Quik Detail vs Carwash

[dengelson]

You know what they say about black cars, it`s true they show everything. If my car is spotless and I take it out for a couple of hours drive it isn`t spotless anymore. In fact sometimes is alarming how much dust has accumlated on the back quarters and rear end of the car. Not to mention bug splats on the front. On a silver or white car this dirt wouldn`t be as noticable but no doubt it would still be there. Getting to the point.

Quik Detailers are a wonderful product that I`ve been using to clean dusty motorcycles for several years with good results. However, with the car I`m very reluctant to continue my QDing ways because of the volume of dust that can be held on the larger painted surface. I just can`t help but think that wipeing off all that dust, no matter how careful I am, on the surface of the paint is somehow detrimental or second best to a good wash.

I have used compressed nitrogen before to blast off as much dust as possible before QDing which really helps but with the added time of that extra step I`m close to the time to just wash and dry the car. I also end up using gobs of towels to QD the car so that I`m always using a clean section of toweling on the paint. This creates slightly more work too for laundering the towels.

So I`ve been doing a lot more washing and less QDing. What do you think? Are we doing more harm than good while using this <em class=`bbc`>very convenient[/i] product? Is a good old fashioned car wash a better solution?

ps I live in sunny CA where I don`t have to worry about my hand freezing solid inside of my wash bucket. :eek: :p

[dtraylor]

Others will probably disagree with what I say, but here is my theory.



If my car sets in the shop for a few days and there is a layer of dust on top of it, I`ll either get it with my car duster and then QD, or just QD. Now when I have driven it for a long time and there is that general layer of road grime on it, I will look at how much road grime is on there and I think if QD can hack it reasonably. If I think it is not enough to have to wash it, and a little more than I normally get with small sprays of QD, I just spray a bit more QD on there, and I change sides of my towels, and change the actual towel very often so I dont trap junk in there and swirl it around. This is on a very light green color though, so it is pretty forgiving. I am obviously not as professional as soome of the senior members on here, so they will probably see this in a different view than I will. I understand what you are dealing with though. A lot of times I dont want to QD for fear of it being "too much" to work with, but I dont want to have to wash again. But if you have the time, I suppose washing would be safer. This is just my 2 pennies.

[muttgrunt]

I`m with Bump. To get the layer of dust I use the Cal. duster first, then QD. I Spray the product on the area to be cleaned and go over initially "very lightly" with a MF towel. Then spray just a lil bit more over same area after all dust is gone from first past and do a finish up buff out with a clean section of my MF towel. Works everytime ! This is why I prefer the larger size MF towels. (20"x40" or 24"x46") You can fold em up a few times and just flip to a clean side very easily.



TBone