Don't believe everything you read on the internet!

[Lncanney]

The following are excerpts from an unnamed internet site. Just shows you ANYONE can write ANYTHING and put it on the internet!


Q: I wash my vehicle at home using a garden hose. Lately, the finish looks dull and marked. What could be wrong?

A: Washing your vehicle at home is extremely harmful to the finish. The University of Texas proved that a single home hand-wash can leave scratches in your finish as deep as 1/10 of the paints total thickness. Also, the average garden hose cannot supply enough water and water pressure with the detergent action to avoid damaging a vehicle's finish.

This important study concluded that automobile owners should avoid washing their vehicles at home. Only a professional car wash can provide the proper amounts of water and water pressure needed along with the appropriate soaps and waxes to safely and effectively clean your vehicle.


The tests also showed that techniques used at professional car washes are virtually harmless to automobile finishes. Findings from the University of Texas research study indicate that with the large amounts of water and specialized detergents used in professional car washes, sophisticated gloss and reflectance meter readings from new finishes used on automobiles were virtually the same before and after the equivalent of several months of normal washings in a professional car wash.


________________________________________________________

I don't know about you, but when I have been "forced" to run my truck through a car wash, I get all sorts of nasty marks (call out the 83 and 80)! I'll stick to the hand washes.

[DFTowel]

"...The International Carwash Association working through a special Carwash Research Foundation Grant..."

[Jbirk]

Jbirk explains why Professional washes are so safe...


Hard Bristle Nylon Scrubbing Brush scrubs off everything quickly.


Ultra Powerful Super Detergant (Removes Everything) and 4000 RPM cleaning brushes





Sand Blasting with Reclaimed water at 1000 PSI (neat hugh)



Supper Dooper Tripple-foam Wax (rinses off cleanly in next step )




Dry the reclaimed/recycled water on your car for an ultimate dry.


The highly trained professional that cordinated your wash:

[Jbirk]

Oh, I am sorry I forgot to mention any marks instilled in your finish are easily removed by wet sanding after your safe, automatic carwash.

[rusty bumper]

Re: Don't believe everything you read on the internet!

Originally posted by Lncanney
Q: I wash my vehicle at home using a garden hose. Lately, the finish looks dull and marked. What could be wrong?

A: Washing your vehicle at home is extremely harmful to the finish. The University of Texas proved that a single home hand-wash can leave scratches in your finish as deep as 1/10 of the paints total thickness. Also, the average garden hose cannot supply enough water and water pressure with the detergent action to avoid damaging a vehicle's finish.

They must be talking about the average Joe who uses just about anything handy to wash the car with.......No matter how dirty or abrasive his tools are.

Not to mention that he might be using the wrong selection of soap too.

[Jbirk]

Stills sounds like BS to me. Not enough pressure? Since when did you need a pressure washer?

I have a pressure washer that does 1500 to 3000 PSI, but I keep it away from my car. I use it to clean my driveway though!

I thought if you could rinse the dirt and soap off you were all set for enough pressure!

Not enough detergent action? I don't think you want too much detergent action unless you want to destroy the wax and essential oils in the paint. If I wanted detergent action, I wold use Dawn Dish Detergent... but I don't want Dawn anywhere near my car!

I am willing to say Meguiar's Nxt or Gold Class soap is just as good if not superior to the "Detergent Action" the professional wash uses. Superior in this case meaning not wax striping, harsh...

As for the Average Joe, I would assume he would use some old Wash Mitt or Spounge... the professionals offering a wash at the place writing that message charge about $10 a wash and probably see a lot of cars. My guess would be their wash mitt is no better than Joe's.

[F-150]

what about the touchfree car washes? are they safe? all it is is pressure washing and air drying by a blow drier.

[Jbirk]

Usually they are not safe for the following reason.

By law, car washes are required to re-claim or recycle the water. This means they have two choices.

1. They can collect the water in tanks and pay to truck it away to a recycling center.

2. They can re-use the water.


So, what they do is re-claim the water meaning re-use the same water that has been on someone elses car. That means there is left over dirt and grime in the water that they use to pressure wash your car.

In other words, imagine taking a pressure washer at around 1000 PSI (typical for a car wash), and having sand, dirt, and grime in the water.

You get a sand blasting effect. To give you a clean car at the end of the wash, they spray each car with about 20 to 40 gallons of fresh water... they cheat a little bit.

You will never get the results from a machine that you can get by hand. If you want a clean car, and don't want to spend much work here is what you will want to do.

1. Wash
2. .... the whole 5 step process at least as many steps as you want to do.
5. Finally, Wax it very well by hand and buff it.

Now, washing will be very easy becasue washing a waxed car is very little work when everything pretty much just rinses off.

With each wash, go over it with a Quick Wax such as Quik Wax, Wax as You Dry, Fast Wax, or Wax-It-Dry

I have just listed 4 waxes that are intended for use on cars durring the drying process. They all work very good for maintaining the wax.

The cheapest of the bunch is the Armor All Wax-It-Dry, but it doesn't come with a sprayer and IMO is not the best wax. It will at least help you prvent water spotting, and leave your car looking fresly waxed. Fast Wax is by Rain-X and I hear it works okay, but I have never used it.

Quik Wax is wonderful and smells great. It is a Meguiar's Product. The only downside of this is that it is $6 for 16oz typically even though you can get it on special for around $4 sometimes. Make sure to get the improved formula it is even better. Lastly, if you want a good quality (not so good smelling) Wax As U Dry, go for the Eagle 1 product Wax As U Dry. They have a new and improved formula and it comes in a 32 oz bottle. It is almost as good as the Meguiar's Quik Wax formula, but comes in a 32oz bottle. You can get it for $6 sometimes on sale for $4.

Armor All is 20oz for $4 and usually is the cheapest of the bunch. However, 32oz of Eagle 1 for $6 (sometimes a bit more) is the next cheapest and much higher quality than Armor All IMO. The Armor All stuff doesn't look or act at all like wax. It is more like slime and never really hazes or anything. Even though Meguiar's and Eagle 1 are a bit more money than the ArmorAll stuff, they come in a spray bottle and it takes 2 to 4 sprays per pannel when drying. Think of how many cars you can do with the 16oz container of Quik Wax! Armor All recomends 2 oz/car. That means 10 cars. If it takes only 20 sprays of Quik Wax, you will get more than 10 waxes while drying.

Lastly, I like Quik Wax because you can spray it on a dry car and it will actually haze and can be easily buffed. Of all the products, the Meguiar's Quik Wax is my favorite. (I havne't tried Fast Wax though, so I can't say)

Get one of these and use it each time you wash while you dry. You will get Streak-Free no spot dry each and everytime you wax while drying. This is more of a maintainence procedure than a wax procedure though.

Just thought I should point it out.


I must say, you need to be the sole washer of your car to ensure high quality results. Quite simply you cannot trust other people unless they are professional well trained detailers such as, Superior Shine. I haven't even met him, but I would trust him.

[Accumulator]

Originally posted by F-150
what about the touchfree car washes? are they safe? all it is is pressure washing and air drying by a blow drier.

It depends on the touchless wash. As Jbirk pointed out, it's risky and won't compare with a proper hand wash, but under some conditions it can be better than nothing. During long roadtrips, for instance, a vehicle can get soiled to the point where you really need to do *something*.

When my wife travels down south, her A8 can get *awfully* dirty, especially in the winter. There's a touchless in Memphis (or is it Nashville, I forget..) that she runs her car through and it does a "better than nothing" job. Doesn't damage the vehicle (or its finish/trim/etc.) any, doesn't strip the LSP (usually a fresh application of Meguiar's #16), and it's better than leaving it dirty the whole time she's away. She's been using the same place for many years so I have a decent timeframe for evaluating it. But that's just *one* touchless wash and I sure wouldn't generalize to the point of assuming they're all like that. And it wouldn't astound me if sometime they mixed their detergent up wrong and it *did* cause problems, but I'll deal with that if/when it happens.

[jks79ta]

Great write up. We have a "new" car wash here in town that claims " your vehicle will come out cleaner than ever before" . Too bad they use the same method in the photos above. Yeah it's clean, but now you need to have the entire car buffed and polished. God I love when people make statements like that.

[Jbirk]

I doubt it is all that clean anyway.

Honestly, the only thing I think a machine could do better is an undercarriage wash.

Don't have a clue how I would go about doing that.

I went to a gas station that has an undercarriage wash, but there is no way to just select that or I would. To get that, I would have to pay $8 and have my car swirled, so I will not wash the under carriage.

[jks79ta]

want to clean the underside?? Best tip i have is to get a good low height sprinkler that either spins or even the type that goes back and forth. hook it up to the hose, slide it under the car, and just pull the hose toward the front or back and let it work. I usually spray the under side first with a good cleaner let it soak and let the sprinkler to the rest.

[Jbirk]

I am thinking about using my Hot Rims Cleaner on the underside.

What do you think?

If it is safe on wheels (metal, coated...) it should be safe on the undercarriage. Right?

My plan is to drive my car on a ramp and then spray it with water spray and scrub the bottom then rinse it.

Sound good?

[RamAirV1]

Originally posted by Jbirk
I doubt it is all that clean anyway.

Honestly, the only thing I think a machine could do better is an undercarriage wash.

Don't have a clue how I would go about doing that.

I went to a gas station that has an undercarriage wash, but there is no way to just select that or I would. To get that, I would have to pay $8 and have my car swirled, so I will not wash the under carriage.

Nice pictorial on the "professional" car wash. That tells it all! The undercarriage wash is the toughest thing to do at home. I don't have a pressure washer and I don't have a car lift.

It would be great if they had a car wash package that consists of *just* the undercarriage wash but I have yet to see that. I have had my GTO for a year and a half and it has yet to see an automatic car wash. My TA only saw one or two automatic car washes. There are a few good automatic car washes, but they are few and far between. I only used them on the TA when winter was so bad, and the salt accumulation was so bad that I had no other choice. I was lucky to find a good place that did not swirl the paint.

RamAirV1

[jks79ta]

Originally posted by Jbirk
I am thinking about using my Hot Rims Cleaner on the underside.

What do you think?

If it is safe on wheels (metal, coated...) it should be safe on the undercarriage. Right?

My plan is to drive my car on a ramp and then spray it with water spray and scrub the bottom then rinse it.

Sound good?

I think that would work, I mostly use Simple G, i have no real reason to scrub much it's mostly just road dirt i try and get off. The bottom of the T/A stays clean as it is not a daily driver, but the other 2 get a little dirty. Try the Hot Rims and tell us what you think.