Car Detailing Best Practices. Part 5: Car Washing

Proper maintenance of our vehicles involves a little bit of science and careful consideration to achieve the best results. Shine Plus offers some valuable tips on car detailing best practices here on our blog.

In our first three blog posts on best practices, we covered some general topics to keep in mind when caring for your vehicle. The remainder of the best practices series will be a bit more specific and start discussing the proper technique for cleaning specific parts of your vehicle. Today's blog will be on how to properly wash your vehicle.

Cleaning the exterior of your vehicle can be done in multiple ways. The three primary methods I will cover are the two-bucket wash method, a foam cannon, and rinseless washing. I won't cover these in great detail in this blog, but I will introduce them. After briefly describing the methods, I will give some general principles which apply to all methods.

The two-bucket wash method is the most simple and straightforward method. One bucket gets filled with water and a grit guard. The other bucket gets filled with water and car soap. A grit guard is a plastic insert for the bucket which allows you to scrub your wash mitt against it to remove as much dirt as possible before returning the mitt to the vehicle. After creating both buckets, you always first rinse the mitt in the water bucket to remove loose dirt, then place the mitt in the second bucket to get your soap. The reason why we don't recommend using just one bucket is that as you pass your wash mitt around the vehicle, it will pick up dirt which gets stuck in the mitt. If you press a dirty mitt against the car, it has the potential to scratch your car.

The second method is a foam cannon. A foam cannon is a reservoir that contains water and car soap which is attached to the end of a pressure washer. To use a foam cannon, you will of course need a pressure washer, and our recommendation is a pressure washer with more than 1800 psi but no more than 3400 psi. To use this method, the vehicle should be thoroughly soaked in foam, followed by agitation with a microfiber mitt or slotted sponge, and then rinsed with the pressure washer. If the vehicle is quite dirty, we recommend first pre-treating the vehicle by rinsing it down with water before you spray the foam.

The third method is rinseless washing. Rinseless washing requires only one bucket filled with water and a rinseless wash product. A slotted sponge is soaked with the rinseless wash product, passed along the vehicle with as little downward pressure as possible, and then returned to the bucket where the sponge is soaked and squeezed in the solution before again applying to the car. This method works because rinseless wash uses emulsifiers to clean the car and encapsulate dirt, making it less likely to scratch a vehicle. With rinseless washing, we recommend that you still rinse the car afterwards before drying. Technically, for a fairly clean car that is being washed with rinseless wash, the wash product can be used as its own drying aid and does not require rinsing. But this only works if the vehicle is pretty clean before washing it and is best left to experts.

Here are some principles that apply to all techniques to get the best result with washing your vehicle's exterior:

1. Always wash your vehicle in the shade when possible

2. Use a slotted sponge or microfiber mitt as these are both proven best to prevent scratches

3. Rinse the sponge or mitt often to avoid dirt accumulation

4. Use a high-quality car drying towel to remove the water after you rinse

5. Take your time and don't be rough. Detailing takes extra attention and should be fun.

And that's all, folks. More in-depth future blogs will cover these techniques in greater detail, but for now, get to it and have fun!