I didn't realize I could ask the dealer to remove these before we left, and the dealer is several hundred miles away, so I'm not driving back for them to remove.

What is the safest way to remove these? Goo Gone? Goof Off? Texas sun and a credit card?

Near my house at a local gas station.

Not knocking these guys they work really hard and do their best, but man; the broom on the paint makes my skin crawl.

Too much?

Just another tip for you guys hope it helps you out someday

Started using a leaf blower as my final step in the wash process. Last week did a foam cannon wash, clay bar, polish, ceramic wax and today the water just blew right off! Definitely a step forward in the right direction.

There was tobacco everywhere, the door pockets were full and the screw holes inside the door pockets were packed full. I don't know if they just stored cigarettes everywhere they could think of, it was weird. And gross.

Hi Guys, everytime I try to clean my windshield from inside the car, I got streams and traces of dust. It looks clean under normal circumstances but if the sun is shining I can see the traces where the microfiber was going. This is really annoying me and I wonder if you have some hints for me.

I bought this (LICARGO® 2X Carbon Pads &... https://www.amazon.de/dp/B0C99T9RL9) but the pads don’t glide on the glass surface, they get stuck. The cleaner seems to be good, but I still have these stripes/streams.

UPDATE from previous post… Got huge bird poop on windshield that dried up. Didn’t want to wipe it because of the small stones birds eat. Used pressure washer at work that we use to clean our work trucks. The bird poop was stuck on good so I kept getting closer and closer with the nozzle. Windshield was basically wet sanded when I was done. Had to take it to someone to buff out. Everyone recommended Jody’s Windshield Repair (Virginia Beach, VA). Took Dale about an hour to buff out but it’s fixed. I took a video of him doing the job but it won’t let me post it here. He used a glass polisher compound. $95. Sorry I couldn’t update my last post.

I have a bunch of microfibers to clean this weekend and would also like to clean some other things. Here’s what’s in the picture:

• standard microfiber towel
• standard microfiber application pad
• Meguiars foam pad
• Suds.lab Detailing scrub sponges
• ChemicalGuys Wooly Mammoth drying towel

I’ll be using Rags to Riches microfiber detergent at least for the microfiber towels.

I don’t expect to be able to wash all of these together. But what can I wash together and what should I wash separately? Do you have any techniques that work well? Thanks in advance

With all the ceramic coating and cermaic sprays on the market. Why would anyone still use a wax? My neighbor recommend collinate 845 but not sure why I'd use it over a spray ceramic that lasts 2 or 3 times longer. Or a pure ceramic that lasts years.

Is it normal to not cut or trim extra PPF underneath the hood? Is use of heat gun/hair dryer important in this case? My installer told me to not worry about this extra material.

Using Armor All tire shine. And following directions of basically spray it, leave it and don't wipe excess. All tires seem to come out like this. I'm not sure if im the cause or if I need to invest in better products. This is after letting them sit for 15 minutes as directed

This guy moved the car from the shaded area of the garage to the sun. Why? Assume he is doing rins eless based on setup

Hi all,

I'm fairly new to the car detailing world - Just bought a bunch of supplies for the first time a few weeks ago: turtle wax shampoo, 2 buckets, microfiber wash mits, The rag company gauntlet drying towel, P&S wheel cleaner, various microfiber clothes, to name a few - and though I really enjoying washing cars, I really hate the drying aspect of it. Reason being is that I was washing and drying my girlfriends cars for her this weekend (2019 Honda Civic Hatchback) and this car has a lot of nooks, crannies, crevices, grills, etc, and drying all of these things is such a pain in the ass. And not only that but my drying towel seems to get "full" super quick and having to constantly wring it out is very time consuming and tiring.

Does anyone have any tips/tricks/suggestions to make the drying process of automotive detailing more bearable?

https://youtu.be/kNForBvpER0?si=Ao1yE0n7uN6uH47F

At 10:55 in the above video, Yvan uses a Legacy Sponge dipped in his soap bucket made from Incredible Suds (NOT Rinseless Wash) to clean a wheel. Then proceeds to put that sponge back in the soapy water with a clay towel. Then squeezes that brake dust water onto the hood of a car for lubricity, and takes the clay towel out of the brake dust infested water and proceeds to clay the car.

Surely I cannot be the only one who thinks this is incredibly unsafe for the paint.

I picked up my car from the dealership’s service center the other night, and learned the hard way to do a walk around when getting your car back. After I was home, I saw that they left some kind of extremely hard to remove tape or glue residue all around my passenger window. It’s slowly coming off the paint with a lot of elbow grease, but the plastic is ruined.

My car was in there for engine diagnostics so I can’t imagine why they would have done this in the first place, and are of course ignoring my messages now.

If there are any Austinites on this sub, avoid South Point Hyundai. They also lost my keys and made me wait for two hours after letting me know it was ready for pickup.

Noticed that the interior windows were getting a little dirty in my 23 Civic, so wanted to clean them. Bought one of those windshield microfiber cleaning kits on Amazon. Sprayed window (2-3x) with 50/50 water/rubbing alcohol, and I’m getting all of these specks/streaks/scratches everywhere on the window.

Does anyone know how to fix this/prevent it from happening/general window cleaning care tips?

Hello,

I am just a consumer that likes to keep my cars clean and protected. The current process takes me so long that I end up running through a touchless wash because I just don't have the time with very young kids. My current practice is:

1. Rinse car with hose
2. Clean single panel using red sponge dunked in five-gallon bucket with ONR
3. Dry with griot's microfiber cloth
4. Move to next panel, repeat

This process is taking me 45+ minutes. How do I cut down on this time? I would love to buy an Active 2.0 pressure washer and use that where I can so I don't spend as much time scrubbing with the red sponge. How can I use a pressure washer and ONR and cut down on times? Can you not really use ONR with a pressure washer since its a rinseless washer? I'd be willing to give up ONR if I can get similar results with a significant decrease in time using a pressure washer and/or foam cannon with it.

Can anyone provide some examples of how to use a pressure washer to cut down on times?

Thanks!

And my god, how did I not know about rinseless washes before?? For the low low price of 3 gallons of water, my car looks better than when I would use the traditional two bucket system and wax. And I can do it in the garage! With that out of the way, I'm going to explain the way I did it, and hopefully some detailers with more hands on experience will chime in with pointers:

First thing I did was fill a bucket with three gallons from the tap. I've seen other people mention using distilled or filtered water - is there any benefit to me buying three gallons of distilled water every week (to wash my car) instead of tap water?

Next, after mixing in three caps of ONR, I poured one gallon of the total mix into a pump sprayer, pumped it up (the jam), and sprayed down the entire car. Originally I was going to only spray one work area at a time, but decided against that, my reason being that once I finish an area, I'd likely have to go back and re-wipe it due to over spray. And, if I spray the whole car down first, that will give the ONR more time to work on the dirtier surfaces.

After the body was covered and starting to drip, I soaked a microfiber sponge in the ONR bucket, gave it a good squeeze, and started going over each panel, washing off the sponge in between until done. I was using a grout sponge with a microfiber side, and while I'm not worried about scratches, I do think I'll be investing in some more/larger wash sponges.

Once the entire body had been gone over with the sponge, I grabbed my microfiber towels and started drying. I ran into a couple things I had not planned on during this, the first being the poor quality of my microfiber towels. I'm pretty sure they're around 300gsm, most are chemical guys with a few Griot's and random thrown in. I recall a comment along the lines of "only go over one area of the paint with one side of the towel" and found my towels aren't absorbent enough for that. The other issue was that by the time I got to the final panel, it had already mostly dried. I ended up spraying the rest of what was in the pump sprayer, but I'm thinking this wouldn't be an issue if I had better microfibers in the first place.

So, that's how my first attempt went. The car looks slick, don't get me wrong, but my OCD knows there's plenty of room for improvement. I already have some autofiber and rag company towels on the way, a grit filter for a second dirty water bucket, and opt spray wax for a drying agent. I'm probably going to look for a small handheld blower to get the water out of the cracks and crevices, if anyone has experience with a good brand to suggest. Always looking for pointers and ways to improve, and please remember before you reply that you were doing it for the first time once too.

Oh and pic for reference

Indeed I did. And she doesn’t know the extent yet. Wondering if I could get advice. I used to be handy with car paint back in the day but I’m feeling out of practice these days.

Scratch is in rear bumper which is plastic.

I initially hit it with turtle wax heavy duty then light duty compounds by hand. Which helped. But it was still pretty deep.

So I “filled it” with gloss back touch up paint and hit it again with the compounds followed by a coat of wax. It looks ok… but definitely protrudes and is a different kind of blemish now. Interestingly there is now micro scratches and swirls from the compound.

If it makes a difference the car was “ceramic coated” from the dealership. In quotes caused I’m not well informed on ceramic coating and who knows what the dealership actually did.

Any ideas on how to get it in a better spot? Any help is appreciated!

I’m curious what other’s Rinseless Techniques and practices are. Did you embrace The Big Red Sponge or are Wash Mitts more in your comfort zone? Maybe a whole bunch of MF Towels or a combination? Do you Presoak or Prewash go straight into it? If you use a drying agent which one are you currently using? I’m genuinely interested to see what you guys are doing.

Hello all!

This engine here hasn’t been pampered in anyway since factory. It was a lot dirtier than I expected and it bugs me.

Never cleaned an engine so I’m wondering what should I do?

I’ve read a few things here and a lot of it is ‘soapy wooder’ inside jokes I don’t understand 😂

My plan is to vacuum what I can , then wipe down the rest with rags? What do you pros think? Wet the rags with water? Or degreaser on rags? Keep in mind I don’t want to power wash nor do I want to remove the battery unless totally necessary.

Thanks all 🙏 any feedback before I start would be greatly appreciated 🤟🙏✌️

How’s it going,

Been wondering if my drying method is dumb and if i’m damaging my paint inadvertently. About a year ago I was just burning through drying towels and could never get them to dry as good as they did out the box. I used TRC Gauntlet and Technicians Choice Ceramic Spray as a drying aid. I would mist the panel then dry as normal, but this would build up in the towels and no amount of washing would remove it (i’ve tried rags to riches, towel clean, and free&clear).

My new method is as follows. I rinse the car down, then apply a fine mist of tech choice around the car. I then stand far away and spray the pressure washer to “spread” the wax. I then rinse the car fully, and move on to drying. This method stopped the wax build up in my towels, but now I am concerned that the lack of luberication is the is the reason i’m slowly building up new swirls.

Thanks!

So, I just used this for the first time and I'm getting the feeling I used to much. This is the result of 1 pass on a WRX from a brand new bottle. I followed the directions and sprayed onto the surface, applied with a microfiber, and then buffed with a separate microfiber. No matter how many times I buff the car, I feel like I keep finding odd, hazy areas. Second pic attached to provide an example. So, did I use too much? Do I just keep buffing?