Car Washing Horror Stories

Friend of mine washes his car when it rain (this is in Southern California). Plus he parks it outside all year long.

I feel so sorry for the 99 Maxima. The paint condition has ZERO reflection.
 
We as car lovers take the washing and maintance of a car seriously but to other people its just a car.It doesn't annoy me when I see people that wash ther car with a ice pick BUT I will tell you when I see a car that is held together with glue(like the cars on pimp my ride)with 4 different tires and tape holding on the lights that scares me.Its a accident waiting to happen.AND THATS MY 2 CENTS WORTH
 
My neighbor was washing her 1 year old Ford mini-van with the kids "helping" her. My best guess is they were using dish detergent, but the kids where following mom around the car drying. They must have gone around the car a dozen times. The scary part was they would lay the towels out on the driveway to "dry" between uses. So picture a few 8 - 12 year olds, stretching the towels out on the driveway, picking up the last one, running over to dry a pannel and repeating. I had to go inside...I couldn't take it anymore!
 
My neighbor uses the two bucket method on his 1ton truck:

One bucket full of Simple Green solution

One bucket to rinse.



Good thing it's white.
 
I am watching my neighbor outside washing and waxing his two year old maxima. He is putting his car through some serious abuse. He seems to have taken a liken to washing his car with ONE bucket of extremely black water with what looks like a face cloth.:nono After the tortuous washing he looks like he is using some paste wax and is applying it with one of those huge foam wash sponges in a cicurlar motion. This sponge by the way has also turned black.:confused: Dude maybe your car wasn't clean before you started to wax it. I also see some huge bath towels on the grass. Are you using these to buff your car? Maybe I shoudl be nice and go out and at least offer him my nice microfibers to take off his wax.
 
I've really enjoyed these stories. The only one I would rate as a true horror story is the "detailer" that uses Pledge on his customers cars and charges them $50. The rest of the stories, I kinda did the mental check in the box next to "Yup, done that".



I've always kept my cars clean and looking "good", but every once in awhile I would see a car that made me say "Wow!" It wasn't until I picked up this used E320 that I was curious enough to find out how to get to the "Wow" plateau. What you are calling horror stories are SOP's to the normal car owner. When they ask what you did to get your car looking so good, they don't want the real answer, they want you to tell them about the miracle 1 step wax.



While you are shaking your heads watching them, they are shaking their heads watching you. It's all in your priorities. Those of us here are looking for "Wow", everybody else is happy with "looking good".



Charlie
 
went to a local car show tonight.



saw a woman wipe down a GORGEOUS '53 ford victoria with an oliy rag and some windex to clean off the pedestrians finger prints.



it was sad to see so many swirl marks on these cars. (ranging from later 30's to new STI's. stock to hot-rodded.)
 
Oooooohh!! I'm going to the Autoshow in Motion this Friday, I'll be sure to take my digicam and check out the paint jobs!! Of course after I'm done driving all the cars :)
 
"$250 to wet sand, buff, polish and wax the hood.

$150 for him being a complete moron who should've listened to me in the first place." - someone said it



i bet the guy was shocked when he saw what he was paying for on the bill :)



i watched my friend just tonight wash the rear of his nissan 240 with the foam brush at the gas pumps tonight its ok thought he gets new paint shot on it sunday so i just said "idiot" and walked away



i was polishing out my truck the other day and my neighbor with a brand new black dodge comes over and says "thats alot of work for such an old truck" its a 97 i just said "yea but atleast it looks better than your new truck" and kept polishing he looked shocked at my smart mouth stood there for a few minutes and went inside hahah



i used to have one of the competitive neighbors where we would do something in the yard and the next week he would be doing the same thing or something better.... he got annoying really fast



i also live next to a know it all neighbor he used to watch me detail my white honda accord and tell me that i was wasting time that all it needs is a good wash every once in a while

he bought a brand new black truck and i talked to him telling him that i could clean it up for him really cheap he was old and stubborn he said he could do it just fine needless to say 2 weeks later it was swirls on wheels and he wanted me to fix it haha
 
My neighbor (about a week after I detailed his daughter's car) decided to wash her blue Tiburon in the hot summer sun. He doesn't work very fast, and so the sun dried a nasty soap residue (complete with water spotting) onto the side of the car. I showed him the residue and reminded him AGAIN not to wash the cars in the sun. He said "That's ok..at least it's not dirty anymore".



IMO, it barely looked better than it did before the wash. If you're going to wash the car, you might as well do it right.
 
Yesterday, as I was sitting at the "Longest Red Light" in Florida, I glanced over to observe the DIY carwash. It was full of people abusing their cars. One guy had the pressure washer under his arm and about 2 inches from his paint. He was "going Rambo" with that thing!



In the next stall, a guy was beginning his wash cycle with one of those soap dispensing brooms. As we watched in horror as he scrubbed his paint at a feverish pitch, my car said to me, "If you ever do that to me, I'm leaving you!"



I am sure my wife would say the same:cool:
 
This happened on two separate occasions, I work at a commercial photo studio in SoCal, the photographer has a Porsche 911 Turbo, and right after telling him that I do detailing as a hobby, that getting the perfect, deep, wet looking shine is what I strive for. He asked me to do a few of his cars which I will do in at work in the studio. But thats sometime in the near future.



A few minutes after our discussion, he tells one of the other photo assistants to wash his car, and he proceeds to do so with the following tools:



Hose

Honda Polish (Honda's QD)

1 Dirty Microfiber

1 Dishwashing sponge.



I was busy in the other studio shooting some bikes and walked out to check on him from time to time.

The chameleonish silver colored Porsche was completely covered with bugs from a drive to Vegas the weekend before. He proceeded to hose down the car, and let it dry under the SoCal sunshine (80+ degrees), then cleaned the entire car with the dishwashing sponge, rims first, then paint. Bottom of the car up! Oh, no soap in this entire process! Just water and a tiny sponge! Then after the water has dried on the paint he QD'd the car with the Honda Polish, with 1 yellow MF that was 50% black with dirt and grease. I was going to say something but I went back in to shoot. Later I came out to a greasy swirly Porsche 911 Turbo. I told the photographer to take a good look at the condition of the paint, because he thinks it looks great. I'll post some pics after I get done with it. Plan is to start with some SSR1 or SMR2.0, maybe FI-II or SSR2.5 if it needs it, but I really dont want to haze the paint and finally some #26 for some depth.
 
SVR said:
OK we all love our cars and certain types of cars that we either really want or can't afford and it would be great to read about some of the things you have seen people do with their cars, either at home or at commercial self serve wash bays



The other week I watched a guy shampoo his brand new Landrover with a long handled hard bristle broom which has the shampoo running out of it and if that wasn't bad enough, he applied it to the car in figure eight motions. I cringed in shock and was going to go have a stern talking to him but decided not to bother as these types of people probably won't listen.



Everyone i see there rinses the car with high pressure and then drives off, no drying the seals, door jams, underside of hood or boot. People wonder why their cars rust.



What's the worst thing you've seen?
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:o ...i used to use that kind of broom with the water running out of the tip to wash. now i know it leaves a whole lot of scratches:p . well this isnt exactly qashing but i watched my neigbor as he waxed his dirty winter salt, snow, mud, dirt covered car with turtle polishing compound which i heard was extremely agressive. well by the time i went out to tell him he already did 3/4 of the car.



edit: oh yeah a few weeks ago my neigbor was washing her dirty new higlander with a nasty dark colored shirt and a tiny 2-3 gallon bucket full of dirty water mixed with Joy dishwashing detergent. she went through the car with the "washing formula" and her dirty shirt while her brother followed her to dry the car where she just "washed" with another dirty old dark shirt. no wonder the car is all faded out even though its less than a year old.
 
Years ago, My daughters wanted to do something special for thier mother for Mothers day, so decided to wash her car. My wife taught them well how to wash dishes efficiently and thouroughly. They applied thier expert knowledge to her car..... when I drove up I couldnt help but notice how dull her car looked.... As I got closer all I could see were swirls on every inch ! They told me that her car was so dirty , no matter how much or hard they rubbed with the Scotchbrite pads, it wouldnt shine.... Took me a week with the Makita to bring a shine back, never was the same due to some very thin clearcoat. A month later, I quietly took it in to trade :rofl :rofl :rofl
 
mochamanz said:
Years ago, My daughters wanted to do something special for thier mother for Mothers day, so decided to wash her car. My wife taught them well how to wash dishes efficiently and thouroughly. They applied thier expert knowledge to her car..... when I drove up I couldnt help but notice how dull her car looked.... As I got closer all I could see were swirls on every inch ! They told me that her car was so dirty , no matter how much or hard they rubbed with the Scotchbrite pads, it wouldnt shine.... Took me a week with the Makita to bring a shine back, never was the same due to some very thin clearcoat. A month later, I quietly took it in to trade :rofl :rofl :rofl
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those girls would be DEAD.
 
my dad used to wash his carwith a scoop of tide dissolved in water.

oh yeah, he used to polish his black car with black shoe polish. he'd ruin all the towels doing that one.



i'm guilty of the squeege wash at the gas station, but just a quick bird dropping removal.

i almost crapped one time when i came outside to see my dad clearing snow off my old car with a straw broom.

i once washed my sisters jetta with those carwash wipes, they come in a pack, premoistened. man, it looked dirtier after i was done

i used to use any towel i could find to dry off my car.

my friend's neighbors use a watering can, like for plants, and an old rag to wash their car, plus some bar soap from the shower (i guess thats thier wax, because they apply it in circular motions when they are done)

i once saw a lady at a diy carwash waxing her car with a candle
 
One time my father pulled out his Villager minivan and started washing it with dishwashing liquid and an old rag he used to clean off his golf shoes. :shocked



Another time he started scrubbing his Taurus with dishwashing liquid as I was washing my car. I couldn't take it anymore and said "HERE, USE THIS! and handed him a bottle of Gold Class and some clean towels and wash mitt."



I have a friend who took a scotchbrite pad to the front of her car to clean the bugs off.



I can't tell you how many times I've been to a DIY car wash and observed people using picking up the brush out of the mud and using it to scrub their car's paint. :eek:



At car shows I've seen people take towels and wipe dirt and dust off the paint without any QD and/or use Windex as a QD. If you say anything to them they get very offended so now I just shut up.
 
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