Small Fish, Big Pond

One tradition most all of us have on the first nice days of spring is to take the car to the carwash and spray off winter’s accumulation of road salts and other muck from the last 3 months. For car lovers it’s practically a holiday and marks the true beginning of spring.

There are a few different ways to go about this, the best is to spend the most of your weekend doing an intensive hand wash and wax in your drive-way.
The most expensive is to pay $50 to $100 dollars to have professionals detail the car for you.
The most useless is to pay the local cheerleader squad to clean it for you; too expensive and poor quality. And if you want to look at soaped up girls in bikinis you’re already on the internet; honestly figure it out (but read my blog post first).

Most of us are lucky if we can find time to spend $5 at the local coin-op wash waving a wand over our car and hoping for the best. Here’s how to make the most of that coin-op wash and get results close to what you get after a weekend hand wash. Best of all how to give you car a great wash in 20 minutes and as little as $4 dollars.

What you need before you wash:

-Enough money for two wash cycles, most coin-ops take $2 to get started.
-A Chamois (check the local auto parts stores)
-A clean rag or towel you don’t mind getting dirty.
-A decent coin-op wash
-*Optional* Rose Royce – “Car Wash” on your iPod while you wash

As for finding a good place there are a few things that you want, first is a “Foam Brush” option.
This is a must!
Second is just simple quality, some car washes don’t mix much “product” in their systems; also look for a wash that has a “Spot Free Rinse” option. You can only find this by trying different car washes and shopping around; some places recycle water without properly cleaning it so the rinse cycle leaves spots.
Optionally look for a wash that has a wringer for removing the excess water from your Chamiois.

Rules to keep in mind:

-Check the local weather report (if it’s raining tomorrow you may want to wait).
-Keep moving, keep things wet. Dry soap leaves spots.
-Use Gravity. Wash and rinse from the top down.
-It takes about 10-15 seconds for the sprayer wand to change modes.
-The best clean comes from physically touching the car, avoid “touchless” washing.
-Every time the hose slaps the side of your car it’s a potential scratch. It can’t be avoided but try to minimize it. NEVER use a carwash that has metal connectors midway on the hose where they may hit your car.
-Most selections on the dial can be skipped. All you really need are “High Pressure Wash”, “Foam Brush”, “High Pressure Rinse”, and “Spotless Rinse” in that order.
-Best time to wash is just after sundown. Drying off in the hot sun can lead to waterspots if you’re not quick.

How to wash your car at the coin-op

1. Before you put in any money get everything prepped.
Lift Windshield wipers into the upright position. Have your change ready, usually two stacks of quarters for two separate cycles. Make sure your car is centered in the bay and you can easily get around with the wand and brush. Check the Foam Brush is relatively clean. The last guy may have been scrubbing mud off his ATV’s and you don’t want to smear that into your paint. If it’s dirty remember to give a quick spray from the wand in the next step.

2. Set the dial to rinse. Put your money in and wet the car down, if you have any extra change you want to use it in this first cycle. Since you usually use $5 in the change machine I use $3 for the first cycle, $2 for the second. Don’t wait until it beeps, put the extra in now.

*****Important*****
The trick to a quick cheap wash is knowing how to get the most out of your limited time. Try to divide the car into quadrants and constantly walk around the car washing those quadrants. A simple car will be:
Top, Front, Driver Side, Back, Passenger Side, Underside&Wheels, usually in that order.
Some cars will have hard to reach areas, you’ll get a feel what places you need to focus on.

3. Once you’ve gone through all quadrants wetting down the car switch to “wash” to cover it in some soap. Again you’re not looking to scrub anything off yet, just cover everything in soapy water. Remember the 15 second delay, switch to “wash” about 10 seconds before you need it.

4. By now you should only be about a minute into your allotted time (usually 4-5 minutes); switch to the foam brush. Spend the remaining time covering the car in a good lather; let the timer run out without putting in more money. Even after the time runs out there should be plenty of suds to scrub around and the brush still works without the timer running.

Make sure that when your time runs out you’ve at least covered the car in suds. Once it’s covered you can take any extra time you need to scrub bad spots. I like to make one quick trip around to cover the car in suds and a second to really scrub it down. The timer runs out on the second pass but there is plenty of soap on the car by then.

5. Try to leave scrubbing the wheels, underside, and wheel wells to the end since they will have the most dirt and you don’t want to spread that onto the rest of the car.

6. Once the car has been scrubbed but before the foam starts to dry put in the rest of your money and switch to the “High Pressure Rinse” mode. Make one quick pass over the whole car to keep it wet and keep the foam from drying.

<7. Now start at the top and rinse everything down. Soap likes to hide in cracks and seams, spray parallel to the seam to get it out. Work as quickly as possible but be thorough; try to spray soap down and off, not from one side to the other.

8. Once you’re confident you got the soap off switch to “Spotless Rinse” and finish rinsing the car down until time runs out. “Spotless Rinse” is kind of optional; it’s better to get all the soap off than it is to make it to the “Spotless Rinse” step (using a chamois will get all the spots anyway).

8.5 If you want to use a spray-on “wax while you dry” product, now is the time to put it on. They aren’t a substitute for a proper wax job but they do maintain an existing wax job pretty well. I prefer Meguiar’s version of the stuff.

9. Once you’re out of time get the chamois and dry off the car. The coin-op “code of conduct” is that if people are waiting that you vacate the wash bay and dry off in the vacuum area. However if it’s a hot sunny day and nobody else is waiting feel free to make use of the shade to dry off. Otherwise the sun will dry the car before you can, leaving water spots.

10. Wring the chamois out often. Don’t worry about the windows too much, there will be spots on them no matter how hard you try to get them, you’ll have to Windex them when you get home.
For the underside of the running boards, bumpers, and wheels use the rag/towel. They never seem to get 100% clean and will dirty up your chamois.

11. Now you can head home but when you get home check the back of the car, around the gas cap cover, and handles for more water to wipe up. The eddy-currents caused while driving will suck water and soap out of cracks you didn’t know you had and will streak if you don’t dry them now. Wipe off and polish any chrome and your automotive badges so they have that extra shine.

12. Finally Windex and Rain-X your windows. Then step back and admire your handy-work because if Murphy’s Law has anything to do with it it’s going to rain tomorrow.