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View Full Version : revisiting techniques



thesacrifice
02-16-2007, 09:46 PM
I`d like to revisit a few of my techniques here, so that some of you may offer some alternatives/ideas/etc.



My car is too low to hit my wells with a good brush. I`ve been spraying them down with armor all tire dressing with semi decent results.



On my wheels I`ve been using the meguiars wheel face brush, the meguiars spoke brush, and I have a hard bristle brush for the tire face. I dump all of these in a bucket of ONR then go to work. After the brush, I use ONR on a microfiber on the wheel face again, because the brush leaves a lot of "puddlin," which result in dirty areas if not cleaned. The tire face then gets 303 rubbed on with a microfiber. I`ve been satisfied with this process.



Today I did a car that was slightly higher and used No Touch Tire Foam instead of Armor All and was disappointed to see that the No Touch dried white, the wells looked horrible. The car still wasn`t high enough to get a brush in there though. I sprayed some Megs APC and 303 ontop of the white, we`ll see how that worked out in the morning (it`s too dark now.)



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bugs/tar...are you guys treating these areas before or after the initial wash?



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how are you ensuring that you`re getting dirt out of those tricky little areas during your wash? Are you drying, inspecting the wash close up, and then going back and spot treating? I tend to find that I miss little areas once in a while, especially if I`m trying to be quick. For instance, my gf`s car has an area of trim runs horizontally along the doors. There`s an indentation that runs on both sides of the trim, good place to find dirt :)



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I often find that my washes get hasty as I start losing patience. The bottom half of my washes probably aren`t as high of quality as the top half. I think it`s partially because I feel hurried bent over and washing. Perhaps a towel on the ground to kneel on may help? I picked up the trick of starting from the bottom up while polishing, which has helped.



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I apologize for the scattered thoughts, having a migraine right now, but too bored to sleep it off.

Accumulator
02-17-2007, 01:48 PM
I`d like to revisit a few of my techniques here, so that some of you may offer some alternatives/ideas/etc.



My car is too low to hit my wells with a good brush. I`ve been spraying them down with armor all tire dressing with semi decent results...



I jack `em up a little bit with a floorjack.




bugs/tar...are you guys treating these areas before or after the initial wash?



I do `em after, usually with Sonus Green clay.



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how are you ensuring that you`re getting dirt out of those tricky little areas during your wash? Are you drying, inspecting the wash close up, and then going back and spot treating?



Not sure how you`d do it with products like ONR...I usually use the BHBs for stuff like that. Sometimes I can get the nap of a mitt in there, especially if I fill the mitt with wash solution and hold it shut while the shampoo mix drains out of it.



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I often find that my washes get hasty as I start losing patience...



Heh heh [insert old-guy lecture on maintaining the right mindset ;) ]. If crouching around the sides of the car won`t work for you (FWIW I gear parts of my workouts towards strengthening my lower back/etc. for stuff like this), the I`d probably suggest one of those work stools on wheels. I have two, one has a hydraulic center post so I can adjust its height, and they`re both handy. When I need to work really low, I`ll sit/lie on a creeper.



I dunno about kneeling on a towel, it`s gonna get wet. There are pads made just for kneeling on, but they always seemed like a so-so idea to me.

thesacrifice
02-17-2007, 02:15 PM
Thanks bud, your input is always valued.