The Right And Wrong Way to Do a Car Wash
# The Art of Proper Car Washing: A Comprehensive Guide
## Introduction
Washing your car might seem like a simple task, but it is far more intricate than most people realize. Jason from Chicago Auto Pros delves into the finer details of car washing, emphasizing the importance of using the right tools, techniques, and products to maintain your vehicle's paint job and prevent damage.
This guide will walk you through everything you need to know about properly washing your car, including selecting the right soap, choosing the best mitts, rinsing techniques, drying methods, and more. By following these steps, you can ensure your car remains scratch-free and well-protected.
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## Understanding the Impact of Car Wash Methods
Car washes, whether touchless, tunnel, or hand-wash, have varying effects on your vehicle's finish. Tunnel washes, in particular, are often harsh due to their brushes and fabrics, which can cause micro-scratches and swirls. For those who value their car's paint job, hand washing is the preferred method. However, it’s essential to use proper techniques and tools when hand washing to avoid causing damage.
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## Selecting the Right Soap
Using the correct soap is crucial for maintaining your car's finish. Many soaps, such as Dawn dish soap, can strip wax and dry out rubber trim. Instead, opt for a thick, concentrated car wash soap that is pH-balanced. Some soaps even include wax protectants, which add an extra layer of protection to your vehicle.
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## Choosing the Right Mitts
When it comes to washing your car, traditional yellow sponges are not ideal. Microfiber mitts, like the Auto Fiber Zero Cuff or those from Ray Company, are a better choice. These mitts encapsulate dirt and debris, reducing the risk of scratches. Additionally, using a bucket with a dirt lock insert helps trap sand and debris, preventing them from being dragged back onto your car.
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## Wheel Cleaning Techniques
Wheels can be one of the most challenging parts to clean. For high-gloss wheels, avoid brushes with bristles that could scratch the finish. Instead, use a soft microfiber mitt or a tool like the wheel bully for delicate areas. If you encounter stubborn brake dust, consider using an iron remover to eliminate yellow stains.
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## Rinsing and Drying Techniques
Rinse your car thoroughly to remove all dirt and debris. A pressure washer can speed up the process, but even a hose works well. When drying, use high-quality microfiber towels to avoid introducing swirls or scratches. For added protection, apply a quick detailer or spray wax before wiping to ensure smooth, scratch-free drying.
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## Avoiding Hard Water Damage
Hard water can leave unsightly spots and etch into your car's clear coat if left in the sun. To combat this, consider using a water softener, reverse osmosis system, or a portable spotless water system. These options provide clean water for washing, preventing hard water damage.
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## Additional Tips
- **Two-Bucket Method:** Use one bucket with soapy water and another with plain water to keep your mitt clean.
- **Avoid Scrubbing:** Do not scrub stubborn dirt; instead, use chemicals or techniques to safely remove it without damaging the paint.
- **Proper Storage:** After washing, store your car in a cool, dry place to prevent water spots.
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## Conclusion
Washing your car properly is an art that requires attention to detail and the right tools. By using pH-balanced soaps, microfiber mitts, and following proper rinsing and drying techniques, you can protect your vehicle's finish and keep it looking new for years to come. Remember, taking care of small details now can save you from costly paint repairs later.
"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwe are back at Chicago auto pros this time for something exciting what do you got we're washing cars oh cool that should be simple yeah actually there's a lot that goes into washing the nuts and bolts of it you'd be surprised so Jason is going to walk us through the finer details of how to wash a car properly and all the nuances and all the damage you can actually do by not taking an account certain things like dirty sponges water debris yeah there's a lot that goes into it when you're washing a car so we're going to show you the tips the tricks and techniques all the tools and the different chemicals we use to do a proper hand wash the first thing that I want to teach you mark is about scratches and mic restoring because contrary to what most people think they don't come out of thin air there's a lot of things that can contribute to micro scratches swirling and basically your paints really delicate anything that touches that surface could cause damage to it including dry wiping the car with the microfiber hand washing wiping in the snow off with a brush or bad buffing techniques bad machine buffing techniques so all this can contribute to swirls and damages especially car washes car washes are probably the number one contributor to micro Sterling and these small minor scratches that you're going to see under paint okay so when you say car washes can you define what that means because I think most people are like well the car wash is going through the meat grinder with the brushes or Occulus so there's a lot of types of car washes you got touchless you got tunnel washes you got hand washes you even got waterless washes and each wash has a purpose you know that most people can't see swirls or don't even care about swirls so that's why we have a lot of people go into these tunnel washes and then but if you care about your paint you want it to look good you want it to look new hand-washing is the way to go also I mean hand-washing the proper hand washing because I've seen a lot of hand washes too that can do a lot of damage more damage than an actual ton of wash if you're not using the proper tools and techniques in your experience what's the most common type of car wash that people do I mean the average would be a lot of people are gonna bring it to a tunnel car wash you know that is that the most damaging car wash as well or can it be it can be I mean imagine 300 cars going through a tunnel and they're using the same fabric there they've been advanced there's different types of town car washes they have soft cloth washes and then they have like these bristle brush washes that you really see anymore so they have advanced in the you know past couple decades and they're safer than they used to be but I mean if you're going for the microscopic level if you've got a nice car and you want to keep it looking as clean and scratch-free as possible I'd avoid those tunnel washes and I'd stick to proper hand-washing what is all this stuff are you gonna talk about every single bottle you have on this table we won't talk about every single bottle but this is a lot of the stuff that you need to properly wash your car so we're gonna go over it individually you know like I have a whole soap section here all right learning about soaps soap is the lubrication when you go to wash your car that will encapsulate any dirt or particles that are on your car so you don't scratch or create swirl marks and there's different types of soap you don't want to use like a Dawn dish soap that has a degreaser in it it's in a strip off any wax or protection that you have on the car and then it'll dry out any trim or rubber moldings that you have on the car so there are a lot of different soaps on the market and some of them are you know what I look for in a soap is I like a thick concentrated soap and most of the car washes soaps are gonna be pH balanced I mean if they're dedicated for car washing so you won't have to worry about that some of them have wax in it so you'll see a wash and wax type of soap if you want to have a layer protection that adds into that and the pH balance is important because you have acidic and you have alkaline or so right the acidic is bad for the paint clearly yeah it'll strip off any type of protection that you have on there so if you just wash your car and use a bad soap now you don't have any type of protection on there gotcha and you can get as crazy as you want I mean you can get pH testers and you can test each soap but generally most of the car wash soaps are going to be pH balanced moving on to the type of media that you want to use when you're washing your car which is important I've seen a lot of people wash their cars with big yellow sponges and you know it's it's not the proper way to do it I mean the car washing industry has advanced a lot in the last couple decades and these are the myths that we like to use these are microfiber I think I call them the dreadlock myths this is an auto fiber zero cuff mitt here other great mints from Ray company here's another type of just soft microfiber type of myth you know when we're talking car wash you can get as crazy as you want you can really get in depth with it the mitts what's the purpose is it because it absorbs a lot or is it because it helps to encapsulate the dirt and take it off or yeah so you see all these fibers and everything if you have something that's flat and doesn't have any porous type of things to it yeah that all the dirt and the salt and everything you're gonna be just grinding it into the paint basically and this holds all that dirt and all the particles inside the mint so that kind of reduces the sandpaper effect of exists great big scratching the paint okay exactly moving on and you know you don't want any sand or anything debris in the type of mitt so you can actually put one of these this is a dirt lock bucket insert that you can put in the bottom of your bucket and that kind of traps all about the debris and the sand and dirt below this so when you put your mitt back in the bucket you're not dragging that back onto the car gotcha coming to wheel cleaning there's a lot of different types of wheel cleaners you have alkaline you have acid wheel cleaners I try to stay with away from the acid cleaners just so I'm not breathing them or get them on my skin damage anything so a lot of the wheel cleaners that are out there are non acid wheel cleaners and there's a lot of good wheel cleaners out there when it comes to wheel cleaning if you're taking care of your car and you're you're maintaining it and you're washing it every week or every two weeks you shouldn't you have to use a heavy degreaser or cleaner for the wheels I mean you could even use a car wash soap if you really take care of it and maintain it if you get into something to where you haven't washed in a while and you have built up brake dust you can use some heavier wheel cleaners here I have some iron removers so if you ever see iron particles or they a yellow he kind of see that yellow on your wheels and everything that's built on brake dust that's actually certain rust and iron removers will remove those are there certain cars that have more of that problem is it so yeah if you're looking at a white car if you're looking at something with silver wheels that's where you can really see that iron but you're gonna see it all if you come down to if you have some black glossy rims you're not gonna see it as much but there's other things with glossy rooms you have to be careful with obviously yes that's when we would come in two wheel brushes so the wheels can scratch just like your paint does it's still just a base coat clear coat so I wouldn't use anything with bristles on a high gloss wheel I would use more something like this this is a wheel bully it has a microfiber head and it's really soft and then I sometimes I'll use a wash mitt on the chair wheels - so you're gonna have a dedicated watchman for the body and one for the wheels gotcha okay coming - actually when you're done washing the car you're gonna rinse it and it comes to drying the car so this can be the biggest contributing factor to installing swirls and scratches into your car if you're not drying it properly because once you start drying it you don't have any lubrication where you when you're washing the car you have lubrication you got soap so picking on the right towel is important you don't want to use your bath towel from at home the terry cloth towels you want to use something with a microfiber that's a microfiber weave that you have they're very absorbent those are the ones we use here and then when you're actually drying the car - we take it an extra step we use a quick detailer or a spray wax or something that's going to lubricate that towel when we're wiping down the car so these products here will add lubrication and it's also going to add another layer of protection okay so it sounds like to me everything is about keeping the paint surface clean as possible and lubricated when you're rubbing it with anything yep yeah and these are a lot of the great tools and but another thing is you want to have good technique so we're going to show you how to do all those techniques next when we actually do the washing process what are these massagers these are pressure washers mark really they're small yeah yeah great little pressure washers so we use these out in the wash bay pressure washing versus hose washing you can definitely use the hose to wash your car a pressure washer is gonna do it faster quicker and more efficient okay this is this this isn't requirement yeah I got good walkout at all not at all but these are relatively cheap you can get these for less than $1000 and you're washing like a professional kind of hits close to home for me but what I'm standing by water pipes yep water tank hoses buckets yeah so what are we doing here we're about to fill the buckets up and the water that you use to wash the car is very important because if you use hard water you can end up with hard water spots which you don't want on your car so if you're watching outside in the Sun and you do have hard water and it dries on your car that water evaporates and there's a lot of minerals and impurities in hard water and it dries on your car and it leaves a water spot if it bakes in the Sun it's actually going to etch into the clear coat and then you have to use a machine to remove those hard water spots so that's one of the reasons why it said don't wash your car in the bright hot sunlight exactly dry real fast and evaporate so if you do have hard water and you can check this you can have a little strip and check if you have hard water or not number one is you can get a water softener I did this when I had a mobile business I put a water softener in my garage too you can get tanks that you can rent so you can have reverse osmosis water and then you can have deionized water and you can rent take tanks and they can put them in your garage number three is you can use a system like this this is a portable spotless water system that you can hook up to the water and it runs through and it filters all those impurities and all the minerals out in the water so you have nice clean water for your car wash that's great and obviously you the benefit of this is you can just put this in your garage yeah or you can do a whole ho-hum system which has plenty of good things about soft waters yep there's different types of systems that you can connect to the wall this one's portable so you can bring it out and this isn't expensive I'm assuming I mean there's some expense to it but not crazy they're probably four or five hundred bucks okay so there he's out of my way so you're we're talking buckets yeah or what did he actually you wanted to tell me something about washing a car yeah these are two high quality buckets that we have right here how much are they five six bucks that's my kind of bucket yeah mine's no price they're five-gallon buckets so what we're gonna be doing is the two bucket wash and what I want everybody to know your viewers there's more than one way to wash a car this is the two bucket method you fill one with just regular water and one with soapy water and the whole point of this is to when you're washing your panel and you have a dirty mitt you're gonna wring it out and rinse it in the just the water one and then we're gonna put it in a soap one so we can have the cleanest mitt possible when we bring it back to the car and wash it there's another method out there I mean you're gonna have one bucket you can put ten minutes in it if you want to and just use one mitt per section and then you can watch a bunch of myths later if you want to so so you want a clean mitt in a dirty mitt basically yeah but the most basic yeah you want to get all the grime that you just took off the car a lot of them it so you don't drag it and transfer it onto other panels oh sorry so do we what's next well we're gonna start washing the car but I want to go over we talked about how delicate the pain is so you have all come when you're driving you got all kinds of things that can get stuck to the paint surface you got dirt sand salt bird droppings bugs all this stuff when you're washing the car can be grinded into the paint and that's where scratches and swirls come from so washing your car is important but the way you wash it is even more important because you got to remember all this stuff all this debris it could just be causing damage if you're not doing the proper techniques gotcha so it's not so much it getting on there well obviously you don't want debris on there but it's it's removing it that is the delicate process how to safely remove that without grinding it into your paint okay so I guess for from my perspective and normal people's perspective how why to do these things cause scratches what are you really scratching on the car so with a paint system I mean you have your primer you have your base coat and then you have your clear coat and clear coats are hard and they're durable but it's what takes all the weathering and different paint systems different manufacturers all have different types of paint so you have soft paint and you have hard paint soft paint scratch is really easy I mean some of that paint you can just scratch with a microfiber towel even if it's perfectly clean that's how easily and delicate it is okay so that's why your that's why you have to take so much care in the washing procedure of your car yes because that basically anything that's on this paint surface could be potentially scratching the clear the top coat there you go yes time to get down and dirty first step of the car wash is to rinse it we want to get all the standing debris off the vehicle you don't have to use a pressure washer you can use just a regular hose but a pressure washer is just going to be that much faster quicker and more efficient all right now that we got most of the debris and all the mud chunks off we can go to step number two which is a foam cannon this is an optional step but with this car being so dirty we're gonna spray this foam all over the car and it'll help break up all that dirt and dust and everything that's been sitting on this car this foam is a little different than your car wash up that you use in this is almost considered an all-purpose cleaner it's really meant for a pre wash type of foam to really break down that dirt grime bugs anything that may be on the vehicle before you actually wash it we're gonna let let it sit for three four or five minutes and then we're gonna rinse it off and there's not a particular way you want to get this you just want to get the entire car covered with the foam usually this is common sense but you should rinse it from the top down let the water flow down the vehicle also one of the things that you'll probably notice that this car is a lot more hydrophobic than the LC we did this one actually has a ceramic coating on it all right on to the wheels which is one of the most difficult areas to clean when you're doing your hand wash behind the capper you can see here it's hard to get to and you got all these spokes and everything I mean if you really wanted to get super crazy about it you could pull this wheel off and clean it and be much easier we're doing it with the wheel on and we're gonna start by cleaning the barrel of the rim and there's lots of different tools one of the most popular tools is this wheel base brush and this is pretty aggressive being these are a shiny black gloss black I don't want to use this aggressive bristle on it so I'm gonna use this tool which is a wheel we'll need to get back into the barrels of the rim and then I'm going to use a wash mitt to get the face of the wheels I'm gonna start by spraying our wheel cleaner here AM wheels this is a non acidic cleaner I want to spray inside the wheel wells usually from top to bottom is best let everything flow down let gravity work for you we'll spray this and it's always best when you're using any type of chemical let it dwell for a couple minutes that's what the chemicals for is to break down all that dirt grease grime all that brake dust particles everything built up you can spray the tire and then spray the wheel well to in my wheel bucket here I actually filled it up with water and soap and everything so I can rinse my tools off after I clean a section of the wheel again we're gonna start from the top get our wheel Woolley in there and this takes a little time you've got to kind of work this back and forth I want to get back behind the spokes so I worked my wheel Woolley in there behind it I generally work on one wheel at a time I don't want any of these chemicals to dry just like you were washing the paint find a cool dry area that you can work in all right on to the washing process of the body got two new mitts we got new water in our buckets and we're gonna start washing from top to bottom most of the debris on your vehicle is going to be on those bottom areas so we're always going to leave those to last we'll start with the hood and the top here when I'm washing the vehicle I never want to scrub in ething I'm just going to use the weight of the mitt here and I just um like I'm gonna keep it from falling on the ground with my hand I'll usually wash just one panel depending on how how dirty the car is so I'll wash the half of the hood here in the windshield and I'm actually gonna flip the mid over I'm gonna wash another two halves of these panels I'll wash the roof and then the back glass after you wash a section you want to rinse the mitt off any sand dirt and debris in this mitt could potentially damage the finish we're gonna dip it in our water bucket here we have a grit guard at the bottom we can rub it against that to really loosen up all that soil on there bring it out back into the soap and repeat the process one thing you want to refrain from is scrubbing everything if you have bugs if you have SAP if you have tar if there's something stuck to your car scrubbing it off is not the proper way to do it a lot of those items B can be taken off by other products or are the chemicals or other techniques and you can safely remove those products scrubbing them is just gonna cause scratches I wanna wash right down to this line here and I'll leave that bottom alright this next step might have your neighbors looking at you funny when you walk out of your garage with the leaf blower to dry off your car but it works really well to get all the cracks and crevices all the water that's standing in the mirror it works really well to get all that off the car all right last step after washing we're gonna dry the vehicle and we got to high quality microfibers that we're gonna use for this and I have two different towels I use one for my main towel to soak up most of water and then a second one to dry up anything else that may be left behind we're actually going to use a mate in spray this is like a spray wax or a quick detailer it's going to add lubrication to the towel and it's also going to add a layer of protection this one's coated in modesto so we're gonna use modesties em to blasts there's not really a right and wrong way to dry a car there's a more efficient way and you know you've seen people do it in circles it's not really efficient with your hands going all crazy eight you're probably gonna miss the spots so I like to use like the Box technique or I'll just start in one area and I'll use overlapping passes and I'll box it out after you're done washing your vehicle don't get too discouraged if you still have contaminants they're sitting on top of the paint you can have bug remains tar residue and SAP still sitting on that surface the most important thing is that you want to remember is you don't want to scrub any of this off there's safe ways to remove this stuff including all this rubber residue that Jack has on his car from the track we're gonna use w7 tar remover all right the last step in the carwash process is to apply tire shine and some people like it some people don't it's a matter of personal preference I happen to like tire shine I think it gives a look a good look on the vehicle we're gonna use to a water-based tire shine there are solvent based tire shines on the market I personally like the water base because that doesn't I don't think it slings as much as the solvent where it can be a little greasy and this is pretty simple to put this on we're gonna spray it onto our applicator pad this is an applicator bat pad that I bought from Home Depot it's actually to paint walls with but it works well as a tire shine applicator I start at the bottom and work my way around the tire and just do one nice even layer we're gonna let this sit on the tire for probably five to ten minutes and afterwards we're going to come with another microfiber and wipe off all the excess here so it doesn't sling on the side of the car Jason just finished washing two lovely vehicles one of which was provided by Lexus North America so thanks to Matt Ruska and Kurt McCallister for that what we tried to do here is demystify the washing process there's not one way to wash a car but hopefully this gives you the tips tricks and some of the tools you can use to get the job done right without tearing up your paint so what's the butter which car do you prefer what looks better after a clean washing I'm on my laptop right now this is the gentleman you're leaving me for very well I hate the savage geese I'm gonna show you how to get rid of them just like this you youwe are back at Chicago auto pros this time for something exciting what do you got we're washing cars oh cool that should be simple yeah actually there's a lot that goes into washing the nuts and bolts of it you'd be surprised so Jason is going to walk us through the finer details of how to wash a car properly and all the nuances and all the damage you can actually do by not taking an account certain things like dirty sponges water debris yeah there's a lot that goes into it when you're washing a car so we're going to show you the tips the tricks and techniques all the tools and the different chemicals we use to do a proper hand wash the first thing that I want to teach you mark is about scratches and mic restoring because contrary to what most people think they don't come out of thin air there's a lot of things that can contribute to micro scratches swirling and basically your paints really delicate anything that touches that surface could cause damage to it including dry wiping the car with the microfiber hand washing wiping in the snow off with a brush or bad buffing techniques bad machine buffing techniques so all this can contribute to swirls and damages especially car washes car washes are probably the number one contributor to micro Sterling and these small minor scratches that you're going to see under paint okay so when you say car washes can you define what that means because I think most people are like well the car wash is going through the meat grinder with the brushes or Occulus so there's a lot of types of car washes you got touchless you got tunnel washes you got hand washes you even got waterless washes and each wash has a purpose you know that most people can't see swirls or don't even care about swirls so that's why we have a lot of people go into these tunnel washes and then but if you care about your paint you want it to look good you want it to look new hand-washing is the way to go also I mean hand-washing the proper hand washing because I've seen a lot of hand washes too that can do a lot of damage more damage than an actual ton of wash if you're not using the proper tools and techniques in your experience what's the most common type of car wash that people do I mean the average would be a lot of people are gonna bring it to a tunnel car wash you know that is that the most damaging car wash as well or can it be it can be I mean imagine 300 cars going through a tunnel and they're using the same fabric there they've been advanced there's different types of town car washes they have soft cloth washes and then they have like these bristle brush washes that you really see anymore so they have advanced in the you know past couple decades and they're safer than they used to be but I mean if you're going for the microscopic level if you've got a nice car and you want to keep it looking as clean and scratch-free as possible I'd avoid those tunnel washes and I'd stick to proper hand-washing what is all this stuff are you gonna talk about every single bottle you have on this table we won't talk about every single bottle but this is a lot of the stuff that you need to properly wash your car so we're gonna go over it individually you know like I have a whole soap section here all right learning about soaps soap is the lubrication when you go to wash your car that will encapsulate any dirt or particles that are on your car so you don't scratch or create swirl marks and there's different types of soap you don't want to use like a Dawn dish soap that has a degreaser in it it's in a strip off any wax or protection that you have on the car and then it'll dry out any trim or rubber moldings that you have on the car so there are a lot of different soaps on the market and some of them are you know what I look for in a soap is I like a thick concentrated soap and most of the car washes soaps are gonna be pH balanced I mean if they're dedicated for car washing so you won't have to worry about that some of them have wax in it so you'll see a wash and wax type of soap if you want to have a layer protection that adds into that and the pH balance is important because you have acidic and you have alkaline or so right the acidic is bad for the paint clearly yeah it'll strip off any type of protection that you have on there so if you just wash your car and use a bad soap now you don't have any type of protection on there gotcha and you can get as crazy as you want I mean you can get pH testers and you can test each soap but generally most of the car wash soaps are going to be pH balanced moving on to the type of media that you want to use when you're washing your car which is important I've seen a lot of people wash their cars with big yellow sponges and you know it's it's not the proper way to do it I mean the car washing industry has advanced a lot in the last couple decades and these are the myths that we like to use these are microfiber I think I call them the dreadlock myths this is an auto fiber zero cuff mitt here other great mints from Ray company here's another type of just soft microfiber type of myth you know when we're talking car wash you can get as crazy as you want you can really get in depth with it the mitts what's the purpose is it because it absorbs a lot or is it because it helps to encapsulate the dirt and take it off or yeah so you see all these fibers and everything if you have something that's flat and doesn't have any porous type of things to it yeah that all the dirt and the salt and everything you're gonna be just grinding it into the paint basically and this holds all that dirt and all the particles inside the mint so that kind of reduces the sandpaper effect of exists great big scratching the paint okay exactly moving on and you know you don't want any sand or anything debris in the type of mitt so you can actually put one of these this is a dirt lock bucket insert that you can put in the bottom of your bucket and that kind of traps all about the debris and the sand and dirt below this so when you put your mitt back in the bucket you're not dragging that back onto the car gotcha coming to wheel cleaning there's a lot of different types of wheel cleaners you have alkaline you have acid wheel cleaners I try to stay with away from the acid cleaners just so I'm not breathing them or get them on my skin damage anything so a lot of the wheel cleaners that are out there are non acid wheel cleaners and there's a lot of good wheel cleaners out there when it comes to wheel cleaning if you're taking care of your car and you're you're maintaining it and you're washing it every week or every two weeks you shouldn't you have to use a heavy degreaser or cleaner for the wheels I mean you could even use a car wash soap if you really take care of it and maintain it if you get into something to where you haven't washed in a while and you have built up brake dust you can use some heavier wheel cleaners here I have some iron removers so if you ever see iron particles or they a yellow he kind of see that yellow on your wheels and everything that's built on brake dust that's actually certain rust and iron removers will remove those are there certain cars that have more of that problem is it so yeah if you're looking at a white car if you're looking at something with silver wheels that's where you can really see that iron but you're gonna see it all if you come down to if you have some black glossy rims you're not gonna see it as much but there's other things with glossy rooms you have to be careful with obviously yes that's when we would come in two wheel brushes so the wheels can scratch just like your paint does it's still just a base coat clear coat so I wouldn't use anything with bristles on a high gloss wheel I would use more something like this this is a wheel bully it has a microfiber head and it's really soft and then I sometimes I'll use a wash mitt on the chair wheels - so you're gonna have a dedicated watchman for the body and one for the wheels gotcha okay coming - actually when you're done washing the car you're gonna rinse it and it comes to drying the car so this can be the biggest contributing factor to installing swirls and scratches into your car if you're not drying it properly because once you start drying it you don't have any lubrication where you when you're washing the car you have lubrication you got soap so picking on the right towel is important you don't want to use your bath towel from at home the terry cloth towels you want to use something with a microfiber that's a microfiber weave that you have they're very absorbent those are the ones we use here and then when you're actually drying the car - we take it an extra step we use a quick detailer or a spray wax or something that's going to lubricate that towel when we're wiping down the car so these products here will add lubrication and it's also going to add another layer of protection okay so it sounds like to me everything is about keeping the paint surface clean as possible and lubricated when you're rubbing it with anything yep yeah and these are a lot of the great tools and but another thing is you want to have good technique so we're going to show you how to do all those techniques next when we actually do the washing process what are these massagers these are pressure washers mark really they're small yeah yeah great little pressure washers so we use these out in the wash bay pressure washing versus hose washing you can definitely use the hose to wash your car a pressure washer is gonna do it faster quicker and more efficient okay this is this this isn't requirement yeah I got good walkout at all not at all but these are relatively cheap you can get these for less than $1000 and you're washing like a professional kind of hits close to home for me but what I'm standing by water pipes yep water tank hoses buckets yeah so what are we doing here we're about to fill the buckets up and the water that you use to wash the car is very important because if you use hard water you can end up with hard water spots which you don't want on your car so if you're watching outside in the Sun and you do have hard water and it dries on your car that water evaporates and there's a lot of minerals and impurities in hard water and it dries on your car and it leaves a water spot if it bakes in the Sun it's actually going to etch into the clear coat and then you have to use a machine to remove those hard water spots so that's one of the reasons why it said don't wash your car in the bright hot sunlight exactly dry real fast and evaporate so if you do have hard water and you can check this you can have a little strip and check if you have hard water or not number one is you can get a water softener I did this when I had a mobile business I put a water softener in my garage too you can get tanks that you can rent so you can have reverse osmosis water and then you can have deionized water and you can rent take tanks and they can put them in your garage number three is you can use a system like this this is a portable spotless water system that you can hook up to the water and it runs through and it filters all those impurities and all the minerals out in the water so you have nice clean water for your car wash that's great and obviously you the benefit of this is you can just put this in your garage yeah or you can do a whole ho-hum system which has plenty of good things about soft waters yep there's different types of systems that you can connect to the wall this one's portable so you can bring it out and this isn't expensive I'm assuming I mean there's some expense to it but not crazy they're probably four or five hundred bucks okay so there he's out of my way so you're we're talking buckets yeah or what did he actually you wanted to tell me something about washing a car yeah these are two high quality buckets that we have right here how much are they five six bucks that's my kind of bucket yeah mine's no price they're five-gallon buckets so what we're gonna be doing is the two bucket wash and what I want everybody to know your viewers there's more than one way to wash a car this is the two bucket method you fill one with just regular water and one with soapy water and the whole point of this is to when you're washing your panel and you have a dirty mitt you're gonna wring it out and rinse it in the just the water one and then we're gonna put it in a soap one so we can have the cleanest mitt possible when we bring it back to the car and wash it there's another method out there I mean you're gonna have one bucket you can put ten minutes in it if you want to and just use one mitt per section and then you can watch a bunch of myths later if you want to so so you want a clean mitt in a dirty mitt basically yeah but the most basic yeah you want to get all the grime that you just took off the car a lot of them it so you don't drag it and transfer it onto other panels oh sorry so do we what's next well we're gonna start washing the car but I want to go over we talked about how delicate the pain is so you have all come when you're driving you got all kinds of things that can get stuck to the paint surface you got dirt sand salt bird droppings bugs all this stuff when you're washing the car can be grinded into the paint and that's where scratches and swirls come from so washing your car is important but the way you wash it is even more important because you got to remember all this stuff all this debris it could just be causing damage if you're not doing the proper techniques gotcha so it's not so much it getting on there well obviously you don't want debris on there but it's it's removing it that is the delicate process how to safely remove that without grinding it into your paint okay so I guess for from my perspective and normal people's perspective how why to do these things cause scratches what are you really scratching on the car so with a paint system I mean you have your primer you have your base coat and then you have your clear coat and clear coats are hard and they're durable but it's what takes all the weathering and different paint systems different manufacturers all have different types of paint so you have soft paint and you have hard paint soft paint scratch is really easy I mean some of that paint you can just scratch with a microfiber towel even if it's perfectly clean that's how easily and delicate it is okay so that's why your that's why you have to take so much care in the washing procedure of your car yes because that basically anything that's on this paint surface could be potentially scratching the clear the top coat there you go yes time to get down and dirty first step of the car wash is to rinse it we want to get all the standing debris off the vehicle you don't have to use a pressure washer you can use just a regular hose but a pressure washer is just going to be that much faster quicker and more efficient all right now that we got most of the debris and all the mud chunks off we can go to step number two which is a foam cannon this is an optional step but with this car being so dirty we're gonna spray this foam all over the car and it'll help break up all that dirt and dust and everything that's been sitting on this car this foam is a little different than your car wash up that you use in this is almost considered an all-purpose cleaner it's really meant for a pre wash type of foam to really break down that dirt grime bugs anything that may be on the vehicle before you actually wash it we're gonna let let it sit for three four or five minutes and then we're gonna rinse it off and there's not a particular way you want to get this you just want to get the entire car covered with the foam usually this is common sense but you should rinse it from the top down let the water flow down the vehicle also one of the things that you'll probably notice that this car is a lot more hydrophobic than the LC we did this one actually has a ceramic coating on it all right on to the wheels which is one of the most difficult areas to clean when you're doing your hand wash behind the capper you can see here it's hard to get to and you got all these spokes and everything I mean if you really wanted to get super crazy about it you could pull this wheel off and clean it and be much easier we're doing it with the wheel on and we're gonna start by cleaning the barrel of the rim and there's lots of different tools one of the most popular tools is this wheel base brush and this is pretty aggressive being these are a shiny black gloss black I don't want to use this aggressive bristle on it so I'm gonna use this tool which is a wheel we'll need to get back into the barrels of the rim and then I'm going to use a wash mitt to get the face of the wheels I'm gonna start by spraying our wheel cleaner here AM wheels this is a non acidic cleaner I want to spray inside the wheel wells usually from top to bottom is best let everything flow down let gravity work for you we'll spray this and it's always best when you're using any type of chemical let it dwell for a couple minutes that's what the chemicals for is to break down all that dirt grease grime all that brake dust particles everything built up you can spray the tire and then spray the wheel well to in my wheel bucket here I actually filled it up with water and soap and everything so I can rinse my tools off after I clean a section of the wheel again we're gonna start from the top get our wheel Woolley in there and this takes a little time you've got to kind of work this back and forth I want to get back behind the spokes so I worked my wheel Woolley in there behind it I generally work on one wheel at a time I don't want any of these chemicals to dry just like you were washing the paint find a cool dry area that you can work in all right on to the washing process of the body got two new mitts we got new water in our buckets and we're gonna start washing from top to bottom most of the debris on your vehicle is going to be on those bottom areas so we're always going to leave those to last we'll start with the hood and the top here when I'm washing the vehicle I never want to scrub in ething I'm just going to use the weight of the mitt here and I just um like I'm gonna keep it from falling on the ground with my hand I'll usually wash just one panel depending on how how dirty the car is so I'll wash the half of the hood here in the windshield and I'm actually gonna flip the mid over I'm gonna wash another two halves of these panels I'll wash the roof and then the back glass after you wash a section you want to rinse the mitt off any sand dirt and debris in this mitt could potentially damage the finish we're gonna dip it in our water bucket here we have a grit guard at the bottom we can rub it against that to really loosen up all that soil on there bring it out back into the soap and repeat the process one thing you want to refrain from is scrubbing everything if you have bugs if you have SAP if you have tar if there's something stuck to your car scrubbing it off is not the proper way to do it a lot of those items B can be taken off by other products or are the chemicals or other techniques and you can safely remove those products scrubbing them is just gonna cause scratches I wanna wash right down to this line here and I'll leave that bottom alright this next step might have your neighbors looking at you funny when you walk out of your garage with the leaf blower to dry off your car but it works really well to get all the cracks and crevices all the water that's standing in the mirror it works really well to get all that off the car all right last step after washing we're gonna dry the vehicle and we got to high quality microfibers that we're gonna use for this and I have two different towels I use one for my main towel to soak up most of water and then a second one to dry up anything else that may be left behind we're actually going to use a mate in spray this is like a spray wax or a quick detailer it's going to add lubrication to the towel and it's also going to add a layer of protection this one's coated in modesto so we're gonna use modesties em to blasts there's not really a right and wrong way to dry a car there's a more efficient way and you know you've seen people do it in circles it's not really efficient with your hands going all crazy eight you're probably gonna miss the spots so I like to use like the Box technique or I'll just start in one area and I'll use overlapping passes and I'll box it out after you're done washing your vehicle don't get too discouraged if you still have contaminants they're sitting on top of the paint you can have bug remains tar residue and SAP still sitting on that surface the most important thing is that you want to remember is you don't want to scrub any of this off there's safe ways to remove this stuff including all this rubber residue that Jack has on his car from the track we're gonna use w7 tar remover all right the last step in the carwash process is to apply tire shine and some people like it some people don't it's a matter of personal preference I happen to like tire shine I think it gives a look a good look on the vehicle we're gonna use to a water-based tire shine there are solvent based tire shines on the market I personally like the water base because that doesn't I don't think it slings as much as the solvent where it can be a little greasy and this is pretty simple to put this on we're gonna spray it onto our applicator pad this is an applicator bat pad that I bought from Home Depot it's actually to paint walls with but it works well as a tire shine applicator I start at the bottom and work my way around the tire and just do one nice even layer we're gonna let this sit on the tire for probably five to ten minutes and afterwards we're going to come with another microfiber and wipe off all the excess here so it doesn't sling on the side of the car Jason just finished washing two lovely vehicles one of which was provided by Lexus North America so thanks to Matt Ruska and Kurt McCallister for that what we tried to do here is demystify the washing process there's not one way to wash a car but hopefully this gives you the tips tricks and some of the tools you can use to get the job done right without tearing up your paint so what's the butter which car do you prefer what looks better after a clean washing I'm on my laptop right now this is the gentleman you're leaving me for very well I hate the savage geese I'm gonna show you how to get rid of them just like this you you\n"