What kit do you need to wash your car?

With the weather warming, you may wish to banish the winter blues from your car's bodywork, by treating it to a spring clean. This is a very good idea. Apart from looking downtrodden, dirt and grime do nothing for your paint. They promote scratches and dull the finish, requiring more involved work to rectify.

Should you have the space and inclination to wash your car from home, you need more than a bucket and sponge to do the task properly. Therefore, before we discuss wash techniques, which shall follow in future blogs, here is an overview of the equipment that you should consider.

The buckets

You need not one but two buckets of at least 20 litres capacity - one is for washing, the other, rinsing.

Car cleaning is not just about washing but also protecting. The main issue involves grit from the bodywork being transferred from the car into the bucket. To prevent you from picking up these abrasive contaminations and scratching the paint, each bucket needs a grit guard. This is a plastic grid that sits in the base of each bucket that prevents these heavy particles from being picked up by the wash mitt.

Getting handy

Old-tech sponges have been replaced by a variety of new products, especially wash mitts. Again, to stop abrasive grit from scratching the paint, one of their purposes is to trap particles within their fibres and release them within the bucket. They are made from a variety of materials, from microfibre to wool, although professional organisations recommend noodle wash mitts in particular.

Brushes that are designed for car cleaning help you reach into small areas that trap dirt. Bumper grilles, rubber window seals and the gap between door mirror housings and their glass are typical hard-to-reach examples.

Should your alloy wheels be of a particularly intricate design, you may also consider using a dedicated wheel brush. Again, these are sufficiently flexible to be effective but are soft enough to avoid damaging the finish. This is relevant especially on diamond-cut alloy wheels.

If you are fortunate enough to have access to electricity, a pressure washer is preferable to a garden hose. You do not need one that is especially powerful but a machine that varies the water output is useful. A snow foam lance attachment is also a worthwhile investment.

Chemical considerations

Purchase a decent automotive shampoo. Never use other products. Dish wash detergent, for instance, is designed to strip grease and wax, which are the very things that protect vehicle paintwork. They can also stain the finish and contain high salt levels, which promote corrosion.

What is good for your hands is not necessarily good for your car. You may be attracted by pH-neutral shampoos, which give the impression of being kind to your paintwork. Yet, they may be too mild to be effective. While such products are ideal if you wash your car regularly, a more caustic shampoo is likely to be more effective on a car that is not pampered.

If you have invested in a snow foam lance, purchase snow foam to go with it. Due to being exposed to brake dust and hot metal fragments being ejected from the brakes, alloy wheels tend to require more than shampoo to keep clean. Buying a dedicated alloy wheel cleaning solution is a good idea, especially iron fallout remover (unless your vehicle has carbon brakes), which converts embedded metal particles into a water-soluble form, so they can be rinsed away.

Further chemicals include All Purpose Cleaner, which you can apply with a soft brush to areas such as within the fuel filler cap. Logically, tar remover releases stubborn tar particles from the paintwork and is available in either aerosol, or gel forms. Glass cleaners and tyre dressing are also worthwhile purchases.

While you can buy other products, such as clay bars/pads, polishes and waxes, they are not central to the washing process. However, it is a good idea to buy a drying towel, so that water droplets do not dry on your paintwork afterwards, leaving ugly white spots behind.

To view these stories or to keep up to date with the latest news from GEM Motoring Assist you can connect with GEM Motoring Assist at:

Twitter: @motoringassist

Facebook: @gemmotoringassist

Instagram: @gem_motoringassist

LinkedIn: @gem-motoring-assist-limited

GEM Motoring Assist is a members’ motoring and road safety organisation in the UK. Our aim is to keep our members on the move… whether that’s through our breakdown recovery service or our motoring and road safety expertise.

Join GEM for simple and straightforward, all-inclusive personal breakdown cover.