Every car needs care and attention. This also includes body washing and polishing. This is necessary not only to create an external gloss, but also to extend the life of the paintwork. Constantly using the services of professional car washes is ruinous for the family budget, especially if you have the opportunity to wash your car yourself.
This is where the first question comes in. How to achieve the same result that professionals manage to achieve? You have to spend a lot of time to remove stains, drips and other unpleasant phenomena from the surface of the car. Professionals have several secrets that allow them to achieve high results in a short time. One of these secrets is choosing the right cloth for your car. Moreover, for each of the processes of creating an external gloss, a special rag is required.
How to wash your car without scratching it?
I think many already know that a risk appears on the body during washing.
The reason for this is the materials that our “shiftless workers” save on and the washing technology itself. Let's remember how this happens in 95% of cases: you arrive at the car wash, an incomprehensible washer asks whether it's doused or full, you say that you want a full body wash with wiping, leave your car and God forbid, if there is a waiting room there, go to it , but more often you watch the whole process from the street. A careless washer sprays your car with an unknown chemical, waits 5-10 minutes and somehow washes the foam off the body. Everything would be fine, but then the complete chaos begins, he takes a yellow cloth (faux suede) from the floor from a bucket of sandpaper and begins to wipe off the paintwork.
So what's wrong here? What's not to like about this type of wash? The thing is that no matter what chemistry is used, it is impossible to 100% remove all contaminants, namely static contaminants. They hold on due to static electricity and it is impossible to wash them off without contact. I think you've encountered them if you don't wipe your car down with foam after spraying it. It is static that scratches the body, and if you consider that suede sandpaper is incredibly dense in its structure, it is easy to imagine how this static abrasive scratches the varnish, which on modern cars is very soft.
How to protect yourself from this? How to properly wash a car without scratching it? Everything is quite simple: proper car washing includes not only spraying with foam and drying, but also a phase during which static is mechanically removed. Let's look at it in order: First, you need to apply BC shampoo to the body, wait 3-5 minutes and rinse it off. It is recommended to wash everything off from top to bottom. It’s more convenient for me to start from the bottom and gradually go through the entire body. Why is that? Everything is very simple, this way I can see where the foam, and therefore large dirt, has been washed away, and where not. If you start immediately from the top, then all the foam from the body will be washed away with streams of water and you will not see the missing areas. After this, I rinse the body from top to bottom with an AED in order to wash away the remaining sand, foam and coarse abrasive.
Next comes the manual washing stage, which, for some reason, is skipped at most Russian car washes. Although it is available in Europe, it is not for nothing that such a sink is called a Euro-wash and they charge a lot for it. So, you need to prepare two buckets, one with plain water, the second with shampoo. It is better to take warm water, but not hot. You will also need a large-pored sponge or a mitten made of wool or microfiber. And, starting from the roof, you need to wash off the static without pressure, very carefully, rinsing the sponge after each element in a bucket of water, and then in a bucket of shampoo. This is necessary in order to “throw” the sand into 1 bucket and not transfer it to the next element. And thus wash the entire car.
During drying, it is recommended to use microfiber towels with a density of 600 grams per square meter. But under no circumstances will I wear suede. Pure fiber is not capable of scratching the paintwork, like any other surface, and it “absorbs” the remaining sand into its fibers, preventing them from scratching the body, which cannot be said about suede (yellow rag). Towels can come in different sizes, the bigger the better. But we recommend taking two 40x40+- 15cm, first going through the first one, removing a large amount of water, and then the second one, clean and dry, getting rid of possible smudges. It turns out even faster, as if you were working with suede, constantly squeezing it out. Large towels (50x80 or more) are not so convenient to work with, they are very heavy and it is not comfortable to wipe the sides of the car, and they cost more than 1,500 rubles. And the second time you still have to go through the body.
Even if you are not used to washing the car yourself, you can bring towels with you and give them to the washers; in any case, even if you do not use a hand wash, it will be much safer to wipe the body with microfiber.
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Choosing rags for washing, wiping and polishing a car
Every car needs care and attention. This also includes body washing and polishing. This is necessary not only to create an external gloss, but also to extend the life of the paintwork. Constantly using the services of professional car washes is ruinous for the family budget, especially if you have the opportunity to wash your car yourself.
This is where the first question comes in. How to achieve the same result that professionals manage to achieve? You have to spend a lot of time to remove stains, drips and other unpleasant phenomena from the surface of the car. Professionals have several secrets that allow them to achieve high results in a short time. One of these secrets is choosing the right cloth for your car. Moreover, for each of the processes of creating an external gloss, a special rag is required.
Sponges, napkins and rags for car washing
There is still debate as to what is better to use for washing a car: rags or sponges, or maybe it’s even worth choosing napkins. Experts' opinions were divided. Some of them prefer sponges, others prefer rags. One thing is for sure: you need to buy these consumables only in specialized automotive stores.
As you can see for yourself, rags are not the best option, especially if you have the opportunity to purchase a sponge. Motorists are offered another option with which to wash their car - napkins.
We figured out which rag is best to wash the car with, but after washing the surface needs to be wiped, and for this we need other materials.
What is the best way to wipe your car after washing?
The car must be dried after washing. If you do not do this, the entire surface will be covered with stains, water marks and stains. For these purposes, you cannot use materials that were used for washing. You must have consumables for wiping your car.
A rag for wiping a car after washing is available in a huge assortment. This amount makes your eyes wide open, so you need to go to the store prepared. This entire number of rags is divided into two groups, depending on the material from which they are made.
Each driver decides for himself how best to wipe the car after washing.
Natural options
There is no secret here, there are only two of them:
1) These are fabric options consisting of cotton with the addition of wool. They are very rare, but they do occur, I have seen them myself. The disadvantages include poor cleaning of the surface until a dry rag really leaves no streaks. But as soon as it gains moisture, they appear on the entire surface. The only plus is that these options are the cheapest.
2) Made from genuine suede (suede leather) . Such options are durable, wipe the body quite well, because they absorb excess moisture. However, such rags have a big disadvantage: they dry out very much, after which they can crack and collapse, and therefore it is better to always keep them damp. In a special tube.
High-quality wipes and cloths for car polishing
An equally important procedure is polishing. A large number of special products are produced for this purpose. We have already talked about choosing a polish in one of the topics. All that remains is to figure out which rag is best to polish the car. There are a number of requirements for such napkins:
In appearance, polishing cloths are not much different from each other, but there are still differences between them. They consist of the material that is used to create rags and napkins.
We told you which rag is better to polish a car to achieve a good effect, so we hope there will be no problems with this. The main thing is that you should not use rags and rags, the material of which is completely unsuitable for these purposes.
Take proper care of your car, then its appearance will always please you.
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Drying the car. Review of body cleaning products.
There are a lot of tips and reviews on the Internet on how to properly dry a car without damaging the paintwork. For those who are concerned about the topic of proper car washing, I think they have studied everything thoroughly and know the best way to wipe their car after washing! or is it better not to wipe it at all, of course, but to use a turbo dryer