Ummm... Nothing will beat pre-washing your car with a good preassure washer before ever hand washing your car with any kind of sponge, rag or microfiber.

If you do that once a week every time you wash your car your paint will thank you entirely. Automatic car washes aren't bad, it just depends on who and how they take care of them. What maintenace do they give to it daily, how often they change the rollers, etc... And no matter how good an automatic car wash is it will never be able to really clean your car like your hands will.

EDIT: For the record I use a portable Husky 1,200 psi washer but I changed the gun attachment for a low preassure one. I can clean my bare hands with it with only minor discomfort from the stream, not harsh at all on the paint. I use the high preassure gun for under the car and the wheel wells, cleaning caked on brake dust from calipers (relubing them again of course). Been doing that for 2 years on my fit with 0 issues. You just gotta know where to apply the preassurized water and where not to. Like for example, don't blast your axle boots directly with the high preassure nozzle or you'll be asking for trouble. jejejeje

 

Well, I doubt many people use a pressure washer before hand washing their car. I doubt they know how much pressure to use either.

Seems like the only way to safely hand wash your car is to do it very carefully. Meaning to always have water running where you're wiping the surface and to make sure the cloth or sponge does not have any grit. That's kind of tough to do when you're lazy and you just want to finish the car wash as quickly as possible.

 

Hehehe I'm not normal, I spend upwards of 4-5 hours washing my little fit once a week, every saturday or sunday. And once a month I hoist up on 4 jack stands, take off the wheels and give it a very thurough power washing on its belly with degreaser and I coat it with AMSOil MP when I'm done and then I wash the entire car with light dish soap, clay bar and two coats of Zymol. I do power wash the wheel wells and the rear underside wich is very visible every time I wash it though.

Being this anal for 58k miles and 2 years of heavy use and apart from the usual nicks and dings from pebbles hitting the front bumper my paint has no imperfections.

 

Wow, props to you. I never even thought about washing the underbelly.

I think everyone likes the idea of taking care of their car, but once you get into it, you just wanna finish it as quickly as possible. So I think the automatic car wash strikes a good balance for us lazy people.

 

Hehehehe, I'm definitely not normal in that respect. My car looks like it came out of the show room yesterday every time I give it its monthly detailing. And its been almost 2 years now and no stoping in sight. :P

 

to dry my car off i use the ABSORBER, it is soooo awesome. we have been using those things for the past 14 years or so. Dries spot free, lasts like 5 years, only $8, and IT'S MADE IN JAPAN!!!

usually sold at walmart..

review:
For the last five years I've used a synthetic chamois called The Absorber to dry my boat and cars. It is so good I can't bear to use anything else. It holds more water and absorbs faster than towels or real chamois. The chamois I used years ago had to be thoroughly dried out after use or it would rot, and when dry, was hard to store. Then you had to get it wet before use and wring it out frequently since it didn't hold much water. A towel, once wet, doesn't leave a dry surface (all those spots). The Absorber when moderately wet leaves your surface utterly dry. It's kind of amazing, really.
After you're done using it, just fold it in half, roll it up wet and tuck it in its hard plastic storage tube. It says you can machine wash it but I haven't tried that myself.
On the company website, you can read details on its PVA open-cell material. The company claims that the product is "the best drying tool you'll ever discover" and I have to agree it is -- it is superior drying technology. I now own four of them in different colors. The site says you can use it to dry pets but I have never tried it on my dog (she's a short hair model and doesn't really need it), but I will try it on myself.



i swear by it... like seriously try it

 

i have one of those absorber things. lol. it smells really bad in the tube.

i got towed like last tuesday and when i got my car back the front lip has a few scratches. like.. paint stripped kind of scratches..

i was wondering if i should like find a lip at the junkyard and just swap it or try to use touch up paint.. but it wont be glossy you know? the gash is about 4-5 inches long and theres a hole sorta chip about the size of a quarter.

any ideas?

top notch towing man, they pwned me.

 

Minus the initial wash the dealer gave my Fit and the use of one of those absorber towels the first two times or so, my car hasn't been touched by any rags or nothin'. Spot-free rinse and no swirls or anything.

 

truckbed liner.

 

^^^Damn now thats a good idea there!!

 

How did you apply that? I ran up to a concrete tree ring in a parking lot the other day ($#*&$*) and scraped the Fit's lip...it's not bad but I'd like to put something like that bed liner on the front. How much, where and how did you do it?

 

Can someone please post what would be considered real world washing and maintenance tips? What I mean is, we are all busy and can't wash the car every day. So it would be nice if someone in the know could post something along the lines of:

Daily
Weekly
Monthly

So lets say daily, would that be wash with warm water using a mitt, and dry with Chamois?

I saw some people mentioned pressure wash, that sounds harsh, is there a particular brand/model that is good for cars?

Thanks from the newbies

 

Not trying to be mean here, but the simple answer to your first question is, wash your car when it gets dirty, and when you have the time. Pressure washers from Costco, Lowe's, and Home Depot generate from 1500-3000 psi, and will cut through your paint as easily as a screwdriver or knife. They are not the same thing as the "pressure washers" at a coin-op car wash. Don't use a portable pressure washer on your paint.

 

I wash mine every other sunday morning in every season except winter. Winter its pointless with rain showers all the time. I wash my car a couple times a month in the winter.
Like manxman said, pressure washers are a NO-NO with cars. Just a hose, and a decent nozzle will do the trick.
As far as towels. For the past 4 months only micro fibers have been hitting my Fits paint. I stongly reccomend micro fiber towels, you can find a nice set of them for cheap at Costco. They really come in handy for people trying to avoid putting "swirls" in the paint. Especially use Microfiber while drying, this is the time swrils mainly happen. Make sure the towel is clean aswell.

 

Washing my car is so annoying, probably why I have the dirtiest Fit around. My water is so hard that it leaves spots all over the car, I have tried drying with the absorber thing and somehow water manages to fall down from the cracks in the car like under the mirrors and dry there so it looks like crap. The back end of the car is all spotty because of the water leaking out from who knows where when I already thought I dried it well.

Does anyone else have this problem? I want to keep my Fit looking perfect but there is no way I'm paying to take it up to the car wash even the one where you do it by hand all the time. I have a dusty drive so it needs to be washed often.

 

Yeah the Fit loves to hold water. Each end of that roofline spoiler, the front grill, all the door handles and the entire butt end of the car. When drying I'll have to end up circling and repeatedly opening and closing all the doors, hood and hatch. Even then I'll have a clean microfiber cloth and a fine mist bottle with distilled water in it for "touch ups" two hours later. It seems like if you think you've got it perfect the fit watches you go inside and goobers down a stream of very calcified water which dries close to white. I'm sorry but if you've got a dusty driveway then you're screwed. The "idea" of my Blackberry Pearl paint was great but the reality of keeping it clean sucks. I actually get up early to wash my car at dawn so as to minimize waterspots. Several times I've thought to myself "this shit's out of hand"!

 

I hand-washed my Fit for the first time yesterday. Got a new cleaning kit with microfibre wash mit and drying towel, and the results were impressive! My BBP was clean and sparkling again!

But on closer inspection there were problems: two scratched spots on a door panel was obvious yesterday, and today under full sun I saw minor swirling too

I had a rinse basin separate from the washing water, but suppose it wasn't deep enough for the dust and contaminants to settle. And the drying towel hadn't been washed and dried first--that's probably the source of the swirls.

In the meantime I'll probably be getting the touchup paint to patch the scratches--one spot is probably just clearcoat damage, but the long scratch feels deeper.

 

There are several solutions to your hard water problem. The most expensive is to buy a water filter that goes between your water faucet and your hose, specifically to filter out minerals from hard water, specifically for car washing. Several manufacturers make these, and most auto parts/accessories catalogs carry them.

For far less expense, try 1. Turtle Wax Ice car wash and polymer polish. Once you have a coat of the polish on the car, the car wash detergent rinses cleanly and the rinse water just sheets off without leaving water spots. I have hard water and use this combo. It works well.

Another low expense combo is 2. the Mr. Clean car wash detergent, used through the spray gun with a filter in the gun. The gun has three settings, and the final setting is the final rinse with only filtered water coming out of the gun. I used this system for about two years until the gun broke, and I found the Turtle Wax Ice products on sale at Costco. The whole setup worked exactly as advertised, and you can buy the system as well as refills of detergent and replacement filters at Home Depot stores. The spray gun is the weak point- the gun will break eventually, but it worked for me for about two years.

 

The suggestions by manxman above are a perfect solution for your problem with water spots. I was going to suggest the Mr. Clean - I wish they had that before I got so fed up with the hard water, that I put in a cistern and have water trucked in.

Regarding the Fit holding water. Do you have a leaf blower? Works beautiful. Dries it fast and gets every nook and crannie where the water hides. I have a gas one and fire it up for a blow dry!

 

Manxman thanks so much for your suggestions. I went to Walmart and got the Mr. Clean Auto Dry system, it works perfectly! Now my car is nothing short of beautiful. :P I am so happy I can wash it with excellent results at home now. It also removed the swirl marks somehow which was going to be my next question because it got swirl marks while I waxed it.

So...if anyone wants an easy way to wash their car at home even with extra hard water, get a Mr. Clean Auto Dry kit! It was about $19 at Walmart. I got a $5 microfiber mit to wash it with as well.