It doesn’t matter what your car is ceramic coated or protected with, regular and careful washing is fundamental to maintaining, preserving & preventing swirls from your paintwork’s finish.
Regular washing helps contaminants from bonding, damaging, clogging up, and overwhelming your exterior surface. Careful washing and drying processes minimize potential swirls and scratches.
Sadly, normal car wash facilities, pardon the pun, isn’t up to scratch for careful washing. Their business model is as many cars in a day. The fact is detail takes time and requires quality equipment and products, all of which come at a cost.
While scratches, swirls, and other defects can be polished out. Each time it’s done, it immediately costs you to polish out, but more critically, each time it’s done, your already very thin paint gets even thinner! Short story: Over-polishing either shortens the lifetime or immediately damages your paint.
This is what a proper and careful wash process helps prevent.
This is the Way – The Steps
#1 Pre treatment – for bugs and tar
Pre-treat the front of your car and bottom sills with a Bug and or Tar Remover as necessary.
A bug remover will loosen the bug guts easier and neutralize the acidity.
Tar removers are general adhesive removers as well, so if you have tar or anything sticky like tree sap or sticker adhesive, this would be a safe way to remove it.
#2 Pre Soak/snow foam
Like when you wash very greasy dishes, hot water or soaking will help soften and break down the grime that holds larger particles of dirt. If you include a pre soak/snow foam, or at minimum a spray of a body safe degreaser or Traffic Film Remover, in your car wash routine, and then rinse your car with a pressure washer, this will be more effective than rinsing with cold water alone.
FYI:
- Hot water takes more energy and hot pressure washers are more expensive to buy and maintain hence why pre-soaking/snow foam is more popular.
- Snow foam vs spraying a degreaser/traffic film remover
- Foam has a longer dwell time, which allows it to break down grime better.
- Dwell is how long something ‘sticks’.
- Allow to dwell for as long as possible but don’t allow a product to dry!
Alternative: If you don’t have a foamer/pressure washer cannon, you can use a handheld foamer or at least a trigger sprayer and spray your presoak on.
If you don’t have snow foam, you can use a body-safe degreaser such as GTECHNIQ’s W5 Citrus All-Purpose Cleaner.
At a minimum, you can use also use a normal car shampoo at a higher concentration if it has foaming agents.
#3 Wheel Cleaning
Before beginning with washing, check if your disk brakes are cool. Rinsing it with cold water while it’s very hot may crack it.
Please don’t touch it directly. You should be able to feel the heat radiating from the disks.
Use a dedicated bucket and tools so you don’t scratch/swirl your paint. It’s helpful to have some wheel-specific detailing or even paintbrushes on hand to gently agitate and clean difficult-to-reach areas.
Don’t leave wheel cleaners on too long or allow them to dry. Since there are different types, it’s best to read their instructions for more info!
I use and sell:
- Autoglym Clean Wheels, which is an acidic based cleaner that’s every day safe. This is appropriate for paint alloys.
- Autoglym which is more an alkaline cleaner. This is appropriate for chrome, raw aluminum, etc
- Iron Removers/Wheel Cleaners
- These products remove the iron that typically used in brake pads. they are safe on all wheel types.
- I recommend them for BMW’s in specific due to their brake systems.
- GTECHNIQ W6 Iron Remover
- Autoglym MAGMA
#4 Initial Rinse
Best: Use a High-Pressure washer to do your initial rinse.
A high flow of water is more important than pressure. A wide fan angle nozzle is the safest. A too focused or pencil nozzle will damage the paint.
0.5 to 1 meter is the best distance from the nozzle/outlet to the paint surface.
If these rules are followed and you still get paint coming off, it’s either a poor paint job or you lifted paint from a fracture or chip in the paint.
Alternative: Try to use a hose attachment to give you a spray pattern that offers a bit of pressure to move dirt from the surface.
I recommend the Karcher K series for consumers, due to sheer availability and support, and Kranzle for professionals (workhorses!)
#5 Hand (aka Contact) Wash
A Hand wash is also known as a Contact wash. The previous steps should have removed a high percentage or even all of the loose particles of dirt and grime.
It’s possible to do a ‘touchless wash’ if the snow foam and shampoo is strong enough and the dirt and grime isn’t too much. Another way is to wash your car more frequently. I don’t recommend it for every wash due to possible build-up. This will only work if; you have a ceramic coating/protectant on your paint, it is in good order i.e. not contaminated, you have a good pressure washer and blower. For a touchless wash, you skip the hand wash, point no.5.
You can either apply your shampoo with a foam cannon (so shampoo is on the car) and then either wash with just a rinse bucket or you can use the Two bucket wash method, which is; #1 Wash (shampoo) and #2 Rinse (plain water)
You could also apply foam with a cannon and use a two bucket method on top of that. I recommend this on super dirty cars.
You will need:
#5.1 Wash mitt
You get wash mitts made with different material quality.
Pure Wool is luxurious. I’m of the opinion that it’s the best for preventing scratches and swirls. However, it’s crazy to maintain. Like having a high-maintenance pet.
Microfibre is what I recommend.
GTECHNIQ’s WM2 Wash Mitt is engineered for:
- Ultra low friction glide characteristics minimise swirl marks
- Holding maximum volume of wash suds
- 100% split varied length with polyester stands optimum for contaminant release
We also stock Chenille (mop style) wash mitts from Autoglym. These represent good value.
For normal hand wash, I don’t recommend using microfibre towels s/clothes or sponges. They lack surface area and safety mechanisms. Internationally you get the Big Blue/Red/Black sponges which are excellent but they are physically different from the kind of sponge we have in SA.
#5.2 Dedicated Wash Buckets
I highly recommend using two wash mitts.
One dedicated for paintwork and then another for wheels and door jambs.
If cost is an issue buy Microfibre for paint and Chenille for wheels.
#5.3 Quality Shampoo
The following is in order of strength and cost.
- Strongest: GTECHNIQ G-Wash
- Autoglym UHD Shampoo
- Great Value: Autoglym Bodywork Shampoo – for bucket washing strictly
#6 Final Rinse
The final rinse options (in order of preference):
- Best: Use an open hose and allow the water to sheet.
- PS: This uses the most water but leaves the surface drier reducing contact.
- This only works if you have a coating or protectant to allow it to bead/fall away.
- Compromise: Shower head attachment on a hose
- Least: Pressure washer
- This will be the most water friendly method
- Because it creates tiny droplets, they are to light to fall off and will need to be dried by towel
Short video demonstrating the sheeting method:
If your paint work doesn’t bead i.e. throw water off, and it has a ceramic coating then it needs to be decontaminated and a booster applied. We offer a decontamination wash, or decon wash, which is includes these wash steps plus a few extra steps. Read more about Decon washes here.
If you don’t have a coating, for instance your car has been glazed, waxed or sealed before, then it simply needs reapplication.
In some cases where there is heavy contamination. i.e. the surface feels rough, then a clay needs to be done.
#7 Drying
Drying options: (in order of preference)
- Best: Air dry only.
- This only works if you have a coating or protectant to allow it to bead/fall away.
- Compromise: Air dry partially and microfiber towel dry
- Least: Microfiber towel dry.
Quick video touching on both air drying and towel drying
The best towels to dry a car is made from microfiber. There are different ones on the market, plush & thick towels, waffle weave, and so forth. It’s a buyer’s preference.
Technique is the most important in drying. In the video, Jason uses two towels and rubs dry. Most of my clients buy one towel and in that regard, I show them the ‘blot dry / matador’ method i.e. you lay the towel over the surface and pull up the water.
The key idea is to dry carefully and conscientiously.
#8 Final Detailing
I recommend performing these final details in this order to avoid ‘fudging‘ over your previous work!
- Tyres and trim
- Quick detailer
- Glass cleaning
We provide Maintenance and Decontamination washes as part of our comprehensive detailing services from our place in Lansdowne, Cape Town.
We also sell Autoglym and GTECHNIQ products which include shampoo, snow foam, foamers/snow cannons, wash mitts, wheel cleaners, and other products as mentioned here. Click here to go to our product page
If you have any queries please call 0716868055 or WhatsApp me. I’m also available on Signal and Telegram.