DIY: How I did a rinseless car wash on my Mahindra XUV 700

July 25, 2025

I use 7L in the 8L sprayer for rinsing.

BHPian traderjagadeesh recently shared this with other enthusiasts:

Hello everyone. As there is no proper thread related to rinseless washing the car in our forum (as far as I know), thought of documenting my method so that it might help others who are interested to keep their car clean with minimal equipment and water.

Equipment that I use:-

Wavex foamer 3.0.
2L manual garden sprayer.
8L manual garden sprayer.
Shinexpro 1100 GSM drying towel
Two softspun noodle microfiber mitts.
Wavex Grit guard.
20L paint bucket which I bought offline for Rs.100. And a small 5L bucket to dump the used MFs and mitts

Consumables

Koch Chemie Rapid Rinseless wash
Koch Chemie Greenstar (All purpose Cleaner)
Sonax BSD(1:10 dilution) as a drying aid
ShineXpro tyre dressing.
Turtlewax trim restorer

I use 7L in the 8L sprayer for rinsing. 7L in the bucket for all the cleaning. 1L in the foamer for cleaning wheels.

1) Filling up the buckets

2) I have 7L of water in the bucket. So adding around 30ml of Koch Chemie RRW. Filled the 2L garden sprayer from the bucket. Dumped the microfiber mitts in the bucket.

Filled up the wavex foamer with Greenstar APC 1:15 dilution for 1L, and added a cap full of car shampoo that I got for free with the foamer.

3) Pretreating the wheels, tyres and tyre walls with APC foam, and I let it dwell for a while.

This pulls down the majority of the grit like below with no agitation.

4) Pre treating the paint with the rinseless from the 2L garden sprayer.

5) Rinsing the wheels, followed by rinsing the body using 8L sprayer. I use almost half of that water from the sprayer here.

That beading is from TW hybrid ceramic was applied two months back, topped up by sonax BSD 1:3 15 days back.

6) Refill the sprayer from the bucket and I will be using that as a prespray for the rest of the wash.

I have a method.

Prespray half of the vehicle, do the contact wash, dry it. Repeat the same on the other half.
Do the same on the front of the vehicle.
Do the same on the back of the vehicle.
Move to the wheels

If the temperatures are high, I do it panel by panel.

7) Contact wash.

Take the mitt from the bucket. Just give a small squeeze and make sure it is holding enough solution. Keep it on the car, don’t apply any pressure, just slide it left and right on it’s own weight. Reverse the mitt while moving to the next panel, dunk it into the bucket to clean the wash media and to fill it with the new solution once both the sides of the mitt is used.

Roof of the car, Windshield, Hood, Windows, side panels is the sequence I follow. I use a seperate mitt for cleaning the bottom parts, front of the car and the back of the car.

8) Drying.

I spray Sonax BSD 1:10 generously as a drying aid (you don’t need one with rinsless as it is a drying aid on it’s own, but I just like using BSD everywhere I can to add some sort of protection), and dry the car using my ShinXpro drying towel.

Repeat the same with the other side of the car, front of the vehicle, and then the back.

9) Wheels.

Spray the APC foam, then I use a tyre brush to clean the tyres and the wheels,then rinse off with the remaining water in the 8L sprayer, and use an old MF towel to dry. I use BSD here as well. Can’t help.

This is my maintainance wash. Once a month or even longer in summer and winter, twice a month in rainy.

Here are the things I want to point out.

I don’t spend too much time on the tyre walls and wheel barrels during the maintaince washes. In fact for tyre walls, I foam them twice, and rince them twice. That’s it.
I don’t apply tyre dressing and the trim dressing on every wash. I do that whenever I feel like the old coating is fading away. I get this kind of result and I am happy with that.

c) I fill up a small spray of 500ml from the rinseless bucket at the start of the wash if I plan to clean the interior on the same day.

Deep cleaning and sealant sessions.

I do follow the exact same procedure with the following additions.

I dunk the Carpro clay towel along with the mitts in the rinseless bucket.
After step 7, I make one spray of iron remover on the quad fold clay towel, one spray on the panel, and do up and down motion until I feel the smoothness. Then rinse off again with plain water, apply rinselss again as a drying aid, and then dry the vehicle using the towel. I avoid BSD here as I don’t want anything between the sealant and the paint.
Then apply the sealant either using an applicator or a MF cloth. I prefer the former. If I had to polish, I finish the entire vehicle, do that and then apply the sealant. But that’s very very rare and I look for reasons to avoid polishing. Once a year is more than enough if we maintain the vehicles properly IMHO.
After step 9, I apply the tyre dressing, trim dressing, and I dilute 1:3 of the shinexpro tyre dressing, and spray it on the tyre walls and leave it like that. I clean the tyre walls properly here btw.

That’s it. Do the deep wash once every 3 months, maintenance wash once or twice a month, waterless wash in between the maintaince wash to deal with loose dust, and we are good.

Here are the before and after pics of this maintainance wash. Trust me, it was way dirtier than it is appearing in the image before wash. Thanks to the rain.

Before:-