TRANSCRIPT
You know, the most common way we get swirls and scratches into the finish on our cars comes from the way we wash it and dry it and also anytime we wipe it with a microfiber towel.
Now, I’ve already completely polished out this car. It has a scratch-free, a swirl-free finish.
And I’m going to share today—actually I’m going to do a brain dump—on all the techniques I’ve learned over the last 30 plus years of detailing cars to safely wash a car to keep that finish pristine without any swirls or scratches.
Demonstration: Washing One Half of the Hood
So the first thing I want to do is, um, I’m just going to take and wash this one half of this hood because we’re going to take and we’re going to show you with the Swirl Finder light the before and after difference.
Okay. So I’m going to film it. Sit up there. Just stay there.
Now, right here from the beginning, I’m going to be sharing some tips, but I’m also going to be repeating this because we’re going to bring a dirty car over. I’m going to show the whole process. And don’t try to remember everything because there’s going to be a downloadable checklist, a PDF file you can download there.
Straight-Line Passes, Not Circles
Now, watch what I did just right there. I just took and I made from—I started in the center of the car and I worked my way outward and I didn’t make circles. So I just made gentle passes just like that. And that side of the hood is done.
And then the key is to keep this thing clean, have a clean place to put it. Okay.
So, next I’ll take and rinse it.
Two-Step Drying With Air and a Towel
Again, I’m only going to do this one side because we’re going to put a Swirl Finder light on here and show you that there’s no swirls or scratches by using the techniques that I’m going to share here today. Okay.
And then to dry this, I like to do a two-step method. First with blown air.
And then the other way I like to dry this is, after I’ve blown off the majority of the water, I like to take one of these Gauntlet drying towels from The Rag Company and I’m going to go ahead and re-wipe it.
I’m going to use a product called Bead Hero, but this is mostly just a drying aid. It’s a lubricant. I’m going to put a little bit right down here onto—just onto—the towel.
Swirl Check on Black Paint
And then in this case, since I’ve already got the water off, I’m just going to give it a soft, gentle wipe. Flip over to the dry side. Then we’ll grab a Swirl Finder light and show you the before and after difference.
And most people would agree, black cars show everything. So this is a great demonstration on how to wash a car to get a swirl-free, flawless finish.
Okay, fully charged-up Swirl Finder light. Here’s the before. And as you can see, there are zero swirls and scratches. Come over here. There’s a smudge, but there are zero swirls and scratches.
That’s because I’m just using some simple techniques that you can use when you wash your own car, especially if you’re new to taking care of your own car, if you’re a beginner or just an enthusiast.
We’ll Bring in a Dirty Car Next
Okay, I’m going to move this car inside. I’m going to move a car that’s actually dirty over here and I’m going to go through every tip and technique I’ve known for about 30 plus years to wash a car safely without inducing swirls and scratches at the same time. So stay tuned.
Brain Dump: Class Tips for a Safe, Thorough Wash
When I teach our car and boat detailing classes, I do what I call a brain dump. I try to take everything in here and get it into the classroom just to share with people the things I’ve learned over the years.
There’s a famous quote I like. It goes like this. It’s from Eleanor Roosevelt. Try to learn from other people’s mistakes. You may not live long enough to make them all on your own.
So, what I’m going to do is I’m going to go through all the supplies I would recommend to do a careful, safe, but thorough wash. And I also have my cheat sheet here, which is just going to become a downloadable PDF file, so you don’t got to try to remember everything. But I’m using this just so I don’t forget everything because there’s a lot I’m going to cover including some techniques I don’t think any other video has ever shared.
Work in the Shade and Start Early
So the first thing is you always want to work in the shade. Right out here behind—in front of—me there’s actually a shade line. The sun—the shade’s going to start creeping away here. So I only got about an hour or so to do this video and make this car wash and get this car washed clean. Otherwise, we’re going to run into sun and then that just causes problems like the soap trying to dry or the water trying to dry on the car.
So, if you can, always wash in the shade. It’s also a good idea if you live in a hot environment like we do here in South Florida to start early while the temperatures are still cool and the wind is low.
Foam Cannon vs. Foam Gun
Okay, so let’s take a look at some of the things. Now, in this particular video, I’m going to be using a foam cannon with a pressure washer. However, if you don’t have a pressure washer, you can also use a foam gun. The difference between a foam gun and a foam cannon is a foam cannon hooks up to a pressure washer and a foam gun hooks up to your normal garden hose.
They both create mountains of suds which creates a lot of lubrication to make washing safer. And also the suds create dwell time so the cleaning agents in the soap can actually stick to the paint and do their work, which is softening and loosening and emulsifying things like road grime, uh, traffic film, dirt, pollen, bird droppings, insect droppings—or insect splatter—things like that.
So either way, a foam cannon or a foam gun, but I will be showing a foam cannon today.
Two-Bucket Method and a Dedicated Wheel/Tire Bucket
Now, if you don’t have a foam cannon or a foam gun, there’s a very popular technique called the two-bucket method. Now, the two-bucket method—or the one-bucket method, whichever you want to use—actually always has an extra bucket. And I want to point over here: this is my wheel and tire bucket. And we’re not going to cover wheels and tires, although I always recommend doing the wheels and tires first before washing the car. And I’ll explain that later.
But the reason you want to have a dedicated bucket for your, um, wheels and tires is because you can put your different wheel and tire cleaning brushes in here. And when you’re cleaning a wheel, a lot of times you’re going to pull off metallic brake particles. So every time you hit the brakes, the brake pads engage with the rotors and brake dust comes off, and that’s scratchy. So you don’t want to take and put a wash mitt into your same bucket that you got your wheel and tire brushes in because you’re going to get those metal particles on here and when you rub it over the paint, you’re going to put swirls and scratches in. So always have a dedicated wheel and tire bucket.
Now we’re going to save a wheel—we’re going to do an amazing wheel and tire cleaning video in the future. So, I’m just going to put this out of the way for right now so I can talk about this other stuff.
Grit Guard and Washboard: Keep Dirt at the Bottom
Now, when it comes to the two-bucket method, you can see I’ve labeled these Wash and Rinse. And the reason for this is because the way the two-bucket method works—let me grab a mitt again—is you start out grabbing some soapy water, you wash a panel, then before you take and put all the dirt on that wash mitt that you just removed from that panel back into your soapy water bucket, you want to take and put it in a rinse bucket. And then you want to swish it around and try to get the dirt off.
Now, there’s a couple tools here I want to share with you that make this a better, easier process. This is a Grit Guard. This is the original. Everything else out there right now is a copy of the original, but this is the original.
And the way this works is you see this grill is suspended off the bottom of the bucket about 2 inches with these vanes. And what these vanes do is when you’re swishing that mitt around, they keep the dirt on the bottom from swishing around because they block it—because they’re vanes. They do what they’re supposed to do. And the grill of course is something you push the wash mitt against when you’re washing. You don’t just put your wash mitt in the bucket and swish it around. You press it down against here and you, you know, just rub it against there. What’s going to happen is it’s going to help to agitate any dirt on the mitt so it drops down below the Grit Guard where you don’t just keep reintroducing the dirt you removed off one panel to the next panel.
Now that’s how that works.
The Washboard Attachment
Now there’s another ingenious invention the Grit Guard company come up with. This is called a Washboard. This actually has these little feet here that attaches to the Grit Guard insert and you stick this down inside the bucket and this just makes it easier for you to take and bring this down at an angle and scrub all the dirt off your mitt and then of course it gets trapped below.
So you take this after you assemble—and you actually got to kind of press these into place—put this into your rinse water bucket and you can see it’s kind of at an angle in there now. And the way this works is you take your dirty wash mitt—you just washed the panel—and you just bring it down here and you agitate it across that Washboard. And the whole idea being is it’s going to loosen, agitate any dirt that’s on there so it falls down and it gets trapped underneath the Grit Guard.
Three Ways Swirls Get In
And this is really important because here’s what I always tell people. If you buy a brand new car, or say you pay a professional detailer to detail your car, or you do it yourself and you’ve got a flawless finish, and then a couple months later—couple years later, depends on how you wash your car—you pull that car out in the sun and you see swirls and scratches everywhere, then the question is, how did the swirls and scratches get into the paint?
And the way they get into the paint is three ways. One, contaminated wash mitt. It’s the thing we rub over the paint. Two, contaminated drying towels. The little sticks, dead bugs, rocks, and things in your drying towel—start wiping the paint off, you put swirls or scratches in. And then your microfiber wiping towels. Anytime you’re wiping like a spray detailer, pulling off a compound or polish, if your towels are contaminated, those are going to put scratches in.
So, this is why I’m always telling people, you know, you’ve got to keep these things clean. Otherwise, you’re going to put swirls or scratches in.
Multiple Wash Mitt Method
And I’m going to share with you what I call the multiple wash mitt method because I believe that is the safest way to keep a pristine finish flawless. And this is especially true if you’re washing a matte car because once you put swirls and scratches in matte, there’s no way to polish them out.
Now, keeping your stuff clean starts with having an extra bucket. And this is where you’re going to put your dirty wash mitts after you’ve used one. And what this does, it just keeps them from landing on the ground, getting contaminated, and causing swirls and scratches in the future.
So, you got to think this thing through and do everything you can to keep the things that touch the paint—wash mitts, drying towels, microfiber wipe towels—keep them clean and uncontaminated.
Anyway, so that’s how you use the two-bucket method.
Soaps, Decon, and Drying Aids
Now, of course, you always want to use a pH-balanced car wash soap and that’s just a gentle way to clean, especially if you got a wax or sealant on there. It won’t break it down as fast, unlike a coating, which is semi-permanent, which really holds up for a long time, which is really a better way to go. But there’s something for everybody out there. But a pH-balanced car wash soap.
Now, a couple other products you can use. This is a decontamination—now, this car isn’t that dirty, but if it was, I’d want to put down a dedicated decontamination product to break up things like iron or iron fallout, industrial pollution, things like that before I start to wash it.
Um, I’m also going to be sharing a pre-rinse and a pre-foam, but this is just an extra step if you’re working on an extremely neglected car or perhaps a car that’s parked a lot in an industrial area.
Then another product that’s nice to have is just some sort of drying aid. Okay, so a drying aid just helps you to get those little tiny water marks off and it also lubricates the surface as you’re drying it. So here’s two—three—chemicals that are important to have to do very, very safe washes.
Brushes for Tight Areas and Bugs
Now besides that, um, I always like to have an assortment of brushes. Now a lot of people have seen these and these come in real handy for getting around like the valve stems, but also the fuel door. You know, a lot of people skip the fuel door.
And believe it or not, just an old-fashioned paint brush. A lot of times these bristles are so long they’ll get into tight areas that these other brushes won’t get into.
This is a boar’s hair wheel face brush. It’s very soft. But what I like this for is to get into the grill. Okay. Wash mitts don’t get into all these. And all new cars got fancy grills. They don’t really get into there, but this brush will. So I really like to have that.
This is just an old school bug sponge, bug scrubbing sponge. And a lot of times when you got baked-on bug splatter on the windshield, the headlights, it just makes it faster and easier to clean it off with something like that versus your really nice clean microfiber towels.
Foam Cannon Setup and Mix
So, we’ve got our chemicals. We’ve got some brushes. This is a foam cannon. This is the Flex Foam Cannon. I’m using the Flex battery-powered pressure washer. And in another video that we shot and shared just recently—there’s two of them—there’s one on how to use a foam cannon and then there’s a review for this pressure washer. But in that video, I share how I like to pre-mix my soap with water. So as I’m working around the car, if I run out of soapy water, I can always quickly just re-add it because what happens is your hands get kind of slippery, so it gets kind of hard to do.
And in that video, I discuss how I pre-mix this. It’s basically 1 oz of car wash per gallon or 2 oz of car wash for 1,000 mL is what it is. And so I show how to do that.
Blow Water Off First, Then Final Wipe
Uh, besides that over here, when it comes to drying the car, I love to have a really good leaf blower. Uh, this is a very strong one. It’s got a fully charged battery in it. And the reason for that is because it’s nice to be able to go through and knock off a lot of the water without even touching the paint.
But also to get all that water out of the cracks and the crevices, the emblems, the side mirrors, the door handles, the headlights, the tail lights, the wiper arms—just to get that water out there so it isn’t dripping down after you’ve cleaned the car.
But then I always do like to come back with a dedicated drying towel and a drying aid to actually do the final wipe because that removes all those tiny little water marks that these tend to leave behind that you got to look carefully to see.
Why I Use a Detailing Cart
Okay. Then I love—I want to share this. This is something I actually—I will pack this one with me when I’m teaching off-site classes. But this is the Grit Guard universal detailing cart. And the thing I like about it is they pre-cut this hole which you can see right there. And it comes with a little spacer to spread out the weight of the water to the second shelf. So it’s not all just sitting here on the first shelf. It’s got a nice film gasket here.
And here’s why I like this—let me center that up—is because now that I’ve got this thing elevated to waist high, I don’t got to bend over to grab soapy water every time I want to wash a car. And when I detail cars professionally for people, I share this cart with all my clients because if you think about it, the thing we all do the most is we don’t change the oil or the spark plugs or rotate the tires. I mean, most of us don’t. We take that to the dealership. They do that nowadays.
But here’s the thing most of us do is we wash our cars. So, I always tell my clients, “Okay, look, Bob, you know, you can bend over the rest of your life dipping your mitt into your buckets or splurge. Buy one of these carts for yourself. Now you don’t got to bend over every time you want to dip your wash mitt into the bucket, but you also got a place to store all your car wash supplies. And of course, you can roll around the car as you’re washing the car to make it convenient, fast, and easy to get to your supplies.”
So anyway, that’s just something I like—the detail cart—because it holds a bucket elevated at waist high so I don’t got to bend over.
Invest in Multiple Wash Mitts (or Towels)
Okay, so besides that—so we got the two-bucket, we got the cart, the bucket, we got this—and then let me pull this up here just a little bit. Now, um, the two-bucket method is better than just a one-bucket method because you’re actually trying to remove some of the dirt you’ve removed off one panel before you take that mitt to another panel.
But here’s a more intelligent way to keep your car swirl-free. And it’s called the multiple wash mitt method. Now, I know some of you are probably thinking, “Gee, Mike, how many wash mitts do I got to buy?” Well, look, it depends on how big your car is, but usually 8 to 12. You know, if you got a big old four-door monster truck, you might want 12. If you got a small crossover like this, you might only need like nine or ten. But a wash mitt like this costs about 10 bucks. And I like these because they’re color-coded so I can remember which side I used.
Um, but the bigger picture point is, you invest that kind of money into your wash mitts and it’s, say, 80 to 100 bucks. But moving forward, if you’ve ever detailed your own car, you understand that it takes seconds to put scratches in, but it takes hours to get them out when you’re buffing. So, an investment in multiple wash mitts actually saves you time and money overall. So, it’s actually a good way to do it.
Now, if you don’t want to buy multiple wash mitts, I get that. You can also use multiple towels. So, here’s a whole stack of towels. I think there’s a dozen here. And you do the same thing. You’re going to take and dunk these into your soapy water bucket and just use one towel per panel. So, both methods would work. I tend to like to use the multiple wash mitt method.
And every time I’m done, I throw it in my dirty towel bucket. And then as soon as I’m done washing the car, this goes into the, uh, shop there. It goes into the washing machine, the dryer, it goes to a table that I clean. I’m going to fold it, inspect it, and I actually take some tweezers. And anything I use on paint, I fold it. I inspect it with my hands. I look at it with my eyes and I pull anything I see or feel out with my tweezers—including my wash mitts.
And it’s really the biggest secret I could share: keep the things that touch the paint clean and—keyword—uncontaminated. And I’ll tell you, I work on a lot of muscle cars or street rods for all the local guys. And what I find funny is every time someone brings me a car, if I look behind the seat or in the trunk, I find their microfiber towels. Where’s my—I find their microfiber towels and I’ll pull them out and I’ll even show the class if I’m doing a class. They’re always contaminated and then these guys wonder how come their cars have swirls and scratches. It’s because the way they get swirls and scratches all comes down to the way we touch the paint. We touch it three ways: wash mitts, drying towels, microfiber wiping towels. So, lock that in your brain. Keep your stuff clean.
Pre-Rinse: Let Water Do Work
Okay. Besides that, I think we’re good to go. I’m going to go over a couple of tips and techniques for how I would approach washing a car using a foam gun. And then, uh, we’ll just work through the process. So, here we go.
So, the first thing you want to do to do a careful car wash is you want to pre-rinse the car. And the reason for this is to remove all that—there’s actually two reasons. One is you can remove 50% of the loose dirt easily just with a garden hose or a pressure washer. But the other good reason for this is because water is a natural solvent. It softens. It breaks down dirt. So, by getting the car wet, you’re already softening any dirt that doesn’t come off in the initial wash.
Clean Fender Lips First
Now that we’ve pre-rinsed the car and the car is actually covered with water—and remember, water is a natural solvent. It breaks down mud. It breaks down dirt. So, it’s sitting over here dissolving stuff just on its own—but one of the first things I like to do, and I’ve never seen this shared in any video, is I like to go ahead and just clean the fender lips because they’re incredibly dirty. And that way I never have to worry about bringing any dirt from the fender lip back onto the fender as I wash it.
Now, normally I like to use what I call a tatty wash mitt. This is something I use for doing the dirt work, but the reason I like these types of wash—let me just show you here real quick—is all these little, they call these alien caterpillars. When you put them in the wash machine, they jiggle a lot and the dirt comes off, so they stay uncontaminated, so they’re clean the next time you wash your car.
But instead of using this to do the fender lips, I want to just show you how dirty these fender lips are by taking this clean white microfiber towel, grabbing some soapy water. And here is why I like to clean the fender lips first. Just the lip there, not the actual outside. This is piano black plastic. It scratches really easy. And look at everything I pulled off. Just the fender lip.
I don’t want to be washing a fender and thinking in my head, I know I better get the fender lip and put all this on my nice clean wash mitts. So, that’s why I do that. And I just do that with some soapy water. You don’t have to foam the fender lip to get it clean, but just come down here and hit them all.
And again, just massive dirt underneath there. And it’s important to get the fender lips clean. You know, if you ever take the IDA Skills Validation test, they always ask, you know, what are some of the most common missed areas when you wash a car? And of course, you know, this is for people that want to be professional detailers. And fender lip and fuel door are the two most common missed areas.
There we go. I mean, just look at all the junk on here. You don’t want to be rubbing this over your car’s paint.
Okay, I won’t even put this in my dirty towel bucket because it’s too dirty to go in there with my normal wash mitts.
Okay, then after that, you can give that a quick rinse. And that way, you just don’t have to worry about grabbing any of that built-up oily dirt and rubbing against your car’s paint.
Pre-Foam for Dwell Time
This is just an extra precaution. You can skip it if you want to. I just know people’s behaviors and habits. And I know when people are washing the fender, they will tend to take their towel, their wash mitt—they will wash the fender lip. Don’t be that person.
Okay. Hey, fender lips are clean. Here is a quick way to put your wand away, by the way. Just poke it down here in a little tip holder, then press it back into that, um, locking mechanism there.
Okay, so now that we’ve got the fender lips clean, the next thing I want to do is I want to go ahead and pre-foam the car. And the reason you want to pre-foam the car and then rinse it before you’re doing a contact wash is because you want the cleaning agents in the soap to go to work loosening and softening any of the dirt that didn’t come off from the initial pre-rinse.
Okay, so I’ve got this all set up. I’m just going to start at the top and work my way down. And as you can see, the benefit to foaming a car with a foam cannon or a foam gun is you get dwell time with your car wash soap, which are cleaning ingredients—you know, surfactants and things like that. They can sit on there and dwell, go to work loosening anything you didn’t blast off. I’m going to get the back here real quick.
And it just makes for a safer wash. I mean, like I always tell people, it takes hours to buff out a car. I buffed out my first car in the 1980s. I’ve been doing this a long time. Takes hours to buff out a car and get all the swirls or scratch out. Only takes seconds to put them back in. So, you want to try to approach your car thinking like, what can I do to avoid pressing any kind of gritty particle over the paint? And that’s to pre-foam it. Let the foam do its thing by soaking there and loosening and emulsifying all the road grime, traffic film, and dirt off the car.
Now, one thing that’s real important is you don’t want to let the soap dry on the car. So, you want to let it dwell as long as it can, but then you want to get it rinsed off.
What “Traffic Film” Really Is
And real quickly, while I’m letting it dwell here, let me explain. Anytime you hear the term road film or traffic film or traffic grime or road grime, what that is—most of the time if you go to a parking lot and look in the center of the parking lot, you’ll see where cars drip oil in the middle of the parking space. If you’re driving down a long straight road on a dry day, usually the center of the road where you’re driving on is darker because all the cars that leak oil when they’re parked also leak oil when they’re driving. And then what happens is that oil and dirt kind of builds up and then the next time it rains, the cars in front of you mix all that up with their wheels and throw it up on your car.
That’s where the oily road film—or what they call traffic film—comes from. And if you got a perfectly clean and ceramic coated car, that road grime isn’t going to stick the first time you drive your car in the rain. But over time, it does. It starts to build up and it bonds to the exterior of your car—the glass, the plastic, the paint, everything.
Okay, as you can see, we’re starting to get a little bit of fall-off here. So, I’m going to go ahead and just rinse.
Contact Wash: Roof First, One Section at a Time
Now that I’ve rinsed off the pre-foam, the next thing I want to do is I want to go ahead—and this is going to be for the contact wash where we’re actually going to use a wash mitt to wash each body panel—but I’m going to foam just the roof.
Now, I’m going to share something with you. I’ve seen a lot of videos, a lot of people teach how to use a foam gun to wash a car. Typically, what they do is they foam the whole car. The problem with that is you end up rushing, okay? You end up rushing trying to get the whole thing washed before it dries. So, you know, if you’re not in a hurry, then here’s what you want to do: just slow down. Tackle the roof first, then tackle the vertical sides, then tackle the front and back of the car.
Now, the multiple wash mitt method. I’ve already got some soapy water mixed up here. This is just soapy water, pH-neutral soap. I’m going to take all my wash mitts and I’m just going to dunk them in here. Push them down there so they’re completely saturated with car wash soap.
Okay. While I’m doing this, that foam is over there, again, loosening, emulsifying, making it safer for me to wash just the roof.
So now I’m going to take and come up here and just knock out the roof. I’ll come down to the glass. What’s nice about this crossover is I can actually reach the entire roof.
Straight-Line Passes, Don’t Scrub in Circles
And then here’s the method. Let me walk around the other side. I’ll show you the correct method to wash a car. First of all, don’t make circles. Okay? Don’t make circles. That puts circle scratches in if you’re scratching. But what you want to do is start in the middle, make a pass, and then work your way outward. Okay?
Again, if your car is in good shape, that dirt isn’t going to want to stick to the paint. It’s going to want to loosen easily with the wash mitt—the contact wash. So, that is the safe way. Start in the middle of the panel, work your way out, make straight-line passes, don’t make circles, and don’t scrub the paint.
Okay. So, now that I’ve done that, I actually only used the blue side. I’m going to save the yellow side for the glass. But, um, what I need to do now is go ahead and rinse that off before that dries.
One Side at a Time
Okay. So, now that I’ve knocked out the roof, it’s completely washed and clean. The next thing I’m going to do, keeping with that thought train of not trying to do the whole car at one time—because then you got to rush and fight before the foam drips off or dries onto the car—I’m just going to do one side at a time and I’m going to break up the front from the sides to the back.
So, I’m going to foam this. I’ll go ahead and foam the windshield and the hood. That foam can sit there and dwell while I do a contact wash on this side. Then, I’ll come back and rinse the whole mess off.
Okay, now that foam is kind of sitting there dwelling, going to work doing its thing. While it’s doing that, I’m just going to take and—uh, this is the side I didn’t use—I’m just going to hit the glass real quick all the way around the car. You know, glass is a lot harder than paint. It’s not that you don’t want to be careful, but you really don’t ever scratch glass or have to worry about scratching it when you’re washing it with a wash mitt and a soap. It’s just not that big of a deal. You do want to be careful, but you definitely want to get the glass all clean.
And then like I showed you earlier, this mitt is now done and it goes into a clean bucket so it doesn’t get any dirtier and that way I don’t have to worry about it becoming contaminated.
Okay, so now I’m going to hook this up so I can rinse. I’m going to grab a fresh wash mitt. I’m going go ahead and do my contact wash on the side.
Panels: Top Down, Few Passes
Okay, then same thing here. Notice I’m rubbing in straight lines. I start at the top. I only make a couple passes. I work my way down and then move on to a new section. And for this, I’m going to flip to the other side of this clean mitt. Couple passes, get around the windshield—or the, uh, door knob there. Then look at this. Just a couple of passes is all you need to do to loosen that dirt.
Okay, at this point I would call this mitt done. I’ve used two sides. It’s okay. I got lots of wash mitts. Come down here. Get the mirror. Get the A-pillar. And with the blue side here, I’m getting the fender up to the front clip here. Headlight.
Now I’m going to flip this over to the side I haven’t used. Start in the middle, work my way out. Just making a few solid passes. I’ve used both sides of this mitt. So now I’m going to grab a fresh mitt to get the other side of the hood. And then we’ll rinse.
And then what I’m going to do is I’m going to do the same thing on the other side. And then I’m going to take a brush to the grill. And then I’ll wash the back of the car. And at some point I’ll give it a final rinse.
I used this side on the hood. So I’m going to flip over to the blue side. While I’m here, just get this front clip here, at least the top part. And again, this mitt is done. No cross-contamination going on. Time to rinse. Then I’ll repeat this to the other side. [inaudible] [inaudible]
Don’t Forget the Fuel Door
It’s just a nice way to get into those tight areas. So, don’t forget the fuel door. I’m not going to foam this area, but I will put some soapy water in there. And then a combination of brushes, it helps you just to get in there and get everything clean. And I actually find these work good, but an old school paint brush also works really well because this has got 4 in long bristles on it, so it really reaches into those areas.
Then of course, come back and then rinse that out. And always make sure that gas cap’s tight before you start.
Final Panels and Final Rinse
Okay, last part. Just same kind of idea. Start at the top, work your way down. Don’t scrub in circles. Only one or two passes will get the job done.
Then the last thing you want to do is a final rinse. Starting at the top, working your way down. And this is important for a couple reasons. One, you want to make sure you got all the soap suds off. But two, while I was washing different sides of different areas of this car, just through gravity, soap had a chance to kind of drain down. So, I have a second chance to rinse it off. So, gravity is your friend.
And coming back for a second rinse is important because a lot of times it’s hard to get 100% of the suds out of here. But gravity—while you’re doing something else—it’ll kind of pull. It’ll go down lower. It makes it easier to rinse for the final rinse.
Drying: Blow Crevices, Then Use a Drying Aid
Okay, there we go. Final rinse. Now it’s time to dry this car before we lose sunshine, before we lose shade. We got plenty of sun.
Okay, so at this point, um, I like to take a leaf blower, which mine is over here. And if this car had a ceramic coating, a fresh coat of wax, or a paint sealant, you’d see a lot of water beading and this water would just blow off. But as you can see, it’s been a while since this car has had any kind of polishing or protection applied to it. And the water’s just kind of laying flat, so it’s not going to blow off. But I do like to use this for the initial dry to blow out all the cracks and crevices and the grill.
Also things like the mirrors, the door handles, the emblems.
Okay, after I’ve blown out all the cracks and crevices, door handles, side mirrors, headlights, marker lights, next thing I want to do is I want to go ahead and use a clean, soft, high quality microfiber drying towel. And I’m going to use a drying aid. We call this Bead Hero. You don’t have to, but it adds a little bit of lubrication during the process just to keep everything safe. And you can spray some on the car or what I like to do is I just like to put a few light mists onto the towel itself. Doesn’t take a lot. Car’s already clean. You’re just trying to get it dry safely.
Least-Invasive Wiping
Okay. And then for flat surfaces like this, you can pretty much just lay this thing down flat, drag it across, and remove all that water. And that’s called the least invasive method because you’re not really pressing a cloth and rubbing it over the finish like this.
Now, this finish could use a good wax job, but at the same time, uh, the idea is to never do anything that could accidentally put a scratch into the finish. That’ll keep your car looking great and it’ll keep you from having to detail it as often.
And then just finish that around the rest of the car. And that’s how I would wash and safely dry a car.
Checklist and Contact
You know, if you couldn’t remember all the tips and techniques that I shared in this video, in the description down below the video, there’s a link you can go to and you can print out a checklist, a PDF file checklist just to make sure you have all the supplies you need and have everything ready to go when you wash your car. That way, you don’t got to stop. And this actually worked out pretty good, but you can print that thing out.
And of course, if you got any questions in the future, always feel free to reach out to me. That’s Mike Phillips, [email protected]. My personal cell number is 760-515444 or you can send an email to Dr. Beasley’s at [email protected].
I hope this video helped you. If you liked it and you want to be notified of new videos, like and subscribe and I hope to see you someday at a future detailing class.