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Car Cleaning/Polishing/Waxing Chit Chat


james
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tbh honest i dont power wash my car .....

Hose it down one side ....

spray alloys with wonder wheels and use the brush

wash with...fairy liquid lol ( the bodywork )

hose down wheels and wash as above

turn the car around and repeat....

then dry with a chamois

all i can say is why?!?!?! your wrecking your paintwork if you use fairy liquid!! sick-smileys-1050.gif]

you can buy some cheap CAR shampoo from halfords or even most food stores like asda, tesco, sainsburys maybe.

can pick up some less than a fiver

if you compare using fairy liquid and some shampoo thats actually used for the job, you will see a big difference in how your paintwork comes out.

if your low on money a really handy tip is when your other half ent looking, pinch some of their conditioner, does the same job (so im told) and its better than using fairy liquid.

rant over

lol not short in money mate btw lol

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[quote name=" http://www.cleancarsforum.co.uk/viewtop ... =81&t=1226"]

I thought I would post briefly with regards to products like fairy liquid or, generically, washing up liquids. It has become something of a common discussion point online that fairy liquid is a horrendously dangerous product - it will strip almost any LSP, it is filled with salt and will do no end of damage. All of this is myth with very little basis in reality.

First up, lets consider what is in fairy liquid. Fairy is a water based mixture of surfactants. There are some additions to this which are mainly to do with stabilising the product so it doesn't break down (fairy is much less likely to separate out than most automotive products).The product is close to pH neutral and doesn't contain anything in the way of harmful additions (it has to be food safe - the same is not true for automotive products). Being more specific, the surfactants within fairy are nothing especially unusual - they are good solid surfactants which are used throughout the detergents industry. They are at high levels and fairy is a good product because they can get them in at higher levels than others without compromising elsewhere. More important is that the surfactants within are actually found in some other products we are familiar with - we call them car shampoos! Salt? In fairy? You must be kidding. Salt is a thickener in a product like this. With fairy, they will be fighting to LOWER the viscosity, not raise it. Salt (sodium chloride) would potentially make the product so thick as to be impossible to make or use. Cheaper products will have lower activity levels and will not be so thick on their own - at this point it is common to add salt to compensate. This is common in budget washing up liquids and similar - not uncommon in cheap bulk car shampoos either! So, from a chemical point of view, fairy and other washing up liquids have very little of concern for your car. In fact fairy is necessarily milder than many car cleaning shampoos - this should not surprise you, fairy is designed for repeated and prolonged skin contact!

Then we have the LSP stripping. I have done numerous tests here and I don't know what the fuss is about. My tests show that it does not easily strip LSP, even when when applied neat to a wash mitt. In fact, on the subject, I tend to find that even neat TFR/APC will struggle to remove my LSPs as easily as spray and wipe! What I have observed repeatedly is the removal of water beading and sheeting. I believe that this is confusing people into believing that LSPs are removed. More importantly, this removal of beading and sheeting is temporary. This fits well with the chemistry - surfactants bond to oils, this is how they work. Your LSP is.... basically a fancy oil. So you have a concentrated surfactant mixture (fairy) and you are applying it to an oily layer. The surfactant will stick! Now, because your LSP is not actually a simple oil, it is much harder to remove. The bond between the paint and the LSP is stronger than between LSP and surfactant - so the surfactant will stick to the LSP but won't be able to remove much of it. The trouble is you now have surfactant stuck to your LSP making the water behaviour appear to have left the building! Now, the surfactant also has a water loving element so it will be removed with enough water. It will not rinse off immediately - it wouldn't be a very good surfactant if it could 'released' the oily end that easily. So it can take a LOT of rinsing to get rid of it all. So in my view there are two potential scenarios here... either these myths are coming from people who are confused as described or the protection products I make are much more resilient than most on the market - much as I would like to claim this, the truth is that I make good products but I cannot pretend that they are all ground breaking!

So next time you hear someone talking about fairy stripping wax - think about it a bit more carefully!

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That it is nick, but washing up liquid is not designed for road grime i guess

No, probably not, unless you eat your dinner off the tarmac. WACK11111

thanks james...but most car shampoo wont deal with road grime tar etc....

A good pre-wash helps get rid of the worst road grime. :)

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  • 1 month later...

right then small update from me, this is my friends car i did for her the other day

couple of before pics

null_zpsa6045340.jpg~original

null_zpsd085e77d.jpg~original

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and after pics

null_zpsceeaabd7.jpg~original

null_zpsd3a98914.jpg~original

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null_zps26031ecf.jpg~original

and some 50-50 shots and closer pics of the paintwork

null_zpsc570b159.jpg~original

null_zpsfaa46177.jpg~original

null_zpsc635b5e9.jpg~original

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