don't know why anyone would use a bucket of water and microfiber cloths over a solution designed for no-hose washing.

 

Automatic carwashes are...in general...very bad from a finish-scratching perspective. However, I would say you're better off having the car run through one periodically than never washing it at all.

So far as washing with only microfiber towels and water and no soap, that is not a smart washing routine. You need something to encapsulate the dirt, and although microfiber is good at doing that, you need a soap of sorts as well.

If you don't have access to a hose, or don't want to use a hose I'd recommend a product called Optimum No Rinse (ONR). ONR is mixed with a gallon of water, you can wash your car the way tsseal recommends using the ONR solution, because it encapsulates that dirt and resists scratching.

If you Google it you will find it as well as how-to videos. Great for apartment dwellers.

 

have to agree with the brushes being bad for car... live up north and will use the brushless car wash in the winter (I have limits to washing car in winter, guess i could go to the doit yourself place...

as for chemicals... use more aggressive wax???

 

Absolutely disagreed. If you run through your car in those paint killers JUST ONCE you're gonna need a lot of pain killers for your headaches caused by the swirl marks. Yes I agree you should not NOT wash your car at all, but once the paint is scratched, it's scratched! So don't be lazy, hand wash it at least once in a while.

Disagree again. Did you ever tried my way of NO CHEMICALS washing? If not then HOW do you know it's not a smart washing routine? How do you decide that a no-chemicals no-cost way of cleaning is not a smart washing routine?

Why are we so ADDICTED on chemicals? You already agreed that microfibre is good at encapsulating the dirt, why do you need to throw chemicals on top of that? Just make sure you don't reuse any part of the already dirtied microfibre cloth to wipe the car, or the dirt on the cloth will scratch the paint.

I have been cleaning my cars with microfibre cloths and plain water for years and never once have scratched my cars' paint for doing that. It saves me time, money and headaches (and heartaches); and I'm proud to say that I never contributed to the polution of the mother earth in this process.

If you can prove that throwing more chemicals to this simple washing routine is "smarter", then I'll admit I'm too dumb to understand the logic at all.

 

Well, when I was younger, I would of...and did wash my automobile by hand in the middle of winter. As I have gotten older I have learned that the center cannot hold. It doesn't really matter...eventually you will get dents, scratches and the like.

However, you can slow the process.

I personally wouldn't use an automatic car wash with brushes...ever. They will scratch.

My routine is to wash relatively obsessively in the spring, summer and early fall. Also apply numerous coats of wax. Then I "glide" during the winter. During the winter, I will go at least 3 weeks between washes. Maybe longer if the weather is bad. But then any day that I possible can wash, I take advantage of...I have found a bucket of warmer water...with some good carwash soap...and going to a coin operated carwash...it's relatively easy to quickly clean my auto...quick spray down...soap it up...quick spray down...The advantage of the coin operated hand wash is I don't have to worry about draging hoses out. I use a high quality micro-fiber wash mit...I never trust the Coin Operated "brushes".

At my age....at this period of time, I find this routine works well enough to me. Even though I know it isn't as much as I used to do. But I would still say, doing this...most of the time my auto is still cleaner...and in better shape than 98% of the vehicles I see on the road.

 

This is how your car will look after 10 years and 305,000 miles if you spend a little extra time and hand wash it once a week.

4Runner Pictures taken 09-30-09

If you take care of your Toyota car it will last many years and you can sell it for a lot when you are done. I sold that SUV for $5,000. Over the life the car I spent less than $1,000 in repairs.

 

Swirl marks aren't so hard to remove, provided you have the right tools. Etching caused by bugs, bird crap, and just general dulling and staining by not washing are harder. I've been detailing cars for 15 years, both professionally and as a hobby.

The notion that "once your car is scratched, its scratched" is just not true. $200 worth of tools and a little practice will have you removing those scratches yourself, or $150 or so paid to a professional will have them removed.

Now, the staining caused by never washing the car really cannot be removed, at least not without much more aggressive measures.

I have corrected cars that have been scratched by people washing without soap, etc. Like I said before, you cannot wash a car with just water...it will cause scratching if there is any dirt to speak of on the paint surface. You want to see swirling? Yikes.

I would absolutely never wash one of my vehicles with just water.

Like I said before, I've been detailing cars for 15 years, I have washed THOUSANDS of cars and used pretty much every washing technique in existence. Washing a car with just water and towels will scratch the paint.

Microfibers are good, but not good enough on their own. If you use the ONR we're talking about maybe 2 ounces of chemical, and its a biodegradable chemical at that.

Using a clean MF is great, but the dirt is there on the paint surface itself, and if your drag that dirt across the paint surface without something to lubricate and encapsulate it...it will scratch. Thats all soap does, encapsulates the dirt so you can wipe it away without it dragging on the paint surface.

Lots of people have marring and don't know it. If I pulled up to your house with my high powered halogen lights and showed you the damage on your paint...you'd see.

Anyways, I bet you use more chemical than me. Using ONR I re-use towels 2 or 3 times between washes, and you need only one sponge and one towel to do a whole car. You throw the multiple towels you use into the wash...with you guessed it...chemicals, way more often than I do.

Its your car, and your choice whether you believe me or not. Like I said before...I'm a professional detailer. I have since sold my detailing business, but people used to pay me $60 an hour to assess and correct the paint finishes on their cars, and very happily so. I've washed thousands of cars, and corrected thousands of cars with wash-induced marring. I know what causes marring.

If that background isn't enough for you to at least lend some credence to what I'm saying, discussing it further with you would be a waste of effort. Lots of people on PC that don't understand that a man with experience is not at the mercy of someone with an opinion. I know what I'm talking about, you can either believe me or not. Don't really care.

To everybody else, washing your car with just water will scratch it. ONR is a good solution, its very eco-friendly and cost-friendly and it will give you a quick, safe wash without a hose.

 

I'm siding with SW03ES on this one.

People are free to wash, not wash or use whatever chemicals and techniques they wish to maintain or abuse their own automobile.

I once "joked" that you could filter your own urine if you really want to save resources.

But I would HIGHLY recommend using a good carwash. Since my guess is that taken as a whole 99.9% of automatic, coin...and handwashing car washes and car washers...use some type of sud producing car wash, I'm going with the numbers on this one.

Plus common sense seems to tell me that micro-fiber towel, mitt or otherwise...it might be a REAL good idea to try to use some type of dirt and debris lifting foam...to help avoid scratches.

So I'm recommending using a car wash.

If you don't want to? Go ahead. But IMO, good feeling or not about using less "chemicals"...we can't live in this society and world without some degree of compromise...and since my automobile is a pretty big financial investment to me? I'm going to go the $10.00 or less investment into Car Wash Soap and then ignore the guilt I may or may not deserve when I see the suds rinse into the sewer grate that feeds into the river.

You realize they use Dawn Dishwashing Liquid to clean the birds that get covered with Oil during a oil spill? Sometimes chemicals can be your friend.

 

Thank you for your professional advice. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to save the world by denouncing anybody who uses chemicals to wahs his car. I'm just throwing in the discussion of a few years of my own personal experiences. If you insist I'm wrong, so be it. I know first hand if I'm wrong or not simply by looking at my own cars. And yes I did look at my cars' paint with strong light in the beginning and found it perfectly unscratched.

It maybe because I did apply a nice layer of good wax when the car was nes, and reapply the wax as often as I could have time to do so. I believe the wax acts as the lubricant between the dirt and the paint and all the dirt might have scratched was just the wax, and it never hurt the paint.

Also it maybe because I laboriously make sure no dirtied part of the cloth is being reused. I don't even reuse it by simply rinse it under water. That's why I use a dozen or so micro-fibre cloths everytime.

Yes I did have to throw the dirty cloths in the washer and had to use detergent to wash them, but that does not cause me to use more detergents because I throw them in the washer with my other household cleaning cloths so I don't have to spend any extra cent.

It very possible that we're both right, on the very possibility that not every person washing the car with micro-fibre cloths and water follows my routine strickly. One mistake and be ready for the pain killers. Yes I know you can get rid of the hair-lines of scratch marks from the paint, but it's still a headache. At least for me it is, especially just to think about the $150 - $200 (not to mention the time wasted) when that can be avoided is you do your car cleaning right every time.

Now if people still insist that they cannot, or will not, spare 5 minutes of their time cleaning a small part of their car every day (chemical or no chemical), but rather spend 1/2 hr + to go to car washes, I rest my case.

 

I have never tried to wash my car with brillo pads either, but I am pretty sure that I KNOW it is not a smart washing routine. There is just no logic to your method from my perspective.

I am glad it works for you, but if a car is dirty, I think a detergent (yes a nasty old chemical), might be needed to avoid slight scratching. If that doesn't bother you, great!

 

Why didn't you write "I have never tried to wash my car with sand papers either..."? Knowing one thing does not mean you know another thing.

It doesn't "bother" me because there's no slight scratching what so ever, and I've been doing this routine over 5 years on 3 cars, same result for all of them.

So you never tried it but you're "pretty sure" I have scratched my cars with this routine; but I, who's experienced with it for years, am not in any position to know that it doesn't? Where's the logic?

If you can use "pretty sure that you know" something without any proof or studying or even trying it out on a small scale as explanation to why you reject someone else's idea, why bother reading this forum at all. I'm pretty sure you won't need any advice from any members here, cause you should be "pretty sure" you already know everything under the sun.

 

I learn all sorts of things from this forum. Not how to wash my cars, though. Thanks for your help, though. Have a great day.

 

Right...in the beginning. Did you go look...today? Where did you look? You need to look down the side of the car, not the top surfaces because thats where the nasty grit is when you wash.

You're not wrong here, a good coat of wax will do as you describe but its still not enough to protect the paint from road grime and salt being dragged across it without any lubrication. The wax is a chemical, you can use wax but not 2 ounces of a carwashing chemical? Come on.

Its like you saying since you use sunscreen...you can just wash yourself with water and no soap, it doesn't really make any sense.

That will help, but like I said the dirt is on the paint...and whether its a clean towel or not...its still going to get drug across the paint and scratch the car.

My 15 years of experience washing thousands of cars lends me to think not.

 

Do touchless car washes use a more corrosive chemical that is bad for the paint to offset not using cloth ?

 

They generally use stronger solutions and car washes typically don't control their solutions very well.

I've been through a couple that made my eyes water. I have one near home that seems to be will maintained and doesn't usually have any strong chemical or smells so I use it. I run my black Corvette through it once a month on average and am not seeing any signs of problems after 3 years.

 

They do use very strong chemicals and will strip wax.

Generally, its not going to do any damage, and is preferable to not washing.

 

I'd love to know if that place is a chain, since you don't live that far away from me. I'm too lazy to do it all by hand except maybe in summer.

Eric

 

Another thing to keep in mind is that at least around here these full service tunnel carwashes are expensive, the one I run the Prius through from time to time (I hand wash the Lexus, but no time to hand wash the Prius) is like $23. For $25-30 you should be able to have a detailer come to your home or work and wash the car by hand.

 

How about the Magic Eraser?

SWO3ES - thanks for the car washing info - our drive through brushless is $20, but the main reason I go is for the inside cleaning. Worth it just for the windows (I seem to make them worse) get that film on the inside.

What do you recommend for wax? Thanks for suggesting the Optimum No Rinse.