How to wash your car and prepare for spring!

There are loads of long how-to guides on washing your car. However, here’s a really quick, simple, and yet thorough guide to follow should you want to get your car nice and clean with straightforward instructions, and without using any ‘specialist’ products or equipment.

We all have our own ways to wash a car, whether its the two bucket method, a quick sponge down or just a blast with the pressure washer.

Here’s Dr.ColourChips guide to cleaning your car this winter!

Chances are, your car spends most of its life outside, exposed to the elements, and as those elements worsen, we begin to wash our cars less and less.

With wet roads & often icy conditions, there is a whole host of contaminants that can be deposited on your car and will quickly build up, causing rust on its exposed metalwork. If rust sets in, not only could your car be unsafe, it’s resale value will diminish!

We recommend washing your car at least every two weeks throughout winter, even if its just a quick wash. Removing those contaminated deposits will make all the difference to the undercarriage of your car – just don’t forget to wash under there!

Here’s our basic checklist for washing your vehicle!
– Pressure Washer
– Two Buckets (One with shampoo, one with clean water)
– Microfibre Cloths
– Wheel Brush
– Sponge and/or Washmitts
– Optional extra, a Snow Foam Machine

You should be able to get all these items from any reputable automotive retailer.

Now,

this should be obvious, but after years of working in the automotive industry, the number of times you see dirty wheels and clean paintwork baffles me.

Start by cleaning the wheels, take your wheel brush and loosen and remove all the dirt and grime, give it a quick rinse after. Then let your wheel cleaner soak in for a few minutes, I’d recommend our Xpert-60 wheel cleaner. After a few minutes, rinse with the pressure washer and move on to the bodywork.

Next, I would pressure wash the bodywork and loosen the dirt, grime and salt. Using the two bucket method, begin washing the car. Rinse the washmitt/sponge in the clean water bucket before doing the same in the shampoo mixed bucket. Reapt until the car has been cleaned.
This method ensures anything on the washmitt/sponge is rinsed off between applications.

Dry with a microfibre towel. Once dry, now is the time to polish or wax.
Again, I would recommend the Xpert-60 Nano-wax.