Accumulator
Well-known member
On another thread, ZoranC posted:
I suggested he try a BHB instead of the mitts, and he posted back:
We were about to commit an egregious threadjacking, so I'm picking the topic up again here. I thought this might be of interest to somebody besides ZoranC so I'm not just pursuing it via PMs.
While I'm gonna continue to rinse my wash media via dunking in the rinse bucket, if you're not gonna do that a BHB seems like a better choice than a mitt.
ZoranC- I fear I failed to explain the rationale behind the BHB suggestion, I'll try to explain. Noting that I'm given to nitpicking when it comes to wash techniques, two things come to mind- 1) dirt stuck to the mitt and 2) the need to change mitts.
1) When I use the foamgun with mitts the dirt tends to stick to the mitt; a very dirty car can result in my moving a dirty mitt across the paint. Yeah, the lubrication from the foamgun helps prevent marring and the flushing from it keeps the mitt from getting *too* dirty. BUT with the BHB, the foamgun basically rinses it clean as you go and thus it hardly *ever* gets very dirty to begin with so you don't drag the dirt across the paint as much. This is borne out by the way my rinse buckets are often *very* clean at the end of a wash, even with winter-dirty vehicles. The dirt gets dislodged and flushed away instead of getting caught in the nap of the mitt.
2) Using the BHB, you wouldn't have to stop and switch to a clean one. You might want to stop and rinse it out *with the foamgun or the hose* if you've just cleaned a *really* dirty panel, but you won't need to dunk it in a bucket. There's no way to exaggerate how well the BHBs rinse clean...no matter what's on them they simply shed it- very different from with mitts. So you'd just walk around the vehicle with the BHB in one hand and the foamgun in the other, cleaning away.
Also, I find that with the BHBs it's very easy to modulate the pressure being exerted on the paint, much easier than with a mitt. I find that holding a mitt in very gentle contact with the (vertical) panels can be a little tricky, and it's harder to move the mitts in a "jiggling" motion, as opposed to the more common long "swipes". The jiggling motion keeps any marring that *might* occur very tiny, as the wash media only move a short distance at a time (if trapped dirt causes a scratch, a 1/4" scratch won't show as readily as a 4" one).
I've often thought that for non-Autopian-level washes (think charity carwashes or the casual DIYer), the above technique would be a *lot* better than the typical approaches. Performed with a higher degree of thought and skill, as ZoranC would employ, it'd work even better.
I suggested he try a BHB instead of the mitts, and he posted back:
We were about to commit an egregious threadjacking, so I'm picking the topic up again here. I thought this might be of interest to somebody besides ZoranC so I'm not just pursuing it via PMs.
While I'm gonna continue to rinse my wash media via dunking in the rinse bucket, if you're not gonna do that a BHB seems like a better choice than a mitt.
ZoranC- I fear I failed to explain the rationale behind the BHB suggestion, I'll try to explain. Noting that I'm given to nitpicking when it comes to wash techniques, two things come to mind- 1) dirt stuck to the mitt and 2) the need to change mitts.
1) When I use the foamgun with mitts the dirt tends to stick to the mitt; a very dirty car can result in my moving a dirty mitt across the paint. Yeah, the lubrication from the foamgun helps prevent marring and the flushing from it keeps the mitt from getting *too* dirty. BUT with the BHB, the foamgun basically rinses it clean as you go and thus it hardly *ever* gets very dirty to begin with so you don't drag the dirt across the paint as much. This is borne out by the way my rinse buckets are often *very* clean at the end of a wash, even with winter-dirty vehicles. The dirt gets dislodged and flushed away instead of getting caught in the nap of the mitt.
2) Using the BHB, you wouldn't have to stop and switch to a clean one. You might want to stop and rinse it out *with the foamgun or the hose* if you've just cleaned a *really* dirty panel, but you won't need to dunk it in a bucket. There's no way to exaggerate how well the BHBs rinse clean...no matter what's on them they simply shed it- very different from with mitts. So you'd just walk around the vehicle with the BHB in one hand and the foamgun in the other, cleaning away.
Also, I find that with the BHBs it's very easy to modulate the pressure being exerted on the paint, much easier than with a mitt. I find that holding a mitt in very gentle contact with the (vertical) panels can be a little tricky, and it's harder to move the mitts in a "jiggling" motion, as opposed to the more common long "swipes". The jiggling motion keeps any marring that *might* occur very tiny, as the wash media only move a short distance at a time (if trapped dirt causes a scratch, a 1/4" scratch won't show as readily as a 4" one).
I've often thought that for non-Autopian-level washes (think charity carwashes or the casual DIYer), the above technique would be a *lot* better than the typical approaches. Performed with a higher degree of thought and skill, as ZoranC would employ, it'd work even better.
).
Do a quick search in the Detailing Products forum for my BHB comparison (hint: search on my user-name as thread originator; I post a lot but I haven't originated all that many threads so it oughta be easy to find)