The Perfect Wash: No More Gremlins

Soon enough, the snow will melt, the roads will dry, and we can go back to taking pride in driving a shiny automobile.  But as we wait for that to happen, we want to share some information about our washing methods and some technology that helps us come close to a "prefect wash".

Did you know that whenever you wash your car, no matter how careful you are, you are adding to the scratches and swirls that take away from the original beauty of its paint.  These defects then multiply and finally overtake the paint (when left alone) and rob the vehicle of its overall lines and designed beauty.  Kind of like gremlins!  Remember how Gizmo turned into a vile creature when combined with water?

But don't worry there are ways to prevent those ugly, swirly, scratchy gremlins!  At Tailored Automotive Detailing we use various methods and tools to avoid them from attacking your car as we prepare it to perfection:

1. The Two Bucket Method:  Most people wouldn't drive to the beach and fill their wash bucket with a shovel full of sand before adding soap and water. Sadly, most of the dirt removed during washing is released into the soap bucket each time the mitt or sponge is reloaded with soap. After washing a couple of sections the soap solution becomes gritty and contaminated, and that grit is scrubbed against the paint. Even rinsing out the wash media after every section is ineffective. Flowing water may remove some of the grit, but most of it is pushed back into the mitt or sponge. It is much easier, and far more effective, to use a second bucket to rinse the wash media in prior to loading it with more soap solution. Two buckets: The soap bucket and the rinse bucket.
2. Grit Guards ™:  They are an ingenious design that uses a grate and vane system to allow releaed dirt to sink to the bottom and prevents them from remixing into the water or soap solution. Tailored Automotive uses one Grit Guard ™ per bucket to give the best possible protection against scratching the paint with contaminated soap solution. When rising the wash media out in the rinse bucket, we lightly scrub it against the grating of the Grit Guard ™ to help release grit. 
   
   
3. High Quality Car Soap Designed for Automotive Finishes.
   
   Automotive soap is designed to remove dirty and road grime safely from the paint, with stripping the existing wax or sealant and will out scratching. Automotive soaps use surfactants to break the surface tension of water, allowing the lubricated solution to penetrate and encapsulate the dirt, reducing the potential for marring. We use soap known for its high-lube qualities and its ability to encapsulate dirt.  Also, we look for PH-Balanced formulas to help combat acidic levels of various fallout and dirt we may be faced with.
4. Pre-Rinse:  Automobiles generally come to us with varying levels of road grime and debris.  Before we start soaping and cleansing, we pretreat heavily soiled areas and areas with "caked" bug and road debris" with special cleansers designed to loosen up those areas and encapsulate the particles.  We then  pressure wash the entire vehicle's exterior, including the wheel wells and undercarriage to knock down the dirt and debris.
5. Sheepskin and Boar's Hair Wash Mediums: These two mediums are well-known for their ability to pickup dirt safely from the paint and hold large amounts of water and soap to help with lubricity that will allow them to cleanse the paint without dragging dirt and debris all over it.
6. Foam Cannon:

The Foam Cannon HP works with a pressure washer. The velocity of the water combined with a quality car shampoo will generate amazing suds. This wash process actually uses less water at a higher pressure, so its eco-friendly, too. With the appropriate settings and mixture ratios, this type of technology creates a layer of foam over your vehicle that allows surface dirt to be encapsulated and minimal touching to do maximum cleaning.  After a dousing of foam...your car will look like this: 

     7.  CR Spotless Water De-Ionizer:  Your water can have anywhere from coarse salt to very small particulate matter that can cause scratches at all different levels.  Most people don't even think of their water as being a primary source for Gremlins!  Tailored uses a CR Spotless to filter the water we use before it touches your car...during any step of GSP.  Sure it is a costly thing to incorporate, but when perfection is what we're after, its a small cost. While we have used other in-line filters and softening systems before, we believe CR Spotless De-Ionized water is the best available for what we want to achieve.  It not only removes big stuff, but the little stuff as well.  In the end, when we final rinse your car, the sun can hit  the paint all it want...no mineral spots will remain- GUARANTEED!

     8.  Careful Washing:  Once your car is foamed up, the sheepskin and/or Boar's Hair mediums are soaked in the soap bucket and panels are washed carefully and without lots of pressure.  We start on the roof and rinse and resoak the mediums every after every panel.  Doors, front/rear ends, and quarter panels are washed up and down, while bonnets, roofs, and deck lids are washed front to back.

     9.  Final Rinse:  Though we continuously rinse while washing, we complete a low-pressure, de-ionized final rinse when we are complete.  This removes any lingering soap, any beads that are on the surface, and prepares the vehicle for proper drying.

     10. The last step of Washing is Drying:  Creating Gremlins in your paint can happen at this point.  No matter how safely you've washed.  To dry safely and thoroughly we use two things: High Velocity Air and Waffle Weave Microfibers.  Our Metro Blo n Vac provides 200 mph winds to move water off of the flat surfaces and out of the crevices.  We use it to blow out the mirrors, emblems, handles, moulding, grill, etc.  The more water we can blow off, the less we have to touch the paint.  Then, we use Waffle Weave Microfiber Towels (WWMT).  While Chamois traditionally do a great job of soaking up water, if you have any remaining dirt, they will drag it along the paint.  WWMTs do a great job of soaking up to 10 times their weight, but they also have a woven fiber nap that holds the dirt away from the paint.

So that's how we keep the Gremlinis away from your paint.  Have any questions, let us know...we'd be glad to answer them and help you keep them away too.