Washing your car regularly not only makes driving more comfortable, but also prolongs its life and saves the driver from fines for a dirty windshield or license plates. The car can be washed by yourself or at a car wash. Which option to choose depends on the owner, but in order not to damage the paintwork and perform all actions efficiently, you need to know how to properly wash a car and how to wash a car. Washing a vehicle is a year-round task, but in the cold season it has its own characteristics, which we will also focus on in this article.
How to wash your car with a pressure washer?
Best for car paint, wash it by yourself. Only the owner of the car will treat it as carefully as possible, using high-quality and gentle cleaning products for washing. But the weather does not always allow washing the car on your own, and not every car owner has the place and time for water procedures. In some cases, it will not be possible to do without the services of paid car washes.
If you know how to wash your car at a self-service car wash, you can save money, but in this case, you will have to put your own efforts to remove dirt and spend a lot of personal time on it. If you have little time, and you need to wash your car quickly, you can stop by an automatic car wash. It can be tunnel or portal. In the first version, the machine is captured by the device and driven through a dense row of brushes with detergents, sprayers and dryers. In portal car washes, the car remains motionless on the platform, and all washing devices move around it. These types of car washes, although they quickly clean the car, do not do it very well, leaving behind unwashed areas and dirt in hard-to-reach places.
If the owner of an automatic car wash does not maintain them in a timely manner and does not regularly change the brushes, washing on them can quickly ruin the paintwork on your car. Some car enthusiasts recommend using contactless car wash services for more gentle car care, but we will not describe how to properly wash a car with a contactless car wash, since in reality such a service does not exist. It is impossible to wash a car without contacting it with at least water, detergents and a simple piece of soft cloth.
You can easily, quickly and efficiently wash your car with the help of special equipment. The German company Karcher specializes in its production. In order for washing to be of high quality and bring you not only cleanliness, but also a lot of positive emotions, you need to know how to properly wash your car with a pressure washer. This procedure is carried out in several stages:
- Wet the bodywork and apply the cleaner to the car with a low pressure sprayer. This is necessary so that coarse particles of dirt that have long fallen on the surface begin to peel off. You can also apply a special agent for rims on rims. Give 2-4 minutes for the car chemicals to react with the dirt.
- Remove dirt with a high pressure jet. It also treats wheel arches and rims as a preliminary cleaning. For this, a special nozzle Vario Power 360 ° can be used, which helps to reach the most inaccessible places.
- Clean the machine with a soft brush. It can be a WB60 or WB150 brush. A sponge soaked in a cleaning agent can be used to clean the rims. To remove dirt from the narrow gaps of the rim, a special nozzle is used.
- Rinse the car with demineralized water (osmosis) and let it dry. To make the paintwork shine, you can additionally rub it with a soft cloth.
If you don’t know how to wash your car with Karcher, here are some simple tips:
- for a car, only a jet nozzle is used, a mud cutter can adversely affect its paintwork;
- from the device to the surface of the machine must be at least 30 cm;
- washing is always done from the bottom up. This is necessary to ensure a long-term effect of the cleaning agent. This washing principle will allow you not to miss a single contaminated area on the machine.
If washing is done in the hot season, it is better to do it under any cover (garage, shed, roof, shade). This is necessary so that the water on the body does not dry up before it is wiped off.
After you have cleaned the body and wheels with a pressure washer, you can wash the car inside. To do this, remove all mats, shake them well and remove dirt with a special cleaning agent. In hard-to-reach places in the cabin and in the folds of the seats, dirt is removed with a special vacuum cleaner with various nozzles to facilitate work. For each type of surface in the car interior, a different type of cleaning agent is used. We will talk about how to wash the car in a separate section of the article.
How to properly wash your car in winter?
Whatever time of the year you plan to wash your car, it is important to set aside enough time for this, and not to do it in between. No matter how carefully the car is wiped after washing, moisture still remains on it for some time after washing, which freezes and spoils the paintwork at a negative temperature, and at a positive temperature it becomes a place to which dirt and dust adhere. After washing, you need to let the car stand for a while without moving.
In winter, washing a car cannot be ignored, since a lot of road reagents settle on its body at this time. They must be removed, but for this you need to know how to properly wash the car at low temperatures. And here it all depends on where the car is stored. If it is in a warm garage, it is best to wash off road dust from it in the evening before putting it in the garage. If your “iron horse” lives in a cold garage, under a shed or in an open parking lot, it is better to use the services of a car wash equipped with equipment for drying locks and seals. If these elements are not dried, then in the morning after washing at a negative air temperature, you will have a problem opening the doors.
If the temperature is very low outside, you should not go outside immediately after washing, because the water remaining on the surface of the car will instantly freeze. If moisture gets into the microcracks of the paintwork, it will expand when it freezes and destroy them even more. Icing also has a negative effect on rubber seals, which wear out faster and deform because of it.
How to wash a car?
It is important to know not only how to wash a car, but also how to do it correctly. The fact is that the use of the wrong cleaning agent leads to rapid damage to surfaces for which they are not intended. Modern autochemistry is very diverse. At the disposal of car owners there are car shampoos with different pH levels, foams, protective wax, anti-rain compounds and various special polishes. Before using them, be sure to read the instructions and familiarize yourself with the list of materials to which they can be applied. This is necessary in order not to spoil the details, for example, when using the wrong shampoo, the chrome trim elements may become cloudy.
In addition to the correct auto chemical goods, it is necessary to pay attention to the quality of the rags used. These should be microfiber products or special cuts of artificial suede (polyvinyl). Their use does not require much effort, they do not leave streaks and less than other materials accumulate abrasive particles that damage the paintwork.
To clean windows, mirrors and headlights, you must use a special glass cleaner. It is sprayed onto the surface with a spray gun and removed with a lint-free cloth. The product does not spread and does not leave drips of dirty water. When cleaning the interior, you must use cleaning products designed for textile, leather or plastic upholstery.
In order to make trips in your car comfortable and safe, and its appearance does not violate the rules of the road, you must always monitor the cleanliness of the vehicle. You can do it yourself or use the services of a car wash. The main thing is to use high-quality cleaning products for washing the car and follow all the recommendations for proper washing.
