Favorite Readily Available Car Wash

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lancerplayer

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What's your favorite readily available car wash for your daily driver? What's something that cleans well and leaves a great shine but also protects? Is a wash/wax the way to go?



By readily available I mean stores like Walmart, Target, Auto Zone, Advanced Auto Parts, and NAPA.
 
I think Advance Auto Parts will have Griot's car wasy. You won't find better OTC.



Welcome aboard, Lancer !!
 
Welcome to Autopia!



lancerplayer said:
What's your favorite readily available car wash for your daily driver?
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If your local Advance Auto has it, the Griot's is, IMO, as good as shampoos get; it's all I use.



What's something that cleans well and leaves a great shine but also protects? Is a wash/wax the way to go?
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IME none of the "wash + wax" products are anything special. Pretty much zero "protection" or even added shine. And most of 'em (have'nt tried the Griot's) are pretty crappy shampoos too, lousy lubricity and encapsulation...which can lead to wash-induced marring.



So I'd just get a good wash to, well....*wash* the car and let a good wax take care of the protection.



If you can't find the Griot's, see if anyplace near you sells DuraGloss (autobody/paint supply places might have it). It's cheaper too. As a last resort you can use the Meguiar's Gold Class, but I sure wouldn't go any lower than that.
 
Accumulator said:
If you can't find the Griot's, see if anyplace near you sells DuraGloss (autobody/paint supply places might have it). It's cheaper too. As a last resort you can use the Meguiar's Gold Class, but I sure wouldn't go any lower than that.
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Its funny how local water affects results. For me the DG stuff just isn't that slick and it seems to not work as well as I'd like on bugs and stuff. My fav semi readily available stuff is NXT wash, its slicker than anything else I've used.
 
Dan- Hey, yeah...that's a good point about the water! Could go a long way towards explaining all the YMMV diffs that people report :think:
 
Ive got griots wash, and i also have gold class and the (funky yellow color) meguiars wash and wax.



If the car is REALLY dirty and bad, ill go for the griots, but if its a wash were the car is just dusty from sitting at work all day, the meguiars works perfectly fine.
 
I have several wash customers and I use Duragloss 901. My local Carquest has it by the gallon at $25.00.



Griots would be a good choice, as would Mothers or Megs Gold Class.
 
LOL - been on a kick to find my favorite car wash. Of the ones I've tried: Optimum Car Wash, Ultima Paint Guard Wash , Sonax, Duragloss, Wolfgang, Pinnacle, Pinnacle XMT, Blackfire and DP Extreme Foam, I prefer the Ultima Paint Guard Wash the most - best combination of suds & lube. Haven't tried the Griots but apparently it's a forum favorite so I should give that a go. For the record, several of the above were samples that were included in various AG orders.
 
addysdaddy reminds me of the various criteria we all have. To me suds are worthless. I like lube and actual cleaning power, I feel that doesn't get mentioned enough. The main reason I love NXT so much is that its a heck of a cleaner, almost as good as an APC mixed in with some of the other washes that seem to be Mr Bubble in a different bottle.
 
The best READILY available shampoo is Megs Gold Class. It's not the best, but it's the best READILY available one. The others I don't consider READILY available if only one shop has them or you have to search around for it.
 
I also like Meg's GC soap. Unfortunately where I live (city, curbside parking, narrow street) w/no driveway or man cave.....I have a man shade. I can't really wash my cars at the house so they go thru the touchless wash down the street (I'm seriously considering on going the no rinse route as it'd be a big cost saving move, and motivating me to keep my vehicles looking thier best w/o risking damage at the car wash.

Anyways, I've gone thru numerous bottles of GC soap at work but stopped buying it since the other crews would use WAY more then what was needed to clean the rigs. Now we use Blue Coral soap which comes nowhere near GC soap. Haven't tried the Griot's soap yet, still have plenty of the BC to go thru.
 
Dan said:
addysdaddy reminds me of the various criteria we all have. To me suds are worthless. I like lube and actual cleaning power, I feel that doesn't get mentioned enough. The main reason I love NXT so much is that its a heck of a cleaner, almost as good as an APC mixed in with some of the other washes that seem to be Mr Bubble in a different bottle.
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Actually I have to agree with you Dan; however, my vehicles typically don't get that dirty, so the cleaning agent part of the equation is not that critical. All of the shampoos clean adequately for my needs. But I believe you make a very valid point about the cleaning ability - just makes me a little concerned about stripping the LSP off. Because of this thread, went out and purchased a small bottle of the Griots Car Shampoo so I'll give it a try this weekend and report back. Appreciate another spin on how to evaluate car shampoos.
 
Yep, I am less concerned about LSP stripping as I use spray wax at just about every wash as a drying aid. And NXT is pretty brutal on some waxes.
 
Dan said:
... And NXT is pretty brutal on some waxes.
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So are some shampoos that I woulda expected to be LSP-friendly, at least with regard to the LSPs from the same line- Pinnacle Bodywork Shampoo (which is a great shampoo otherwise), 4 Star's UPP shampoo, the BF shampoo that came with their AFPP intro kit. All of those are downright *harsh* on LSPs IME.



The Griot's seems to be incredibly mild on LSPs, at least the way I use it. And note that I typically do each area at least several times per wash using (primarily through the foamgun) a strong enough mix to clean truly filthy vehicles.
 
Did a quick wash yesterday to test out the Griots. It didn't suds as much as I would've liked but it did seem to stay on the paint. The car wasn't dirty so I cannot judge it's cleaning power but using fk425 as my drying aide, the drying process finished beautifully and perhaps a bit slicker then with some of the other products I've recently tried. Probably need a couple more times using it to really evaluate the product but my early assessment is very positive. IMHO, not sure it's any better then the Optimum and I still like the Ultima product the best.
 
addysdaddy said:
Did a quick wash yesterday to test out the Griots. It didn't suds as much as I would've liked ...
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I'm starting to think that the limited sudsing (though it does suds up pretty well with my softened water) might be part of why I *like* the Griot's :think:
 
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