So much out there on how to wash a car. It's...a car. I do agree with much of the comments above and I do try to avoid mechanical car washes if at all possible. If I
must use one, I don't ever use the gas station un-attended versions. I've had pretty good luck with some of the attended ones on past cars; I prefer the kind where you sit inside the car while it goes through, then dry it and vacuum yourself. But I find it's so easy to wash the MY (and we have an even smaller i3) that I can wash and dry in the driveway in way less than half an hour. I find that washing and drying the car myself allows me to look over the car for dings/dents/other.
I don't know the rules in SD, although I'd love to live there. If you're allowed to wash the car yourself, I'll jump on the bandwagon with my average joe wash tips. FYI, while I've never measured I'm pretty sure I can get the whole car washed with far less than 10 gallons of water, and it's probably closer to 5. Someday I'm going to measure. Someday.
I'm currently using:
- Meguiar's Gold Class car wash for a soap - but it's just a reasonably priced soap that was well-reviewed on that online store everyone loves to hate...and still uses. I'm not a soap nerd, but I do use car wash soaps and not dish soap.
- Turtle Wax Hybrid Ceramic Polish and Wax. Smells awesome, and works pretty darn well. I seem to need to use it about twice/year.
- I've also used Nu-Finish, the stuff in the orange bottle that claims once/year. Yea...it's a twice/year product too. And if you even look at the black plastic while you're holding the stuff you'll have grey streaks forever. It's OK. Nice shine.
- For the glass, you just can't beat Invisible Glass and a regular bath towel or hand towel. Someone on here (or was it Reddit?) recommended the Invisible Glass kit that has a roughly 18" handle with a 6" triangular pad and microfibers on it for the inside of the windshield. I just got this and Holy. Cow. This. Thing. Is. Awesome. I'm going to find that post and shower whoever that was with compliments.
To wash, I use a brush that I found at an RV shop back when I had one of those money pits. It's all plastic, no metal, with soft rubber edges to the brush part. It's on a roughly 4 foot plastic pole. Folks,
this is the way. As long as there's no metal on either the pole or the brush, you can cover some serious ground in a very short time without ever getting yourself wet.
For the inevitable bugs on the huge front painted mouth of our cars, I brush that first, then while it soaks I do the top and back of the car; brush the front again. Rinse. Brush the front again, and while it soaks do one side of the car and wheels; brush the front again. Rinse. Do the other side. This means you're brushing the front six times and letting it soak just a bit. Everything comes off with very little effort. And this whole process takes minutes. Did I mention that the brush on a stick allows you to move very, very quickly?
I use one of the car squeegee things from Abstract Ocean to get the majority of the water off before I use a towel. Using that, I can use one towel to dry two cars...almost. Might have to break out a second towel at the end of car number two.
With the brush on a stick and the squeegee, I spend more time unrolling/rerolling the hose and getting stuff out and putting it back than I do washing and drying the car.
Particular me says: please dry the inside of the door frames, trunk, and frunk every time. Takes minutes, makes the car look far cleaner.
Finally, I'm embarassed that I spent this much time talking about washing a car.