Oh brother... Here he goes again. (Lot's of pics)

SuperBee364 · 03-31-08, 05:44

For those of you thinking, "Oh great, we get a few months break from Supe, and now he's back and posting yet another rant about how wonderful touchless washes are.", you're right! But I just can't help it... bear with me through one more?

I've been on a quest to develop the closest thing I can get to the perfect touchless wash. I think I'm getting very close. Take a look at the results and see what you think.

This was the first wash I've given it since I applied the second coat of Vintage last week. I purposely let it go a few days to get it as dirty as possible. It rained/snowed alot the passed few days. In the following "before" pictures, the crap you see on the paint is a mixture of brake dust, water spots, road grime, road salt and sand. Mostly brake dust and water spots.

I think most of us can agree that in order to get this completely clean, some sort of wash media would be needed. At least, IME it would be. Until now.

Process was:

2 Coats of Vintage LSP. Latest coat applied about four days ago. Edit: The wheels don't have any LSP on them at all. Going to put UPGP on them tonight.

High pressure rinse

Wheels pre-sprayed with P21S wheel cleaner

2 oz of Z7, 1 oz of CG's CW&G, 29 oz of water in the foam cannon. Very thick layer of foam was then applied and left to dwell for about three minutes.

High pressure rinse.

Spot free rinse using a Mr. Clean spot free rinse cartridge

Blow dry with leaf blower.

Tires were treated with Z16. This was *really* hard to do without touching them.

OK, I did use a tire swipe for this part.

The only parts that had any wash media touch it were the wheels. There was just too much brake dust sticking to them for the touchless method to work. I'm going to seal them with UPGP and see if that helps. I ended up having to ONR the wheels after the whole wash was done due to the yucky brake dust.

Anyway, you'll notice in the afters that the car is completely clean. No water spots, no road grime, nada. It's as clean as if it had been washed with a mitt. I think that 99% of this is due to the LSP; Vintage lets go of whatever is on it very easily. The only sealant I've used that displays a similar ability is UPGP. It's not quite as good, but it is still very cleanable using touchless washes. The other 1% is the soap combination. Zaino/CW&G just *cleans*.

Check out the "after" shot of the back end. The black vinyl sticker on the trunk didn't fare very well. It's still dirty and water spotted. (Edit: Bold added for the preceding sentence. The stickers aren't up to a touch free process.... yet). There's no vintage on it to protect it. QD's make the flat matte finish of the stickers too shiny, so I'm going to ONR them tonight.

My wife's truck was recently in an accident. I'm waiting another couple of weeks to polish it. I'm going to repeat this test using Zaino on her truck once the new paint is cured enough to be polished/sealed.

Polygon · 03-31-08, 05:52

Not bad. Doesn't show at all on the blue but the black trim is going to need something from the looks of it.

Frito Bandito · 03-31-08, 06:41

Nice, glad you found a process that works for you. I've found I can get a decent amount of touchless cleaning using my Gilmour but not anything close to what you are getting with a pressure washer.

Also, I look forward to your Zaino tests. I would be very interested in a clean rinsing LSP that's a little cheaper.

SVR · 03-31-08, 07:56

Excellent stuff superbee.
The one thing with wax over sealant is that it absorbs rain drops/dried up water spots so they come off very easily with just foam gun.

Trouble is you can't use wax in parts of my country cause it melts in days. Darwin is the worst with tropical storms in wet season and 30 to 40 C weather day after day for 365 days.
Outback SA it can get to 50 C in summer

SuperBee364 · 03-31-08, 08:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by SVR

Excellent stuff superbee.
The one thing with wax over sealant is that it absorbs rain drops/dried up water spots so they come off very easily with just foam gun.

Trouble is you can't use wax in parts of my country cause it melts in days. Darwin is the worst with tropical storms in wet season and 30 to 40 C weather day after day for 365 days.
Outback SA it can get to 50 C in summer

Oh, I'd never use a wax over a sealant, or vice versa. Never been one to "top" LSP's with something else. The wheels don't have anything on them at all right now, so the UPGP will not be topping Vintage.

Edit: Although now that I've re-read your post, maybe I should give that a shot sometime.

That is some serious heat! Hope it cools down for ya soon... should be, right?

Setec Astronomy · 03-31-08, 08:34

SuperBee, are you going to tell us what was wrong with the cannon?

SuperBee364 · 03-31-08, 08:49

I'm still not quite sure, Setec... I soaked it in some phosphoric acid based cleaner for a couple hours, rinsed it out, and now it seems to be working pretty well again. Might have just been hard water scale?

I'm still planning on taking it apart.

NSXTASY · 03-31-08, 09:09

I would be interested to see what happens after a few weeks of these touchless washes, when you take a clean white MF/Cotton App and some AIO to see if the app stays clean.

Denzil · 03-31-08, 09:37

So no water spotting at all on the paint itself? Looks impressive...

SuperBee364 · 03-31-08, 09:46

When the car no longer cleans well using this process (which I've been doing for quite a while -well, variations, at least-, just haven't taken pictures and done a thorough write-up), I'll start washing it with a BHB until I get a chance to put on another coat of wax, or an interim touch-up with Field Glaze.

SuperBee364 · 03-31-08, 09:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by Denzil

So no water spotting at all on the paint itself? Looks impressive...

The spot free Mr. Clean cartridge works really well. I had previously used a dual cartridge water softening system, but it's just an ion exchange... exchanging calcium ions for sodium ions. It pretty much left salt stains on the paint and started corroding my pressure washer gun. The Mr. Clean cartridge is a true de-ionizing water filter. It removes the calcium instead of exchanging it for sodium. They are kind of expensive, though. The label says they're good for about ten washes. I get about five out of them.

Blasting off the spot free water with the leaf blower gives the finish shown. I imagine when it gets hot, it's going to be tough to do this part fast enough.

I had been using a waffle weave to dry, but wanted to go totally touchless.

Setec Astronomy · 03-31-08, 10:00

Bee, you need to junk that Mr. Clean and get a CRSpotless.