Mr Clean Auto-Dry

[imported_Aurora40]

Well, this is not a product that really filled a need I had. I have a 2 gallon garden sprayer I fill with distilled water if I want a spot-free rinse, but even when I do that, I still dry the car off. Typically I find just washing, sheeting with the hose, drying, and later QD`ing the car works the best for me because the QD step ensures any spotting is removed, and also brings out a lot of gloss on the paint, and helps protect the wax.



However, I found myself on vacation with the Regal and no cleaning supplies. No prob, except every night the car would get covered in a salty, sandy grime. The windows were so bad that I could barely see out of them each morning, so I`d drive to the gas station and sop them with that gross cleaning water to avoid scratching the glass while wiping it off.



So, since I couldn`t let that continue (fortunately the winds died and the car didn`t get nearly as dirty after the first couple of days), I decided to get the Mr Clean thing. I felt it would fit the bill because I could clean the car off, but not have to dry it. This means I wouldn`t have to search for a suitable drying implement that I was very unlikely to find, and also means that if the car isnt` completely clean, I won`t introduce marring in the drying stage. I knew it would not come totally clean as the environment wasn`t that clean.



So, the Mr Clean was excellent because it could improve the finish with little possibility of causing more harm. As it turns out, I couldn`t find a 100% cotton chenile wash mitt or a sheepskin one, so the mitt might be a source of some marring. It seemed ok, though, and I used very gentle pressure to wash and a lot of soap and water.



I found the Mr Clean easy to use, though having no bucket means it is hard to rinse the sponge out well, and you have no bucket to set it in while you rinse the car. But you could always use a rinse bucket with the Mr Clean.



The soap cleans well, and doesn`t seem like it would strip wax off. It noticeably improves the sheeting action on the paint, and I suspect it must leave some residue behind because the paint sheets like that no matter how much you rinse it (I`m curious to see how it behaves when I was the car with normal car wash). The soap also sprays out in a useful pattern, nice and wide, and is quite sudsy and feels pretty slippery.



The rinse is great, very powerful, and the unit as a whole is very quality, sturdy, and easy to use. It would be hard to rinse wheelwells with it, though, as the handle is so large (much larger than you expect it to be).



The spot free rinse is nice, it`s a weak stream that takes several seconds to ramp up, but sprays out a wide even pattern. It is a bit like spraying paint or something. It can be hard to displace large pools of water because the sprayer puts out so little water. I was able to rinse the Regal and a Trailblazer with the filter, and it seems to still have a little life left (and it was the trial filter included, not the supposedly better one you buy as a replacement).



However, as I expected from using distilled water many times, nothing will dry completely spot free. There are areas where water pools a bit that will have some spots, and sometimes you can see trails where water dripped out of the body and spotted. But, both cars seemed to be free of heavy spots, the kind that etch and cause damage, so to me it was a big success.



My goal was to make the cars cleaner without any risk of damage from drying or water spotting on the paint. So the Mr Clean came through big-time, and I`ll probably make it a vacation must-have (along with a decent wash mitt). But, it`s very unlikely I would use it at home as I`d still have to QD the car afterwards to remove the light spotting, and some of you mentioned the soap leaves a film that gums up with QD. And the soap and filter would make each wash more expensive. It just doesn`t solve any problems I have with washing at home. But on vacation it solved a huge one! :xyxthumbs

[MongooseGA]

great write up. i keep thinking about trying it, but then i find some reason to put it off...



this might inspire me to keep one handy when traveling.





btw, where in VA are you?

[imported_Aurora40]

Yeah, I didn`t really see it helping at home, even if it did what it said. So while it was interesting, it wasn`t compelling enough to buy. But being on vacation changed that. It`s real easy to use and doesn`t take up a whole lot of space, so now that I have it, I`ll probably make it a road-trip essential. They seem to be sold everywhere, though, so you could always just wait until you need it to pick one up.



I live in northern VA.

[Scottwax]

Great to know Bob. :up



I have one customer who has a water deionizer at his office and house and wants me to do conventional washes on his cars. His partner also wants convetional washes but is in an out of the office too much for me to wash his cars there, so I go out to his house. No deionizer there and he has black cars. It has been real tough in the summer to wash them and get them dry before some sections begin spotting. I will definitely pick one up now.



:bounce

[PAW]

So, a small square bucket, a Mr Clean, a decent wash mitt and a coiling hose would make a good vacation car wash kit. Throw in one of those special facuet handles, the ones hotels like to remove, and you should be set.

[imported_Aurora40]

Hey Scott, I don`t think you`d find it works as well as that guy`s whole-house deionizer. In that case all your water is spot-free, so you don`t have to displace the regular hose water at the end. But the Mr Clean might help you with that other guy. They sell the filters and the soap separately, so if you hate the soap, you could probably just buy filters and use it only for the power spray and the spot-free rinse.



I should have mentioned it was beachy-type water, and seemed fairly hard and minerally, so the initial "trial" filter did pretty well. They claim 2-3 uses from the trial filter and 10 from the replacement filter. It kinda makes me wonder how many actual uses one could get out of one of those resin-bed canister filters since they are so much bigger. But the Mr Clean sprays very evenly on the spot-free setting, and the replacement filter is like $4.99 (cheaper than the replacement soap).



Again, the car didn`t come out completely spot-free, but the spotting that was there was the very mild type, not hard spotting. I doubt it would etch paint, it`s like the kind you can leave by towel drying but leaving a slight dampness behind with the towel. You can see the little patterns very lightly where some water ran or pooled, but they weren`t hard spots.



Edit: I think you can still get a $3 off coupon here: http://www.homemadesimple.com/mrclea...y/coupon.shtml

[Scottwax]

Bob-I still plan to use the one guy`s deionizer, he wants me to anyway.



I did go ahead and get the Mr. Clean Autodry for my other customer today. Seems to work very well. I won`t use it to allow air drying but it gave me more than enough time to get his black vehicles back in the garage and blow out the seams without having to worry hard water was drying on the horizontal surfaces. I also noticed after blowing the seams out and drying off the vehicles, the paint seemed very slick and I haven`t waxed either since late June or early July.



The one thing that seemed very odd (although the instructions said to expect it) was that after using the soap, pretty much all the beading was gone and the paint sheeted. Really cool when using the spot free rinse seeing all those little bubbles flying across the paint.



All in all, I am pretty happy with the purchase. Does it dry 100% spot free? I`ll never know because I will still dry his cars. However, I don`t have to rush through the blowing out the water and trying to dry the cars before they begin spotting. Drying the cars seemed a lot easier too.

[imported_Aurora40]

I guess you didn`t notice any kind of film or anything left behind by the soap? I have yet to try anything after washing to notice, but some people mentioned that. That`s cool that it`s easy to dry.



Yeah, it does sheet insanely from that soap.

[Espada]

What interests me here is the dionizer the customer has. What is that and how does it work? Is it electric or does it use filters? Does it produce enough distilled/dionized water to wash the car? Water where I am is super hard - it`s so bad I have to put citric acid in the dishwasher.

[Scottwax]

Originally posted by Espada

What interests me here is the dionizer the customer has. What is that and how does it work? Is it electric or does it use filters? Does it produce enough distilled/dionized water to wash the car? Water where I am is super hard - it`s so bad I have to put citric acid in the dishwasher.

It looks like a huge oxygen tank. No electricity involved. Water goes in, soft, mineral free water comes out. I`ll see if I can get more information on it.

[Pondscum]

I`ve tried using my normal car wash detergent, rinsing as normal, then using the spot free rinse filter on the autodry for the final rinse. It works better than not using the autodry at all, but not nearly as good as using the soap that goes with the autodry in conjuction with the rinse filter final rinse. Just as they say, the polymer film that is left behind after their soap is part of the process.



My normal routine is to use the autodry as per the directions, blow out the seams with my leaf blower, then let the vehicle dry in the shade while I head for the fridge. Two beers later I take care of any spots with some QD and a MF (they are usually hard to find). Windows seem to retain water spots the worst, but I always clean them afterwards anyway.



I`ve tried to detect any traces of the polymer film from the soap after the vehicle dries, but I haven`t been able to so far.



I also use the autodry for the windows on my house. It works pretty good for those too.

[JayC]

For anyone interested, there is a new version of the Mr Clean Auto-Dry coming out in Feb. It was on display at SEMA. Not sure what exactly is new but I does cost more so hey, its gotta be better, right? :up :up :up

[acl99]

this is what i found about the -

Autodry

[togwt]

~One manâ€â„¢s opinion / observations~



Living close to the beach we have two problems (before you all start feeling sorry for me in my FL beach house) Hard water and lots of wind blown sand.



I like to use Perls car wash concentrate and a hose type water filter as (long term) its much cheaper (filter replacement) than the Mr. Autodry



Water (Hose) Filtration:

Utilizing standard filter cartridges (9.75-inch x 2.5-inch) housed in a clear polyethylene filter cartridge, which allows you to see when the cartridge requires replacement. Filter connections are standard ¾-inch hosepipe fittings; unit is complete with a filter-housing wrench to replace cartridges and a wall-mounting bracket



To provide spot-free vehicle washing and to remove hard water minerals, unit can be fitted with a sodium cartridge, PW-SOF, which uses standard water softening sodium (salt), with a life span of approx. 90-gallons (dependant upon water chemical content)



The sodium resin cartridge can be regenerated indefinitely using readily available water softening sodium (salt). Place the used cartridge in a container with the water softening sodium / water solution and soak for 12-hours or more. The salt will displace the calcium replacing it with sodium. With two filter cartridges you can use one while the other is in the regenerating solution.



Filters available: Sodium (PW-SOF) standard softener resin removes hard water chemicals, Calcite cartridge. (PW-CAL) to neutralize the pH value and a one-micron carbon block (KX-1) for Chorine removal (gardenhosefilters)



~Hope this helps~



Knowledge unshared is experience wasted [each one / teach one]

justadumbarchitect / so I question everything/ JonM

[togwt]

Originally posted by Scottwax

Great to know Bob. :up



I have one customer who has a water deionizer at his office and house and wants me to do conventional washes on his cars. His partner also wants convetional washes but is in an out of the office too much for me to wash his cars there, so I go out to his house. No deionizer there and he has black cars. It has been real tough in the summer to wash them and get them dry before some sections begin spotting. I will definitely pick one up now.



:bounce

This link post may provide some relevant info



http://autopia.org/forums/showthread...122#post441122



~Hope this helps~



Knowledge unshared is experience wasted [each one / teach one]

justadumbarchitect / so I question everything/ JonM