The life of a world traveller and media personality get hectic once in a while, and every once in a while I don't have the spare hour to kill washing the tard. This particular month the poor thing has been put though 2200 miles of everything from Chicago to the beach to Wicked mountain roads. It needed a bath, I had no time. On a whim, and a little bird on our local chapters message board, I decided to take him in to get his belly scratched by unfamiliar, self titled professionals. Bad idea. It gave me a panic attack, and as soon as I saw a thug with more gold in his ear than in all of the local pawn shop I knew I was in trouble. The car got cleaned, and after trying to explain how these particular tires whip grit onto any Tire shine and make the wheels look bad and asking nicely for them not to touch the windows... The tard has gritty wheels and my tint... Well... I learned my lesson. Call me anal, but never again. Quoth Mrs. Bee, nevermore
Here CR, let me translate: "I let somebody else wash my car and I ain't never gonna do that again." Minus the poor English and slang, that is.
I think most people would cringe if they saw the BMW factory minions running the cars through the car wash... . Fortunately, the roadster is small enough that I can "dry wash" it with a spray bottle of Griot's. But at a car wash in Wisconsin (O'Fest a couple of years ago), I had them attend to the wheels with something that was supposed to take off brake dust. Which it did---along with about half of the clear coat.
Was it a car washing service, or a car wash? That's harsh either way. I'm very careful with who I let detail my car.
Satch, I recommend Armorall Extreme Wheel and Tire cleaner for cleaning your wheels - it's amazing at cutting through the brake dust. I spray it on, let it sit for a few minutes and then tackle with a brush - makes cleaning a breeze.
I wait for an autocross to really clean the wheels. I start with a GoJo wipe. Around here, I could never get away with anything you spray on and then rinse off, or I would use some of the Sonax stuff.
What's wrong with spray on-rinse off? I'll have to look up the GoJo and Sonax. It took me a long while to find a great wheel cleaner.
In Mondo Condo, aka the Home, we are NOT ALLOWED TO WASH CARS. It's really okay, since it's a criminal waste of water in SoSoCal, but it means you have to learn to "wash" your car with products like Griot's Speed Shine (which I buy by the gallon!). I like it better than Griot's Waterless Wash---a product that reflects the new times we live in. Speed Shine makes a great lubricant for clay, too. And it must have some detergent qualities, because after the GoJo wipe, it cleans the Dinan wheels pretty well. I'll look up the stuff I researched on German wheel cleaners. I have it here somewhere.
Found it: http://www.autogeek.net/sonax-wheel-cleaner.html These Auto Geek suppliers, by the way, have just about everything you've ever heard of---and many you haven't---when it comes to detailing. But somehow they missed Wd-40.
The implications of the Brushes Of Death are something that I swear got beat into my head at a very young age, so when I saw some ex-prison type looking guy approach the One with a long brush on a stick, I had to do everything in my power not to run, tackle him and beat him with his own brush (although, to give myself credit, I was in heels, not the best running shoes and certainly not the footwear I'd want to be wearing then an altercation of Little Blonde Girl VS. Ex Con at Car Wash occurred) I can still remember my dad scrubbing our old Trans-Am, Bondo spots and all, telling me of the evils of the "Brushes Of Death". I can still remember my first husband, of whoms father owned one of the oldest Car Detaililng Shops in that town going through the roof when I took our not very spectacular car through the automatic. I believe he said "Good Lord Nikki, why don't you just go rub a brillo pad over it". Not to mention the fact that Mr. Bee has a whole closet in the garage full of automotive cleaning accessories, and taught me how to properly respect the exterior of an automobile, no matter how much of a junk heap it was. He patiently showed me how to use that clay stuff on my tired old nissan. And now, I finally have something I can be proud of, so the brushes of brillo pads better stay far FAR away from my One. I wouldn't have gone there, not by a long shot, if I didn't see an offer from them on our Local Chapters Yahoo message board. Shame on the proprietor of that business to think that our Bimmers would deserve such treatment. I can't be certain, but I think he's an Audi guy, the owner that is. Bastard.
Wow! Astounding! I'd go crazy with worry about paint swirls if I couldn't do a regular 2-bucket wash. Nothing is more relaxing than spending the day detailing my car... once a year I'll do a 2 day marathon that involved a wash, clay bar and 3 coats of sealer and wax. I'm a bit of a detailing freak. Having said that, I'm not so fanatical about my wheels and probably only wash them every 3 washes of the car... recently one of my colleagues asked if I had new wheels on the M. I told her no, that was just the color of brake dust... hence the reason I need a really great product for wheel cleaning.
Yeah, I spend a hell of a lot more time with research than I do with detailing! I think I got it out of my system back when I used to paint cars. We used to do our final color buffing, after giving the paint about 30 days to fully cure, with. . . wait for it. . . cornstarch. Nowadays all I have is an old Sears two-speed buffer which is pretty good at slinging zymol cleaner all over everything in the garage, and not much else. I keep meaning to buy Griot's six-incher, but then I'd have to eventually break down and use the damn thing. Fortunately, I can't seem to find the time to apply the touch-up Alpine White III that I bought for the front of the roadster, because then I'll probably feel compelled to buff it out.
Brillo Pads + My amazing brute strength + random nursery dirt and debris = surface scratches from hell I was under the same impression though. If they were good enough for my mom to use on me as an infant, why wouldn't they be good enough for my precious machine made of steel...err...plastic...errr...material other than flesh?
When I first got my black BMW, I thought I was a bad owner if I didn't religiously run it through the car wash by my house every week. Pretty soon it was so swirled up and had so many holograms that it was barely black anymore. I took it to a reputable detailer and he explained to me why this happened (auto-washes, etc..), polished the car out. 10 hours and several hundred dollars later, the car looked better than new and I then got a lesson in "real" hand washing. I learned to use the two bucket + grit guard with microfiber method to wash and I have done a good job of avoiding putting swirls in my own cars ever since. I began to get dismayed at how long hand washing with two buckets was taking me, but then I found out about "rinse-less" wash soap. I have since become a pretty big fan of "Optimum No Rinse" soap. It saves a lot of time and water. Really the only swirls I have now are from the few times I forgot to tell the dealer service dept not to wash my car. :-( Nothing a bit of polish can't fix, however. Anyways, heres a good video talking about two-bucket: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xobp-uptqtA
