How To Wash Your Car Properly

In today's video, I'm going to be talking to you about the correct way to wash a car. Now, I know it sounds super basic, but the wash process is the foundation for any detailing work you're going to do. And I see a lot of people make some really common mistakes that are really easy to avoid. If you just know these tips and tricks and you have a process to follow, you can just repeat it each and every time. What I'm about to show you is the exact process I've always used since Auto Finesse has been cleaning cars since 1999. Yes, I really am that old. I left school, I cleaned cars. It's about all I've done throughout my whole life. So this is what I'm dedicated to. Today, we have the perfect example of a daily driver to perform this wash on. Black car, absolutely filthy. It's got road grime, it's got mud. The wheels are covered in brake dust. So it's the perfect test bed and the perfect thing for me to show you my process on how to clean a car properly. What a lot of people don't know is it's actually this stage right here, right now, where most of those unsightly swirls are created. Because if you don't remove the dirt correctly before you come into contact with it, you then run the risk of dragging that around the panel. And that is what causes dull paint, swirl marks, and they're super hard to remove. So if you take your time right now, you save yourself a tonne of time later on down the line. Let's get into it. We're gonna start things off down here at the wheels. These are generally the grubbiest part of a car when you're cleaning it. So we always start here. A mistake I see a lot of people make is they get carried away, they get the jet wash out, and they wet the whole car up before they've cleaned the wheels. That is the wrong way to go about things. We clean wheels first because they're the grubbiest. It also means we can take our time down here. We can do these thoroughly, especially with designs like this. They take a little while to get into all the edges and make sure you get everything. I'm gonna show you a couple of tips and tricks that I use to ensure I get everything every time I clean the wheel. Before anything, I'm gonna soak the wheels in a powerful wheel cleaner. We're using Reactive here. I've done the barrel, and then I've gone from 12 o'clock all the way around to coat everything. Now, before I start getting the brushes in there, what I wanna do is remove as much dirt as possible before I come into contact with this. So I'm gonna get my jet wash, blast off as much as I can before we then reapply this, use our brushes, start at a 12 o'clock position, barrel first, all the way around in a clockwise manner, then onto the face. We'll use a wheel mitt into all of the detail, and then finally, a detailing brush just to get in the lug holes and any other bits that I didn't get with the mitt. I'm gonna take the time while I'm down here to clean up the tire wall and the wheel arch at the same time. Now, it's quite important you clean your tire walls because if you think you've got all that dirt on the wheel, pretty obvious that you've got the same amount of dirt up on the tire wall. Cleaning them now will actually mean when you dress them later on, you'll get better adhesion from the actual product that you put on there. But also, if you don't wanna dress them, they'll look nice and clean as well and natural. All I'm using here is an APC. We've got Verso mixed up four to one in a bottle. Spraying up the wheel arch liner and the tire wall at the same time. And then what I'm gonna do is just grab a tire brush and just go around that and work it in to make sure it's super clean. Now, we're ready to jet that off and that is one wheel complete. So, with all four wheels washed, you might think it's now time to come into contact with it, get the wash mitts and the buckets out and start washing. But you would be wrong because before that, I've got two products here that we need to use. We've got a pre-wash citrus power. I'm gonna use this on the grubbiest areas of the car. Anything from kind of the waistline down front of the car, the wing mirrors around the back and then I'm gonna lay snow foam directly over the top. Jet it all off in one go and what that's gonna do is remove 80 to 90% of the standing dirt that's on the car before we go and come into contact with it. What this does is reduces dramatically the chance of us dragging around any grit and causing those unsightly swirl marks. So, citrus power first, snow foam over the top, jet it all off and then we're gonna be ready to get the wash mitts out and give it a clean. So, a top tip when you're using snow foam on your car, what you're looking to do here is leave it on for as long as possible before it dries out. Now, I'm pretty lucky today. It's overcast, it's pretty cold so this is not drying out too long which means I can leave it on here longer to do its thing. What snow foam does and the reason that you want the foam itself is what it allows is the detergent to stay on the car for longer, meaning you need a less harsh detergent to break down the road grime because it can stay on there longer working and doing its thing as opposed to something like a TFR or traffic film remover where you spray it onto the car and then it dries up pretty quick so you immediately need to jet wash it off. Usually these are caustic, they're quite harsh on coatings, they're not very nice on delicate finishes like piano black or gloss trims or even exposed aluminium parts whereas a snow foam, nice pH neutral, still gets the job done, just dwells on there a little bit longer. I'm now gonna jet this off. I'm gonna start from the top, work my way down. That may be different than what you've seen other people suggesting online. Now, I see no good of starting from the bottom and rinsing upwards. What I wanna do is remove the dirt, I want it to go from the car onto the floor and away. If I start rinsing upwards, I'm gonna push that dirt up the vehicle into gaps. It's just not the right way to go about things. So start on the roof, work our way down and we're jetting as much dirt as we can off with our pressure washer now. So two buckets, wash mitts in the bucket closest to the car and then our shampoo also goes in that same bucket. Reason for this is, this means I always know what bucket is my rinse bucket and what bucket is my wash bucket. I come off of the car, I rinse my mitt in this bucket, then take fresh solution from this bucket back onto the car. So we're gonna take our solution, we're gonna start at the top of the car. I like to break the car into three parts, uppers, glass, down to about the midpoint and then those lower parts, they are our final part that we do. So again, we're working from the grubbiest areas last. So we're going cleanest to grubbiest, top to bottom. Another nice little tip when you're washing a car, always clean your windscreen wiper blades. Just give them a lift, a rub along with a wash mitt. That means there's no debris there when you use them next time they won't smear up and it's just good practice to look after them. They'll last you a little bit longer. I hate it when people wash a car and they don't go under the windscreen wipers. It's one of my pet hates. That, underneath wing mirrors, inside door handles and around exhaust tips, you'll see me get all them bits every time. So each time I've done a section, take the wash mitt into the rinse bucket and what I'm trying to do is rinse any of the dirt off of the wash mitt now and then we go and we take fresh solution back to the car again. The reason we use a wash mitt and not a sponge is you've got these fibres, so if there is any dirt or grit there, it can sink into them fibres, whereas a sponge is relatively flat to the surface and it will drag that around more, causing more possibility for there to be scratches in the paintwork later on down the line. Now this is one of the bits that really stresses me out when people miss the exhaust tips. Don't get me wrong, you can clean them up later, but you should really try and do the best job you can. When you've got the car wet, this is the chance to get all of the dirt off of it. Anything that don't come off now, you can address later on, but what I like to do is get one of the mini barrel brushes and just get around them and clean them up properly. It doesn't take a second and it saves you a load of aggro later on. Another little bit that I see people miss all the time is this bit of paint that just rolls in the arch. So what I get is one of the older wash mitts and always just rub around this on one last spot. This car's pretty well maintained. We do look after it, believe it or not. Old wash mitt again and just wash down your door jams. Now with the car thoroughly washed, all that's left to do is rinse off the suds and then dry it. With the car rinsed off, all that's left for me to do now is dry it off. And there's one last product I like to use and that is a quick detailer. I'm using Finale here just to aid the drying stage. Just simply a little mist over. You'll see the water start to disperse. What this does, gives a bit of extra shine, but it also makes your drying towel slide across the panel easier. And believe it or not, this is one of the points where most people cause the most swirls using a bad or a tumble dry drying towel and not using a quick detailer or dry scrubbing at the paintwork with a drying towel. Once all the body work's dried, there's one last thing that you must dry and that is your wheels. Now, all I use a microfiber cloth for this. Just go over them, soak up any water because like your paintwork, if you don't do this, you'll have watermarks all over them and it undoes all your hard work. It's also a good way of seeing if you missed anything. Doesn't matter how good you think you are at cleaning wheels. You'll always get a little bit of pickup from somewhere, but at least this means you pick it up before someone else sees it. So that is the basic process of washing a car complete. However, no car wash is truly complete unless you dress the tires and clean the windows. So I'm gonna use a water-based dressing on the tires and the arch liners, clean the glass, and then we're good to go. If you're cleaning your car, you could leave it there. Maybe it's just a weekly wash down you wanna get on with life, or maybe this is the basis of you're gonna get it in your garage or undercover and carry on with some more detailing steps. No matter what your plans are, that is the foundation of any detailing work you carry out. A good proper wash really shouldn't be overlooked. So just like that, we are finished. This car, this is far as I'm taking this one. This is ready to hit the road now. It's looking a lot fresher than it was before. Do need to tackle that interior at some point, but that is for another guide. Hope you liked this video and stay tuned because we've got loads more just like it coming for you. If there's something that you want us to show you or explain in one of our videos, please drop us a comment because we're gonna try and make as many of these as we can, showing you what you want and need to help you detail better. Thanks again for watching and see you in the next one.