How to Safely Wash Your Vehicle

Hello!  I’m Jonathon Suess, the owner of Eagle Custom Detailing.  In this blog post, I want to share with you how to wash your vehicle in a safe manner that will help prevent self-inflicted micro scratches, swirls, and halos from being put into the paint of your vehicle.

Have you ever had your vehicle’s exterior detailed and then sometime later you walked past your vehicle and the light caught your eye at just the right angle?  What did you see?  Did you like what you saw?  Did you see something that looked like swirls, halos, or spider webs in the paint?  Did you see tiny scratches going in a kind of linear or circular pattern along the panels of your vehicle?  Do you wonder how they got as the paint looked amazing not too long ago? Do you think to yourself how that can be since you keep your vehicle clean by going through the touchless car wash at your local gas station/convenience store or perhaps you wash the vehicle yourself at the local self-serve car wash or even in your own driveway?  

The most convenient ways of keeping our vehicles clean can be the most detrimental to the clear coat/paint of our vehicles.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to tell you, you must not use those locations if you really care about your vehicle.  They are legitimate businesses and serve a purpose of convenience for those who don’t have the time or ability to wash their vehicles on their own.  A little food for thought, though.  The chemicals drizzled all over your beloved vehicles are quite caustic and corrosive, and over time dull the luster of the clear coat/paint.  That is why you see swirls and halos in your paint as the chemicals used to clean the exterior of the vehicle lightly etch all exterior surfaces of your vehicle over time as you repeatedly go to such facilities.

But Jonathon, I wash my vehicles at home by hand religiously.  How am I scratching my vehicle?  You’re scratching your vehicles, because what you are using to wash your vehicle is most likely just pushing around dirt that is already on your vehicle all over the rest of the exterior.  Maybe you use a sponge or a nice-looking wash mitt.  Both can be effective at cleaning your vehicle, but if they aren’t properly rinsed between cleaning each panel you are essentially putting the dirt you just took off your vehicle back onto another panel and pushing it around creating micro scratches everywhere.  Don’t feel bad, it’s not something we think of even though it makes perfect sense.

In the detailing community there is debate all the time about which method one should use to wash the exterior of a vehicle as safely as possible.  Some include just one bucket and ten wash mitts or sponges, while others include one or two wash mitts and ten buckets, one for soap and the rest to rinse your mitt or sponge out nine times before getting it back to the soap.  They’re all effective, but not all that practical when it comes to the lay person who wants to wash their vehicle safely and efficiently.  While you’re never going to be able to prevent all scratches, swirls, and halos from washing your car by hand you can prevent the bulk of them by using the two-bucket method.  

To perform the two-bucket method you will want to get yourself two five-gallon buckets, something called a “grit guard” to put in the bottom of each bucket, at the very least a nice microfiber wash mitt or pad, and a car soap that is close to pH neutral (pH of 6-8).  There is a plethora of great soaps out there with and without, waxes, sealants, and even a touch of SiO2 (the main ingredient in ceramic coatings).  If your vehicle has a ceramic coating on it, pH neutral soaps are an absolute must and “ceramic soaps” do a great job in helping maintain a slickness and superior gloss of your coating.  Believe it or not, but baby shampoo is also pH neutral and can be used with great efficacy on coated vehicles.

After you’ve gotten the buckets, grit guards, mitts/pads, and soap you obviously need a water source unless you’re in an area where washing your vehicle at home is prohibited at which case you will want to either find a quality rinse less wash or a waterless wash (that should be for very lightly soiled exteriors as they aren’t suitable for more heavily soiled vehicle exteriors.  Optimum No-Rinse is the pioneer of the rinse less wash and still very effective, but there are several out there now that are just as good if not better.  I’ll get into this method a little later.  For now, with what I’ve discussed to this point you’re ready to get going.  All you must do is get your vehicle into a place you can wash it, preferably out of direct sunlight.

Once you’ve situated your vehicle in a spot in an enclosed or shaded area, you’ll want to spray down your vehicle with water using the highest pressure setting you can on your hose nozzle starting at the top and working your way down.  There are several good nozzles out there that are adjustable to give you a good jet to attack any dirty areas like the sides of the vehicle, the wheels, the wheel wells, and areas covered in dead bugs.  On the areas covered in bug debris, it’s best to use a quality bug remover.  Just like the soaps you can find good options locally at automotive parts stores.  Spray the affected areas and let it dwell for a bit.  While having a paint safe bug sponge is a nice thing to have it’s not necessary.  After you’ve let the bug remover dwell for thirty seconds to a minute take a microfiber towel folded in quarters from the soapy water and lightly scrub to remove the bug debris.  Once this is done to your satisfaction, rinse the areas and proceed to washing the whole vehicle.

When washing the exterior of the vehicle after it has been sprayed down with water, start at the top of the vehicle (use a small ladder or step stool to get to the top of taller vehicles if you can’t reach, and don’t use a brush as that is a sure way to scratch your vehicle) every time as any soap running off of the highest parts of the vehicle will go down onto other soiled areas helping loosen the dirt and film on the paint.  Here, I like to start with the roof on one side of the vehicle then do the windshield moving to that side of the hood, the rear window, and the trunk lid if it’s a car.  After that I move to the side windows and then the top halves of the doors and quarter panels going from the front of the car to the rear.  I repeat this process for the other side of the vehicle finishing with the rear-end of the vehicle as that is where the most dirt collects as we drive.

Now that I’ve established a path to washing the car, I want to discuss how to use the two-bucket part of this procedure.  Your wash mitt/pad will start out in the soapy water bucket.  You’ll bring the soapy mitt to the panel and move it across the panel in a back-and-forth motion using as little pressure as you can.  Let the soap and the mitt do the work.  This will help prevent scratches and swirls.  Before moving onto the next panel, dunk your mitt into the second bucket filled with plain water.  Move the mitt around in the bucket vigorously for a moment or two.  This will help release dirt, grime, and film collected while going over the previous panel.  From there, remove the mitt from the water bucket and dunk it once again into the soapy water bucket repeating the process on each panel according to the sequence I spelled out above finishing with the wheels as they contain the most dirt and debris that can cause scratching on your vehicle’s painted surfaces.  

Once you’ve gone over whole exterior of the vehicle, it’s time to rinse the soap off.  On your hose’s nozzle you’ll want to adjust it to a lower pressure setting that will be more effective in rinsing the soap off a little more quickly.  Once you’ve rinsed the soap off take a quick walk around the vehicle to see if you may have any panels that still have dirty areas.  If that is the case, soap up that area again using a little pressure with the mitt to help remove the remaining dirt.  Again, rinse and you should be good.  

Now it’s time to dry the car off.  There are a couple effective ways to do this.  If your vehicle doesn’t have a ceramic coating (and even if it does) getting a large microfiber drying towel (NOT a bath towel from your bathroom, they are a much more abrasive fabric on your paint) will be the most efficient way to go about it.  You can often dry a vehicle in a short amount of time if you’ve got a smaller vehicle and don’t have to get up on a step stool to dry the roof.  The drying towels are safe if you are maintaining them and keeping them clean, but that’s another blog entry for the future.  Another option especially if you have a ceramic coating on your vehicle is getting an electric car dryer or even an air gun attached to your air compressor if you have one.  It’s like a hair dryer for your vehicle.  Another option is getting a smaller leaf blower, but make sure it’s used only on your vehicles.  This is straight forward, start from the top again like you were soaping the vehicle or rinsing it off.  The nice thing about this is you will often be able to get water out of the tight spaces like the grill, the filler cap door, around the windows, etc.  A good thing to have if you are using air to blow the car off is a smaller microfiber towel to help wipe up any drips left behind as you go.  Aside from drying the door jambs and other small areas and maybe wiping down the glass to remove any residual streaking left behind from drying the vehicle off you are done, apart from dressing the tires if you like to give that nice, finished look.

As I mentioned above another option when washing your vehicle when you may not be allowed to wash your vehicle with a water hose is to do a rinse less wash.  Here you can still use the two-bucket system.  The procedure is to wet down the panel and if you can’t use a hose get some sort of spray bottle/cannister.  Hand pump pressurized spray cannisters work well in this case as they convey a good amount of water at the panel and can help attack the dirt on the panel.  Once you’ve done that, take your mitt from the bucket containing the rinse less solution and go over that panel like you would with the soapy water bucket otherwise.  In this case the rinse less solution is not going to be foamy, but it contains components that safely lift the dirt from the vehicle’s paint.  Once you have gone over the panel and the dirt has been cleaned away, rinse the mitt in the plain water bucket and return it to the rinse less solution.  Now you will want to take a microfiber rag or towel to wipe down and dry the panel.  You will repeat this process for each panel including the door jambs and wheels providing a fresh, clean microfiber towel or two for each panel.   Apart from working in water restricted areas, rinse less wash is great when you don’t have a shady area to wash your vehicle as going one panel at a time allows you to avoid the potential of water spotting if you can’t rinse or dry your vehicle off fast enough.

That is all I have for today.  The washing process and how you do it is rather straight forward, but very vital in maintaining a relatively flaw free finish to your vehicle’s exterior.  For questions on this topic or my other topics, or to schedule an appointment, feel free to call me at 308-354-6295, email me at eaglecustomdetailing@gmail.com or stop by for a chat.  As always, isn’t it time you did something really special for your vehicle?