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Neither of the cars that I currently own has never washed with foam. Had been rinsing and washing myself since the day I bought them
BHPian traderjagadeesh recently shared this with other enthusiasts:
How safe is rinseless washing without a pre-rinse?
When do you need a pre-rinse?
Let’s address these questions, as there is a discussion going on. I don’t want to sound smart just by talking. But will put the practical results first, and then proceed with what I want to explain.
I have been a DIY detailer for almost 11+ years, 9 out of 10 of my washes are with rinseless for the last 7 years, and I currently own two cars (XUV 700 and VW Virtus). XUV is 16 months old, Virtus is 6 months old. Xuv is midnight black, Virtus is white (that’s why I never included Virtus in any of my posts, as it is a pretty easy colour to maintain). Neither of the cars that I currently own has never washed with foam. Had been rinsing and washing myself since the day I bought them. (Except that the xuv was wet wiped for a week with plain water by the watchman when I was in a camp, thanks to my father). Let’s talk about XUV as its paint is so soft on top of it being dark colored, and is prone to showing minor paint defects and can lose gloss just like that.
This is how I maintain my cars.
Summer and winter:-
Once every 30-45 days, or after a long road trip, I pretreat with Koch Chemie Vb (1:25 if the car is very dirty, 1:40-50 if the car is moderately dirty, 1:10-15 if I am prepping it for a decon and seal), then rinse it off, do the contact wash with ONR (Version 6 blew my mind and I never go away from it for a while unless they can do some out of the world stuff), and dry with a twisted loop towel (Sonax BSD at 1:5 or Koch Chemie PW are my go to drying aids). This is what I meant.
Video: Link
Between the deep washes in the summer, as I don’t drive it in the rain, I just have to deal with loose dust and traffic film. That’s where I spray the rinseless, agitate it with the wash bucket, then dry without any pre-rinse. I do it once a week, sometimes twice a week, depending on whether it doesn’t take anything more than 15 minutes to have a perfectly clean car. Here is the video of that.
Video: Link
Once in a while, just the bottom 1/3 and the back of the car get dirty. That’s when I use Koch Chemie VB/Greenstar as a pretreat for the bottom 1/3 with a manual foamer, pretreat the rest of the car with rinseless, rinse it all off, and then do the contact wash with the rinseless. Here is the video of that.
Video: Link
Rainy:-
I go all the way on every single wash. Pretreat with Vb followed by a rinse, then the contact wash with rinseless as I do in summer for deep cleaning every week or when the car gets very dirty. And I use drying aid on every alternate wash.
Once every 2 months, I use CarPro IronX and carpro clay towel for a quick decontamination during the wash. Do the tar, mineral decon stuff if necessary.
Once every 6 months, I use Soft99 fusso coat for 12 months as a sealant post decontamination.
The xuv has seen two summers, two rainy seasons, and is about to complete two winters so far. I had washed it more than 60 times, out of which at least 35 times didn’t include a pre-rinse. Never done paint correction on it yet (as I didn’t have the time to do that, nor was it in that bad shape to demand one). Driven it for around 32,000 Kms so far, and it has seen all levels of contamination in these 16 months. Here is how it is looking now, and you be the judge. I will do the paint correction soon to cover up the minor swirls(which you can’t see unless you have an inspection light standing close) that I have got because of wet wiping with water by the watchman, and the ones that are caused by the dealer at the time of taking the delivery.
An important thing to note here is that I have never used any electrical pressure washer on XUV. Just a cordless one whenever I needed a rinse. Sometimes done with a pressurised garden sprayer when I was in my hometown. So don’t fall for the fancy stuff when someone just talks without any practical evidence to show or prove a theory, just because they feel it that way without understanding the science behind it (which I will talk about in this post itself).
Before going into that, understand that clear coat is not as weak as the professional detailers make you believe for their vested interests. Sure, it can easily get scratched if you follow no common sense practices, but it can withstand a certain degree. If you follow proper practices, it doesn’t cause visible marring, and even if it does after 2-3 years, it can be easily corrected with just one step polish, and you will have a glossy car for its entire life. So don’t bang your head about marinating the paint by drying with a towel. You have to worry more about hard water drying on the surface while drying off with a blower, or it getting into the crevices like the mirrors, then dripping down after the wash, causing permanent mineral etching more than merely marring the paint by towel drying with a drying aid. Don’t even think about drying with a blower unless you are using RO or deionized water for everything in your car wash, as you spread the minerals with water during air drying and a portion of that water gets evaporated, leaving those minerals on the car. If you have a coating, it gets clogged, and you need an acidic wash to get rid of those. A weak sealant might not be able to protect from those accumulated mineral deposits after a few washes. Don’t get on that bandwagon.
What’s the science behind rinseless wash?
a) Rinselss has polymers. They do the encapsulation and emulsification of the organic contamination when sprayed on the panel (refer the first post of this thread for detailed explanation). They add some weight to that encapsulated dirt as well, which helps in bringing that to the bottom of the wash bucket, below the grit guard, which traditional soap can’t do to the fullest. So you don’t need a wash bucket and a rinse bucket separately.
b) They also add lubrication. As you don’t need to rinse after the agitation, that lubrication will be there for you during drying. So a drying aid is not a necessity.
c) They do that to the minerals in the water as well. So all the problems you have with hard water are solved just by letting the rinseless do that job for you.
d) The important thing that no one talks about is the phenomenon called “ZWITTER ION”. Bear with me for a lengthy explanation.
The process of rinseless:-
Don’t want to be a science teacher here, even though the topic is interesting. In layman’s terms, imagine that the rinseless on the car surface forms a magnetic north pole (That’s how the genius minds behind these chemicals made them). And these polymers make the encapsulated dirt have both north and south poles. We all know that north and south magnetic poles attract each other, north and north magnetic poles repel each other. When you agitate with the wash media that has some rinseless solution in it(sponge or a mitt), as the encapsulated dirt rolls, when the north pole of the car surface faces the north pole of the encapsulated dirt, it gets repelled and pushed into the sponge. The solution in the wash media attracts the dirt during that repelling process, and gets trapped in the wash media(that’s why rinseless sponges work better here than mitts). Once that is dunked into the wash bucket, sponges, by their nature, release that encapsulated dirt, and that will settle below the grit guard in seconds. And you have a clean sponge for the next panel with fresh rinsing solution in it.
Again, no. that doesn’t mar the paint unless you have mud that got stuck to the paint without entering into the polymer bubble (rainy season stuff). So you need a pre-rinse then which is common sense, like doing with a traditional foaming soap. Even then, you just need a cordless pressure washer with a proper alkaline chemical, as I have explained.
Waterless washes can’t do this. Foaming shampoo can’t do this.
e) And the final point, it is so cost-effective as I can just get away with using 20-30ml for a wash (Rs. 1400 for one and a half years roughly). Don’t create a mess on the floor post the wash, uses less water in comparison, no need to worry about hard water, especially during the summer where we have very little time to work with before drying, polymers are environmentally friendly as per the claims from ONR and you can literally use the wash bucket water to plants, and the list goes on.
I rest my case here. I don’t run a detailing business, so I don’t have anything to sell. But I am passionate about everything I do, and love science. That’s why stating the facts backed by science with real-world results, unlike some upselling detailer who has their vested interests and reasons to sound smart and diss on anything they don’t understand or believe in. At the end of the day, it’s you maintaining the car with the real-world provisions and the obligations.
Jai Hind.
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