Glan gluaisne
Active Member
I wash with 2 buckets and use a DI. The less you touch the car the less chance of creating micro scratches / swirls. Drying the car you run a high risk of creating swirls as there is a lack of lubricant across the paint. There are, of course, plenty of other opportunities to add micro scratches at other points, my own preference is to do it this way.
Here’s a pic demonstrating the value of the 2 bucket wash.
That's a really good point, and one I should have remembered. My first Prius was black, and I wasn't too careful when washing it, mainly because, at the time, I was driving well over 20k miles a year, so always seemed to be washing it in a rush. When I came to sell it, I gave it a really good wash and noticed that the paintwork was really bad, covered in small swirls and microscratches, that probably looked worse because it was black. Took me hours to cut back the paint and polish it so it looked half way reasonable.
It looks as if my lazy approach of regularly giving the car a blast with snow foam, pressure washing and then a gentle rinse with DI water might be better for the paintwork, as well as being fairly quick and easy.