I like to keep the process of washing simple since I want to do this every other week.
BHPian vamsi.vadrevu recently shared this with other enthusiasts:
I didn’t know where to post this but I finally mustered up enough courage to do my own car wash today.
In my 12 years of driving cars (10 years with my father’s Alto K10) and 2 years with my Nissan Magnite, I’ve always given the cars for a wash at a nearby place (reputed fellow, does a good job) at Rs. 400 per wash.
I never bothered to carefully understand what goes into a proper wash. Partly because of the overwhelming number of suggestions and ways to do a car wash. The products and types of products themselves were quite exhausting to go through to understand which was best suited to my washing needs. I kept putting it out of my mind thinking it is too much.
But the cost of getting the car cleaned at a professional garage every month was proving to be increasingly expensive and time consuming (long wait times at every wash garage!) Also, the better half insisted I washed the car myself (because I pamper the car too much in her opinion) to get a nice workout. Not a bad idea.
So I decided to read the basic essentials on what were needed and got to work on a fine Saturday early in the morning.
1. A good shampoo (I got the wavex wonderwash. I don’t know if it’s good but it had decent reviews)
2. Wash mitts (I got 4 of them thinking I’d need to separate mitts for glass and top and sides and bottom) (ended up using only one)
3. A nozzle to spray water (my apartment had a pipe available for watering the plants, I just needed to connect a nozzle to it)
I bought the connector below
https://amzn.in/d/hhfCxxh
And this nozzle
https://amzn.in/d/ixMBCtX
4. I got various types of microfiber towels (from shinex and softspun as they had the best reviews)
5. Colin for the glass areas (didn’t bother to know if this was meant to be used on car windshields or if this is considered sacrilegious and a car wash faux pax)
At a high level, my process for the wash was thus;
1. Wash off the dust layer with water jet (not pressure jet but just forceful jet from a 5 floor overhead tank)
2. Lather up the wavex shampoo in half a bucket of water with mitts and apply in circles and saturate the entire car in lather. I had chosen to do this at the crack of dawn before sun came out as I did not want the shampoo drying off on the initial areas while I was doing other parts of the car.
3. Rinse off the shampoo.
4. Dry with towels (different towels for top and bottom parts of the car)
Below are the results
In my extreme enthusiasm, I missed cleaning the tires entirely and I didn’t want to bother taking the car outside the parking area again! Oh well! There’s always a next time.
The wavex shampoo did leave a nice shiny surface. But it was very difficult to get bird dropping and insect off the front of the car! I had to redo these parts with colin again!
Scope for improvement and mistakes I made
1. I should have used more shampoo. I only got a quarter bucket of foaming liquid which was barely sufficient for the entire car.
2. Should not forget the wheels!
3. The pipe connector kept getting disconnected due to pressure (gotta invest in better connection between the pipe and the nozzle)
4. The force of water was not sufficient. Perhaps I should get a pressure washer. (I now understand the rabbit hole that car detailing is)
I hope to improve upon my technique for next time.
Please suggest any better products or techniques. I like to keep the process of washing simple since I want to do this every other week. Once I improve my technique for wash, I’d like to get into detailing and waxing the car myself.
The process took me 1.5 hours and I was thoroughly exhausted and sweating. It was indeed a nice workout.
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