[Livnletcarsliv]

Originally Posted by el lobo 6061

How do you clean your car daily during summers and in monsoon? Since we have a very dusty environment in India.

Cleaning and maintaining the car during summer is no different from how we do in other seasons. However, the only important factor is the time of the day. In summers (in fact for any season), the best time to clean/detail your car is early in the morning or later in the evening - if it's closed/covered parking. In open parking, the only best time is early mornings. The idea is that washing/maintaining should be done only on a cold/normal surface.

Dusty environments - depends on what is the intensity and severity of the dustiness. For eg - In mining areas, to start with, it is definitely recommended to go for PPF + protective coating to reduce the damage and increase the longevity of the protection. And a maintenance 3-6 months once based on the usage of the car. And of course frequent washing (even if it is daily). In fact, interior cleaning (engine bay, AC system, etc.) is very important in mining areas.

[AJ56]

Originally Posted by Chetan_Rao

Blasphemy for our detailing brethren, but I always found the paranoia mildly amusing.

Any form of contact will leave some sort of marks over a period of time, so unless someone invents hovering cleaning mechanisms (and even then one can't avoid other avenues of contact), maintaining a factory-finish paintjob is a myth. Most cars have their factory paint-job tortured by open-to-the-elements storage and careless cleaning before a customer even sees the car for the first time. Dealer stockyard cleaners don't use Jopasu dusters, microfiber towels and expensive cleaning products. A rag and a hose/bucket it usually is.

That doesn't mean I go around in a filthy car, but I won't be investing in a dark room and black lights anytime soon. If I need special equipment and yoga lessons to see a scratch, I can live with it.

P.S. Just got back from a rainy highway drive. Took me THREE 500 ml portions of 1:100 diluted proklear and 1.5 hours, and the car looks as good as new inside out. There isn't enough grime or caked mud to justify an under-body wash, so I've put it off for later.

The amount of misinformation in this post is just staggering. Any form of contact will not leave swirls on the paint, you don’t need ‘hovering mechanisms’ just solid wash technique, kindly look up the multi mitt wash method, coupled with a good air blower for drying and you won’t leave micro marring on your finish.

Before I’m accused of being an idealist, you can see my own car, it’s an 8 year old black Honda with really soft paint, parked in the open. It’s not been polished for over 4 years and washed once a week, not even ceramic coated just old school paint sealant every few months. No waterless wash or dusters are used as they will leave fine swirls over time. You don’t need a ‘dark room with black lights’ to see the loss of gloss and optical clarity that results from having micro marring on your car’s paintwork.

Regarding maintaining factory finish and dealer induced swirls, no car leaves the factory perfect. You need to perform minor to moderate paint correction to fix slight defects and wet sand any excessive nibs/orange peel left behind in the clearcoat by the QC at the factory level and remove the additional swirls inflicted by the dealer prior to delivery. Just because it’s not in great shape to begin with doesn’t mean it can’t be fixed in most cases, protected with a good coating and then properly maintained.

Nothing wrong with wanting a car to look as good as it drives. Cheers.

[Kosfactor]

Originally Posted by AJ56

The amount of misinformation in this post is just staggering. Any form of contact will not leave swirls on the paint, you don’t need ‘hovering mechanisms’ just solid wash technique, kindly look up the multi mitt wash method, coupled with a good air blower for drying and you won’t leave micro marring on your finish.

It will.

There is no sealant or coating that you can apply which would prevent it either.

You could use a pressure washer and blast away some of the loose sand and dirt, but that's about it. The moment you rub anything on the paint, it will cause swirls and scratches. Pressure washing will eventually cause rusting in places you cannot see if done frequently, no air blower will dry those places either. So water wash is not practical for daily drive cars.

Waterless is the best alternative to the neighborhood watchman. Do it once a week and you're good. One needs to be sensible though, if the vehicle has been through a lot of mud and dirt, you have got to take it to the car wash / hose it down before touching it. Certainly dry dusting is a bad idea whatever magic duster it is.

[Chetan_Rao]

Originally Posted by AJ56

...
Nothing wrong with wanting a car to look as good as it drives....

Of course.

This is what my 2 year old car looks like. The paint has never been water-washed or detailed professionally.

All it sees is a Jopasu duster, Proklear waterless wash and the occasional wax-based polish (hand-buffed with a microfiber cloth), all done by yours truly.

Won't win a detailing contest, but not too shabby, eh?

[AJ56]

Originally Posted by Kosfactor

It will.

There is no sealant or coating that you can apply which would prevent it either.

You could use a pressure washer and blast away some of the loose sand and dirt, but that's about it. The moment you rub anything on the paint, it will cause swirls and scratches. Pressure washing will eventually cause rusting in places you cannot see if done frequently, no air blower will dry those places either. So water wash is not practical for daily drive cars.

Waterless is the best alternative to the neighborhood watchman. Do it once a week and you're good. One needs to be sensible though, if the vehicle has been through a lot of mud and dirt, you have got to take it to the car wash / hose it down before touching it. Certainly dry dusting is a bad idea whatever magic duster it is.

I never claimed sealants or coatings help prevent swirls (coatings do help a little but that’s another issue). The main job of any paint protection is to prevent chemical and UV degradation, not physical abrasion resistance (Use PPF for that).

Touching your paint properly will not cause scratches and swirls, like I said educate yourself on proper wash technique and use purified water like we do. I can show you pictures of cars we have ceramic coated years ago who come in every 3 days for a foam wash, they have over 300-400 washes and have no paint defects under the brightest spot lights we have. There is no other treatment done in this period from when the coating was applied years ago with the exception of a chemical decon every few months.

Pressure washing with clean filtered water will never cause rusting in any place, your entire car body is galvanised for precisely the same reason, we have washed thousands of cars over many years and never had any rusting issue. Classic cars (pre 1990) are not pressure washed as they are prone to rusting no doubt. If you want to be extra sure, just drive around a little after the wash to dry the underbody completely.

Waterless washing, while preferable to your watchman, is far from perfect and will positively result in fine swirls within a few washes. Best avoided if you care about your paint and swirls. Best technique for maintaining a swirl free finish is to get a pressure washer, run it through a water softener system and spray your car down, followed by an air blower, assuming your paint is protected, water will just fly off with the air, zero need to touch with drying towels.

Here’s an example of daily driver Civic we coated years ago, it’s not a garage queen and we have done nothing to it over the years apart from the occasional chemical decon (tar + iron). Still beads water like crazy and there are no swirls on the paint.

[Chetan_Rao]

There's no arguing that a professionally detailed car (or one done by a really committed amateur) will have better aesthetics than one that isn't. Our detailing thread has plenty of examples.

I've looked at multi-mitt washing methods, have even read accounts where people use a separate mitt for each panel of their car, and plenty of techniques that reduce the amount of water directly used to wash a car.

That's not the point of this specific thread though. There's an argument to be made that moving water consumption away from the end point doesn't reduce overall usage. The guy using a mitt-per-panel is still using water later to wash all those mitts, every single use. It's akin to that meme where a Tesla is hooked up to a gas-powered generator.

We're approaching a point of scarcity where we'll lack water for far more basic necessities than washing a car that can very well do without it.

It's a personal choice of course, at least until water is available and viable.

[AJ56]

Originally Posted by Chetan_Rao

There's no arguing that a professionally detailed car (or one done by a really committed amateur) will have better aesthetics than one that isn't. Our detailing thread has plenty of examples.

I've looked at multi-mitt washing methods, have even read accounts where people use a separate mitt for each panel of their car, and plenty of techniques that reduce the amount of water directly used to wash a car.

That's not the point of this specific thread though. There's an argument to be made that moving water consumption away from the end point doesn't reduce overall usage. The guy using a mitt-per-panel is still using water later to wash all those mitts, every single use. It's akin to that meme where a Tesla is hooked up to a gas-powered generator.

We're approaching a point of scarcity where we'll lack water for far more basic necessities than washing a car that can very well do without it.

It's a personal choice of course, at least until water is available and viable.

Yes agreed completely, as a detailer I can only point to the best practices for your paint, not for the environment unfortunately. I just wanted to highlight that there are ways to wash a car properly without damaging its finish. Like you said, it’s a personal decision as it is impossible to reconcile the two (safe washing vs. environmentally friendly washing that will inflict swirls). One way to achieve both might be a water recycling system but most people won’t have the required drainage design to support it.

At the end of the day, the very act of manufacturing and operating a car also harms the environment (even EV’s), but that’s a trade most of us here are willing to make owing to our passion.

[kosjam]

Originally Posted by anjan_c2007

It calls for an immediate introspection by all of us, to totally avoid wasting water.
...

Foresight and action are needed or else our ex_ PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s famous quip "the third world war will be for water" may turn out to be factual.

Alas what the OP wanted to discuss when this thread was initally started, has gotten lost in the intervening time.

Last year I was in Cape Town, S.Africa, and they had reached the D-Day, the day when they had completely run out of water. I was there only a couple of days, but they were worrying. Taps run with razor thin streams of water, half a bucket water to take a bath in, every alternate day, and the best (worst?) thing, people getting hefty fines if caught washing their vehicles with water.

This scenario is a bit hard to imagine in India right now, what with monsoons and the flooding happening pan India, but this is our not distant future. Unless the government (who else?) comes up with a similar ban on needless wastage of water, we will suffer the same fate.