bath towels

[asm505]

I have a friend that has a really nice audi and she uses a regular old bath towel to dry the car. I am thinking this cannot be good, am I right?

[fdizzle]

you wont get to many posative responses on that . . . even high quality, color and dye free bath towels that have been washed a million times with perfume/powder/softner free detergeant have the potential to micro marr or create swirils . . . . .

If you want my oppinion . . . invest in four or six microfiber drying towes. Thats all I use. Genuine leather chamois that have been properly conditioned are also not a bad method for drying, it is just not a good idea to drape any drying device and pull it over your paint.

dab all that h2o up . .

If I had it my way, I would use microfiber bath towels, but I just am to poor . . . .

[02ZTSfocus]

Most bath towels use a backing material that contains a heavy polyester thread that will cause marring. So in addition to what fdizzle said, the very design of a bath towel is going to cause marring on the paint.

[Accumulator]

Noting that I only touch our Audis with the softest MFs I can find and that I've posted about why I won't touch *my* vehicles' paint with cotton towels [EDIT: this is *NOT* correct, see later post], I don't mind changing hats and posting the following, hope it doesn't sound like I'm contradicting my previous posts on the subject but this isn't quite as cut-and-dried as we usually make it sound.

High quality 100% cotton towels *can* be fine. It's not like every time somebody touched a vehicle with one in the pre-MF days they caused marring. The (potential) problems are that all 100% cotton towels aren't created equal and even the good ones don't stay nice and soft forever. My view is why take chances when MF is available (but the same caveats apply to MF too) but that doesn't mean that every cotton towel will cause the kind of damage that I worry about; I've used plenty of cotton towels that are a *lot* softer than automotive paint. In fact, I used to use them on black ss lacquer...sometimes I regretted it, but not all the time by any means.

Note that back when I got my Mallett 'vette, Chuck and his guys were using black cotton towels when they detailed. No marring, and Chuck was a custom painter before he switched to building tuner cars; he knows from how to detail paint. IIRC, MirrorFinishMan still uses cotton instead of MF.

I'd just advise your friend to keep an eye on those towels and replace them before she needs to rather than *after* they've caused a problem.

[fdizzle]

I agree here,

I will also contradict my previous post on this notion . . . .there are a few companies that make very high quality and refined cotton products suited for automotive detailing.

If your going to use a cotton product, make sure it is 100% cotton, try to find one that has a soft edge (not superwoven and tough, like a bath towel) that is white. white = no dyes, no mystery chemicals. Preshrunk cotton will usually have less lint too . . .

for ex: MG makes a super plush terry polishing towel. It feels softer than silk and for one 16x16 towel you gonna shell out 5 bucks. that cotton product will not harm you paint.

[GregCavi]

Nothing beats a MF IMHO.

Greg

[RTexasF]

You are correct, there are better alternatives such as those mentioned.

[Spilchy]

I subscribe to Consumer Reports (yeah, I admit it) and they did a whole review on cotton towels.

NEVER judge a towel on how soft it feels in the store beacuse they indicate that manufacturers "finish towels with fabric-softening 'hand enhancers' that wear off after a wash or two."

Believe it or not, they say a new brand of toweling made from a blend of cotton and bamboo are 25% softer than traditional all-cotton towels after multiple launderings.

They rated #1 the Lands End cotton/bamboo the softest towel followed by the #2 Lenox Platinum Collection.

With the all cotton towels they recommend Wamsutta Supima Classic and Charisma Egyptian as #1 and #2. Everyone's Fieldcrest was 5th on the list.

If you can't find the bamboo / cotton blend it sounds like you should stick with "Egyptian" cotton or it's American counterpart "Pima."

But, I'm not sure what the edging is made of or if there are other types of fabric woven into the towel that cause marring. That's what scares me about cotton.

With the abundance of high quality MF's of various nap sizes at cheap prices, my days of cotton are LONG gone. I see zero need for them except using my old school (no longer available) Koala buffing towels for glaze removal. But I rarely do that any more.

[cchiu1026]

Sup guys, i have yet to pick up some quality mf towels. I've seen that many recommend pakshak, but what is the best of the best of the best if there is any.

[Accumulator]

Noting that I only touch our Audis with the softest MFs I can find and that I've posted about why I won't touch *my* vehicles' paint with cotton towels...

Oops, that's not true I was thinking of polishing/waxing/normal drying but *actually* I occasionally still use cotton towels on my paint for one specific job: catching potentially contaminated water that I blow out of seams/etc. with the compressor. This water often harbors gritty dirt from inside the nooks and crannies, so I want to blow it into the towel and *not* do any wiping or even blotting. A fluffy, absorbent cotton towel works great for this.

Spilchy- You gotta watch it with textiles from Lands' End I have a lot of their towels and the quality varies to an incredible extent. E.g., some of the best towels I've ever used are some LE supimas I got in the early '90s. I still use them, they're *still* soft, fluffy, absorbent, everything you could ask for in a towel. Ditto for some of their Egyptian cotton ones from that time. But their supimas and Egyptians of a more recent vintage don't compare, *at all*. After just a few years they're no longer as good as the decade-older ones! My bet is that they switch suppliers from time to time

Heh heh, I haven't thought of my Koala towels for ages either...still have them around somewhere, probably in the bottom of my "good cotton towels" barrel along with my *very* nice, but small, cotton towels from Emmons Coachworks (late '80s). Yeah, such towels are nice with stuff like #7.

On the edging/serging, I wonder whatever happened to the guy who used to reserge Charismas with 100% cotton thread. IIRC he'd even de-lubed his serger so it wouldn't contaminate the towels. I can almost rememer his name...maybe Kevin sombody I think he was a Zaino distributor. I still have a bunch of his reworked Charismas, some still unopened.