Cleaning regime

RAYK47

RAYK47

Active member
 Hertfordshire
Hi all, had a quick look but couldn't find anything specific.

What is your cleaning regime?

I don't have a driveway and there is a green in front of my house so running a hose out to the roadside is not an option. The SUV goes through automatic car washers when needed but i am concerned that the Z4 may need less aggressive cleaning (i am paranoid about the roof leaking).

So if you cant wash it at home what do you do? the DIY Jet Washers, the automatic washers or the hand washers in supermarket car parks?

What after washing treatments etc?
 
i get my soft top car hand washed by a crack team of eastern europeans... though not in a supermarket car park, they have their own premises on an industrial estate in town.

their process is pretty thorough - de iron wheels, snowfoam, rinse, wash, rinse, dry, polish. all for a tenner.

i'll be honest, the roof leaks a bit when jetwashed, but its only a drip or two down the inside of the windows.
 
thanks Brillomaster

that seems good for a tenner, its about 20 quid here but need to look around (actually that may include the inside as well).
 
Romanians. Less than 10 mins from my house. £10 + £1 tip. They do a thorough job.* While they're doing it, I go to a local shopping centre for bits & bobs. Have used them on all cars since 2016.

*The 20+ stone chips on the Z bonnet make a 'better' job (clay bar et cetera plus polishing with a freshly cut mop of virgin's hair) a waste of time. (Must admit, though, that of the 25+ car's I've had, I washed only the first one. Twice.)

p.s. When I first took the Z to the Romanians, they used an Autoglym 'polish for life' on it and the colour - Melbourne Red - still glows and shines.
 
You can get a battery powered pressure washer like a Ryobi RY18PW22A or RY18PWX41A which can work from a bucket.
 
Brillo may recall my utterly OCD cleaning regimes on my previous cars on 350z-uk :D

The battery powered pressure washer is a good option, I got a Worx Hydroshot as I have to clean on the roadside. But if you can get an extension lead that goes across your green you can still use a normal pressure washer plugged in and the hose in a water source like a plastic tank or large bucket.

In terms of regime it depends on what the goal is. A full regime might be:

Snowfoam and soak
Shampoo and soak
Clay mitt (nice and easy to use less likely to have marring than a clay bar) all over
Machine polish
Panel wipe everything down
Apply LSP to seal your hard work

Products across this process are wide and varied. Your LSP could be a liquid sealant or a traditional wax. You can hand polish a car but it wont have the results of a machine polish. Clay work is a stage so many people miss, yet it provides so many benefits. I usually use a hydrophobic shampoo, I've been using Gyeon Bathe+ for a few years and have recently tried experimenting with Mothers Ceramic base Shampoo which is pretty awesome.

Once you have a decent sealant on the car after giving it a good going over you should then just need a much less abrasive routine of cleaning using a shampoo.

For the wheels dont worry too much about all these wheel cleaning products, I would focus on something like Bilt Hamber Autowheel to de-iron and then use normal car shampoo and a dedicated mitt to clean it up. An all plastic wheel brush is also a real asset here.

Products I would recommend:

GTechniq Snow Foam
Bathe+ or Mothers Ceramic Shampoo
Clay Mitt from Halfords (cant remember the brand name)
Polishes I have had good success with Scholl S20 and Menzerna 2-1
Ive been through a few hard waxes, Victoria Concours and Bilt Hamber Double Speed are good ones for good results and ease of application.

I also acquired a cordless spot polisher, cost about 55 quid off amazon a Sealey branded one. If you really want to keep on top of the paintwork these are super useful for polishing out minor scratches etc.
 
I would beware of those £10 'hand' car wash places, continued use will dull the shine on your car's paint, it happened to my E46. This is because although it's a hand wash they use the same wash mitt and same dirty water on the last 100 cars or so that came before you.

I suppose this isn't too much of a problem if your car is already full of swirls and micro scratches but after having my E89 paint corrected and detailed with Gyeon ceramic coating I only wash it myself using the two bucket method. I don't have the facility to wash the car at home so go to the local petrol station and use their self service pressure washer.

Snow foam first let it dwell, rinse, wash car using the two bucket method rinse and then depending which petrol station I am at either use the automatic roller wash but just on the dryer cycle or use a purpose made micro fiber dryer cloth.

Have to say after 4 years I have not managed to collect too many micro scratches or swirls and the paint still looks like factory fresh and the Gyeon coating works almost as good as the first day it was applied on most panels. Probably helps that twice or thrice a year I apply Gyeon Wet Coat to help the coating.
 
1. Drive to local Costco.
2. Let four blokes who only ever use four gestures (‘move forward’, ‘stop’,‘you want clean inside too?’ and ‘your car is ready’), clean down the car while I sit in it with the heaters on, listening to music.
3. Get out of the car. Let two ladies dry the car, door shuts, clean the glass and tyre shine.
4. Pay £10, grab my free air freshener and do something else.
 
Monday, wash car, polish with Lidl furniture polish, nice and shiny.
Tuesday go to work.
Wednesday, car just as dirty as Monday morning before wash.
 
Silverstar said:
I would beware of those £10 'hand' car wash places, continued use will dull the shine on your car's paint, it happened to my E46. This is because although it's a hand wash they use the same wash mitt and same dirty water on the last 100 cars or so that came before you.
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The one I go to is a bit better than that, but I take your point.

That said, where I live, in the People's Democratic Socialist Republic of Leicester (motto - 'We waste the people's money for the people'), driving a well cared for car must be heart breaking, because the roads are crap. This is true of the country as a whole, of course (motto - 'We waste the people's money for the people'), where road re-surfacing is done by the billions of pounds worth of cars that are used to run carelessly strewn stone chips into fresh wet tar by the Ministry of Transport (motto - 'We don't give a bu$$er about your cars').

As for ceramic coatings, they don't protect aerodynamically efficient cars that are driven quickly. There's nothing wrong with 'Driving Miss Daisy' in a beautifully presented car, of course, but I don't do that in my 340 bhp, 500 Nm (for 8 seconds in over-boost), twin turbo et cetera Z4 and the bonnet's covered in stone chips as evidence of the pleasure that quick driving gives me.
 
£10 hand car wash places....... :chairfight: my idea of a great way to trash your paintwork in under 30 mins
 
Busterboo said:
As for ceramic coatings, they don't protect aerodynamically efficient cars that are driven quickly. There's nothing wrong with 'Driving Miss Daisy' in a beautifully presented car, of course, but I don't do that in my 340 bhp, 500 Nm (for 8 seconds in over-boost), twin turbo et cetera Z4 and the bonnet's covered in stone chips as evidence of the pleasure that quick driving gives me.
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Well I can assure you I am no miss daisy neither and my car gets driven hard and fast and I don’t have many stone chips at all! But of course no coating apart from PPF is going to protect against stone chips, what it does provide is a] nice glossy shine b] car stays cleaner and is much easier to clean and c) combined with the right wash techniques reduces the risk of swirls and micro scratches.
 
Silverstar said:
Well I can assure you I am no miss daisy neither and my car gets driven hard and fast and I don’t have many stone chips at all! But of course no coating apart from PPF is going to protect against stone chips, what it does provide is a] nice glossy shine b] car stays cleaner and is much easier to clean and c) combined with the right wash techniques reduces the risk of swirls and micro scratches.
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It occurs to me now that we may both be wrong: you use a ceramic coating and have few chips and I don't and have lots, so the coating could be more protective than we think.
 
Silverstar said:
a] nice glossy shine
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I wish I'd not had my E89 treated with Autoglym polish, because driving due West at sunset, especially in winter, is terrible. :cry:
The reflections from the bonnet are blinding.

Don't you find this?
 
Ceramic coating does not protect against stone chips, however it is a big upgrade on traditional waxes etc. as a last stage product. It does lots of things from UV protection to preventing etching to paint clarity but it doesn't stop a piece of rock chipping the paintwork when it hits it at 80mph. The difference in bonnet chips is more than likely simply down to the quality of roads in your area and how close you drive up behind other cars more than anything.

On the polish side, remember this is as much for removing swirls and holograms as it is for making a car look shiny. Just because it looks shiny doesn't mean you have done the other job which is to fix those swirls. You will have very limited success when applying a polish by hand, machine polishing is umpteen times more effective. If you really want to go to town get a number of polishes that start with the deeper cutting then finish with a fine finishing polish, the generic all in one polishes are ok but you will get better results with multi stage polishing.

Also note that polishes contain fillers, AG SRP is very well known for this (sorry!) for example and contains a lot of it, so it looks like it has done the job initially but the fillers fail over a short time. Your more dedicated brands with multi stage polish levels will be more effective.
 
coldel said:
The difference in bonnet chips is more than likely simply down to the quality of roads in your area and how close you drive up behind other cars more than anything.
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Thank you for this and the rest of your reply, coldel.

Yes, as I've said, the roads round here are poor. As for driving close to other vehicles, though, I don't think I do. (I have noticed, however, the phenomenon of the windscreen sometimes being hit by stones from vehicles going in the opposite direction.)

Your reply suggests you drive a highly polished car. Doesn't your bonnet blind you sometimes?
 
I only suggest the driving up close as an issue as by default vehicles do flick up debris and the closer you are the more likely you are to take a splattering of it. On a drive out with mates once one of them wheel spinned away from a junction and I was right behind him, my heart dropped hearing all the stones hitting the front of my car lol

I don't get bonnet blindness no, I've never experienced that in any car I have owned. I do live in the city, so maybe low sunsets dont affect me as much and I am never really driving in a westerly direction, most roads around here go in all different directions. The main issue I tend to get is reflection of the dash in the windscreen.
 
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