Just a Observation about SALT / WINTER Washing

For years, uhm, maybe decades, on the various touchless/winter washing topics, I have always wondered what special sauce Accum. was using as he has always said HP rinses pretty well with the winter muck he has in his area......where IME, high ph presoak, every presoak method/option tried for a HP rinse, it never rinsed as clean as I would have preferred prior to a mechanical wash.


Granted we`re living in a new era where driving is less, but I have definitely driven enough to accumulate quite some winter grime on it. Anyhow, I don`t know if the city is using a different type of salt and maybe this is the answer, but for the last 2 times I have done a presoak-swell and HP salt rinse this year, the panels are rinsing considerably cleaner than of every year prior to this.

Calcium, Rock, Magnesium, Potassium, etc. <_<-_-:wacko:

If you live in the upper Midwest like I do, this Artic Invasion and snow has left rock salt inoperable as a de-icer. It worked with the first wet snow before the sub-zero Fahrenheit temps arrived, but when they did, it was useless. The public works department, both city and county, did put down A LOT of salt in an effort to make well-travel streets/roads/highways and intersections somewhat safe, but have since resorted to sand and small-grained gravel at side street intersections to make them safer. Some of the lesser traveled road are glare ice from the vehicle travel compacting that snow into rock-hard glare ice.
All I can say is between the salt and dirt, there are a lot of VERY dirty vehicles in Wisconsin and they all have ermine-white salt residue on them and the bottom rails and lower quarter panels have rock-hard, sand-embedded frozen slush chunks on them. Even just travelling clear streets, the salt dust just hangs in the air like a fog and even a rarely seen clean vehicle that sticks out like a soar thumb in traffic will become coated in this salt dust.

As far as cleaning vehicles and "pre-treating" them prior to a High-Pressure (HP) wash in an effort of not having to physically touch surface and risk inducing swirls and scratches, well, I find that kind of a pipe-dream fantasy and having a truely "clean" paint surface. I find that physical mechanical touching by an "appropriate" wash media (microfiber noodle mitt for me) is still the best way to clean a salt and dirt encrusted surface. If a salt binder, such as beet juice, has been used to make the salt stick to the road surface, this gooey concoction cannot be removed by any other method completely that with a physical mechanical touching to wipe off such Road Traffic Film (RTF). I know this too well after going through touch-less tunnel washes and then drying my vehicle with PFM microfiber drying towels. I do this immediately after going through the wash to mitigate freezing of the water that the end-of-the tunnel blower does not remove, especially door jams and trunk jams. I am willing to live with drying towel-induced swirls just to have the salt and RTF removed completely.

There are some pre-soak soaps out there that come to mind; like 3D`s Super Pre-Soak, or Blackfires Foam Soap, but I have no experience with an HP washer , foam guns/lances and pre-soak soaps, and I am sure that IS what the Original Poster is asking about: "What Pre-soak soap works best at removing salt RTF?" (So what you have told us Captain Obvious is basically nothin`!)

For what it is worth, I have been using a mix of Rain-X Heavy Duty Truck-&-SUV Wash soap and Turtle Wax`s M.A.X.-Power Car Wash "liquid" in about 2 ounces of the Rain-X HD with about 4 ounces of the TW MAX-Power per gallon (usually only make about 2.5 gallons for a wash soap bucket) as economic wash soap for my winter weather-appropriate (above 32°F) two-bucket washes. Yes, I do the panels and jams first, then the wheel wells and rims/tires last with the same soap bucket (different wash media for the wells and rims/tires, though) As stated, both Rain-X soap and Turtle Wax liquid wash are inexpensive (AKA cheap, like me), work very well at removing salt RTF, and are easy to find at over-the-counter big-box stores or auto parts stores.

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Originally Posted by mobiledynamics

For years, uhm, maybe decades, on the various touchless/winter washing topics, I have always wondered what special sauce Accum. was using as he has always said HP rinses pretty well with the winter muck he has in his area......

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I can`t really explain my good fortune since the OCW`ed A8 is just as easy to do as the FK`ed ones. Its undercarriage doesn`t even have that on it, yet by the time I crawl under to do the touching part it`s basically all cleaned from the rinsing.

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it never rinsed as clean as I would have preferred prior to a mechanical wash.

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Maybe you and I just have different expectations, although my panels basically rinse clean enough that any non-Autopian would call them "clean". Not as good as a real Touchless would do though, not as good as I get `em when I do a full Home-Touchless either. But plenty good enough in the "get the big stuff off" sense.

But whatever, I`m just glad you`re finding this season easier to deal with :D Maybe they`ve used "regular salt" in your area this year, the "soft water effect" can help clean, and if it`s *that* instead of something more tenacious the overall effect might be very satisfactory compared to your usual.

I got a "fenderwell" attachment for the pressure washer, basically just an angled nozzle with no pattern adjustment, and it`s working great. I still use the American Waterbrum (?sp? Haet those cutesy spellings..) undercar wand first to get the nastiest off, but this thing`s great even with the wimpy pw`s minimal output. By the time I switch to the "touching" stuff it`s tempting to just say "good enough" (not that I do ;) ).

I have a -sleeved/corrugated- I dunno metal flex attachment you can bend any angle you want that fits into a standard disconnect/etc. Never really got into the groove of it so I get by with a standard 18" nozzle that has the flex rubber boot in the middle .

But indeed, whatever this new cocktail they are using on the roads, I`m -ok- with it as panels are rinsing considerably different than of latter years with the HP rinse.

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Originally Posted by mobiledynamics

I have a -sleeved/corrugated- I dunno metal flex attachment you can bend any angle you want that fits into a standard disconnect/etc. Never really got into the groove of it so I get by with a standard 18" nozzle that has the flex rubber boot in the middle .

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Those sound similar to the thing I had for the Karchers back in the day.

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But indeed, whatever this new cocktail they are using on the roads, I`m -ok- with it as panels are rinsing considerably different than of latter years with the HP rinse.

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Yeah, glad it`s better this season.

I`d been thinking about this thread...and I wonder if my softened, and *warm* water makes a big diff? (Heh heh, no...the warm water does *not* make a diff with regard to my LSP longevity. )

https://www.pwmall.com/p-132799-1427...and-attachment

Link above. I`m a bit older now...so I do less splurge buying to some degree -_-<_<:blink:
Granted I`ve always researched the bejeezus out of what I buy but that defiantly was a buyers remote by. I must have got a few pw lances in various lengths, etc.....but all I use for the most part is the 18"flex booted variant. It`s all I ever grab.

I guess u gotta buy them/to have them them on hand to see what works....

mobiledynamics- Heh heh, IMO you sound "older *and wiser* " ;)

I`d sure wrap that Flex Attachment with something lest it touch something and mar it! I even wrap some plastic things lest they touch my paint.