— Method
How to wash
a car properly.
There is no trick to the perfect car wash. It is the right products, used in the right order. The range was built as a sequence, so here it is, from the first pre wash through to the last buff, with the measure for every step along the way.
01 Summary
The short version
If you already know your way round a lance and a bucket, here is the whole thing in eleven lines. The rest of the page is why each one sits where it does.
- Spray ZEST over the car, leave it to dwell, jet wash it off.
- Cover the whole car in FOAM, dwell again, then jet wash it off.
- Wash with SUDZ a panel at a time, rinsing each one before you move on.
- Clean the wheels with RIMZ, agitate if they need it, rinse.
- Spray SKIN over the wet car through the lance, then rinse it off.
- If you want the ceramic too, work ARMOUR round the car a panel at a time, jet washing off after every one.
- Dry the car with a looped towel or a blower.
- Vacuum the interior, wipe every surface down with TOUCH, then buff to a satin finish with a dry microfibre.
- Clean the glass with PURE in small sections. Start inside, and polish every pane with a dry microfibre.
- Finish with SLICK, a panel at a time, buffed to a high shine with a dry microfibre. Go round twice for a deeper gloss.
- Stand back and admire a show ready car.
02 Setting up
Before you start
Wash in the shade, on panels that are cool to the touch. Everything below works by staying wet long enough to do its job, and a bonnet that has been sat in July sun will dry a pre wash in under a minute. Early morning and early evening are the easy windows.
Rinse the whole car down before anything else goes near it. Thirty seconds with a hose takes the loose grit off, and loose grit is what puts scratches in paint later on.
Give yourself about an hour and a half for the full run. You can do the wash and skip the interior, or foam it and stop there. Nothing here breaks if you leave a step out, as long as you keep the ones you do in order.
None of it is specialist car detailing. It is the same routine every time, and on a British winter that means getting the salt off before it sits, which is the job the first two steps are doing.
03 The wash
The perfect car wash, in eleven steps
Every ratio and dwell time below is read straight from the bottle it belongs to, so it says the same thing here as it does on the label and in the dilution guide.
Nothing touches the car
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01
Citrus pre wash, nothing touching the car
ZEST Powerful Citrus Pre Wash
The first two stages happen without anything touching the paint, and between them they take off most of what is on the car. ZEST goes on through a snow foam cannon, or through the trigger sprayer, whichever suits the car.
Cover the car, leave it to dwell, then jet wash it off before it dries. Work upwards from the sills, so nothing runs down over dry panels and leaves a mark you have to chase later.
- Dilution, foam lance (1L)
- 1:4 - 1:15
- Dilution, pressure sprayer (5L)
- 1:4 - 1:15
- Dwell
- 3-5 minutes
-
02
Snow foam over the top of it
FOAM Indulgent Snow Foam
FOAM goes in the cannon and over the whole car. Still nothing touching it. This lifts what the citrus loosened and buys another few minutes of dwell for free.
Same as before: leave it to work, then rinse it off while it is still wet.
- Dilution, foam lance (1L)
- 1:4 — 1:15
- Dwell
- 3–5 minutes
Work out the FOAM measureSnow foam setup and troubleshooting
The contact wash
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03
The contact wash, panel by panel
SUDZ Luxury Car Shampoo
This is the first time you touch the car. SUDZ goes into a bucket, or into the cannon so you can lay it onto one panel at a time and work it with the mitt. Either way round, the measure is on the bottle and the two are different.
If you are washing out of buckets, use two of them. That is the two bucket method, and it is the single habit that keeps swirl marks out of paint: one bucket holds the shampoo, the other holds clean water with a grit guard in the bottom, and the mitt goes back into the clean one every couple of panels.
Do a panel, rinse it off, move to the next one. The thing to watch is that the whole car stays wet the entire way round. Nothing should be drying off in the sun while you are busy at the other end of it.
- Dilution, foam lance (1L)
- 40ml - 100ml in 1L
- Dilution, bucket (10L)
- 40ml - 100ml per 10L
- Dilution, soft top (1L)
- 40ml - 60ml in 1L
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04
Wheels, now the car is soaked
RIMZ Powerful Wheel Cleaner
Wheels after the wash rather than before it. By this point the citrus, the foam and the shampoo have all run down over them and they have had a long soak, so there is far less left for the wheel cleaner to do.
Spray them cold, take an agitation brush round if they are properly dirty, and jet wash off inside the one to two minutes on the bottle. Never let it dry on the wheel. Check what the wheel maker says if the finish is anything other than painted or lacquered, and keep the wheel brushes away from paintwork. Doing the wheels first works too, if that is the way you like it. This is a preference rather than a rule.
- Dilution, sprayer (1L)
- Neat — 1:10
- Dwell
- 1–2 minutes
Protection
-
05
SKIN, through the lance
SKIN Hybrid Wax Spray Sealant
Protection starts here and it goes on while the car is still wet, which is what makes it quick. SKIN goes through the snow foam lance, over the whole car, and comes straight back off with the jet wash after its sixty seconds.
You can stop at this point and dry the car. If you want the ceramic on as well, that is the next step rather than an alternative to this one.
- Dilution, foam lance (1L)
- 100ml - 200ml in 1L
- Dwell
- 60 seconds
-
06
ARMOUR, panel by panel
ARMOUR Ceramic Spray Sealant
ARMOUR is done per panel rather than over the whole car at once. Spray it on with the trigger it comes with, wipe it around with a clean mitt, give it thirty to sixty seconds, then jet wash that panel off before you move to the next one.
Work your way round the car doing that. Keep it off hot panels and out of direct sun, and do not let it dry on the surface. If it contacts glass, rinse immediately.
- Dwell
- 30–60 seconds
- Durability
- Up to 6 months
Drying and finishing
-
07
Dry it before it dries itself
Water left to evaporate leaves the minerals behind, and on a dark car you will see every one of them. A looped drying towel dragged flat across the panel is plenty; a blower is faster and touches nothing.
Do the door shuts, the mirror housings and the badges, because that is where the drips come from ten minutes after you think you have finished.
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08
Then the inside
TOUCH Satin Interior Detailer
Get the loose grit out first with a brush or a vacuum, otherwise you are just pushing it around the dashboard.
Mist onto the towel, never onto a screen, wipe the surface until it is clean, then turn the towel over and buff. The finish should be satin. Anything shinier than that catches the sun straight back into your eyes.
- Safe on
- Plastics, leather, Alcantara, glass
- pH
- Neutral
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09
The glass
PURE Crystal Glass Cleaner
Dry, cool glass and out of the sun. Start on the inside, which is almost always the side that was causing the glare. Spray the towel rather than the window so it is not running down inside the door before you have touched it, work a section at a time, then polish each pane clear with a dry microfibre.
It is alcohol based and flashes off fast, so small areas beat one long sweep. The inside of the windscreen is usually the bit that was causing the glare.
- Finish
- Streak free
- Chemistry
- Alcohol based
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10
SLICK, the very last thing
SLICK Quick Detailing Spray
SLICK is the end of the job and it goes on clean dry paint. Mist a clean microfibre with it, put a couple of squirts straight onto the panel, work it around, then turn to a dry towel and buff it off.
One panel at a time round the car and you are done. It layers as well, so a second pass adds depth rather than going to waste.
- Use
- After every wash
- Surface
- Clean, dry paint
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11
Stand back
That is the whole thing: ten stages of work and a car that looks like it came off a stand rather than off a driveway.
If you take one thing away from this page, take the order. Everything else on it is detail.
04 Pitfalls
Where it usually goes wrong
- Washing in the sun. Everything dries before it has done anything, and you spend the afternoon chasing water spots.
- Starting a pre wash at the roof. It runs down over dry paint and leaves marks that are harder to shift than what you started with.
- Letting half the car dry off while you work on the other half. Keep the whole thing wet from the first rinse to the last one.
- One bucket, if you are washing out of buckets. The grit you took off the front wing goes straight back on at the door, and that is where swirl marks come from.
- Letting anything dry on the paint. If it is going off faster than you can work, do half a car at a time.
- Wiping in circles. Straight lines, in the direction of travel, so that any marks you do put in are far less visible.
05 Kits
Buy it as a kit
The same bottles in the same order, in one order. No bundle markup, and nothing in a kit that is not on this page.
Only after one thing? Every bottle is sold on its own in the shop, at the same price it carries inside a kit.