So I need major help on how to wash the stang

[Freedom]

Ok while I appreciate the thought here, doing it this way will end up damaging your paint. Go on youtube and look for how to properly clean a car. Here's a quick overview of what I do for a regular weekly wash. Oh...and never...ever wash your car in direct sunlight.

1) Rinse the car, get it wet. A pressure washer is great to clear off loose dirt. Then apply a ph-neutral foam, let it work for a few minutes before you continue.
2) Pressure wash the car, remove the foam.
3) Use one bucket with soap and a microfiber mitt. Clean the wheels and tires. You can use a more aggressive cleaner on the tires as long as you're careful. You can use a tire brush. When done do not reuse the bucket. Do not reuse the mitts or towels you used.
4) Get two more buckets. One bucket is a rinse bucket, one bucket has soap and water in it. Both buckets should have a dirt trap in the bottom. Also, only ph-neutral soap. Don't use soap with wax or other gunk in it. Just soap.
5) Use a fresh microfiber mitt. Get it soaped up. Start at the top of the car, apply in long smooth strokes. Never ever scrub. Never ever do circles. When wiping, rotate the mitt so a new clean portion of the mitt touches the car as you go. When you've done a pass, rinse off the mitt in the rinse bucket. Get it clean. Go back to the clean soap bucket, get more soap. Continue.
6) When your microfiber mitt gets dirty, toss it in the rinse bucket and get a fresh one. You do not want to put dirt back on the car. You should also be visually checking the mitt for dirt or debris, since scraping that back across your paint will damage it.
7) When the final wash is done, pressure wash the car and remove the last of the soap.
8) Use large microfiber drying towels to dry the car, using smooth light strokes. Do not scrub, do not do circles. If you have a low-power leaf blower you can blow dry the car first before using the drying towels. When a towel gets wet, set it aside and get a new one.
9) Open the doors, the hood, and the trunk. Use smaller microfiber towels to get all the water that got inside the frame. Water gets everywhere, and you don't want pools of water continually sitting in your car.

The next steps would be your sealant treatment of choice. Bonus points if you have a ceramic coat instead. Extra bonus points if you have a professional ceramic coat instead of a consumer-grade coat.

Then clean your microfiber towels and mitts in the laundry. Do not use aggressive soap. Use a gentle clean cycle. Do not use aggressive heat on the wash or dry cycle or you will damage the towels.

If you are willing to invest a little time and effort, you can keep your car from getting the dulled and scratched paint that you see on everyone else's cars.

Foam is nice but isnt necessary. I dont see anything wrong with what he said though? except the squeegee part. But your method is the way I do my cars.
Washing your paint in the sunlight is a big no no as water drys up and leaves water spots. You can get around this by keeping the car soaked and use de-ionized water.

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[Holmes]

I don't know how to wash a car properly. I watched a lot of videos, please help me with some feedback. I did take the car to drive through car wash and it f*cked up the paint a bit..didn't know this was bad. One $60K+ car later, I'm trying hard to learn about paint care.
Here is a link to the video:
Any feedback will be helpful, thank you in advance.

As another follow-up, you will get tons of different opinions on how to wash your car. A lot depends on the space and resources you have available. If you live in a house with your own driveway and no water restrictions, plus have some money for a pressure washer, water deionization system, and a nice budget to buy supplies from Griot’s or Chemical Guys then, you can have a nice setup at home. When I wash my cars, it’s more for the pleasure of doing the job. Probably takes me an hour or two per car to go over everything inside and out. Would be much more effective to go down to the local auto spa. But if you live in an apartment or have water restrictions, you are more limited with what you can effectively do, comparibly speaking. If this is your situation, probably best to take the car to Sparkles or Ventura West, Catus Carwash (or similar) and pay $25 (or whatever) to have the pros wash the car for you. BTW, the black car looks great but you didn’t do yourself any favors. It’s a very tough color to keep looking clean and you really need the right tools and supplies for the job. Otherwise, IMO, you should take it to a auto spa style car cawash. Again IMO.

My setup at home I use:
Tons of microfiber not less than 20/80 or 30/70 blend.
Soap from Chemical Guys.
Speed shine from Griots Garage
Two buckets with grit guards.
Wax - I find that Carnuba works best on solid colors and Synthetic wax best on Metallic colors.
I have an in-house water deionization system for the garage so no worry of mineral spots.
Use a metrovac blower to air dry the car and blast out water from the wheels and other hard to dry areas.
Also have a separate front load washer and dryer in the garage just to wash my microfiber. The cold rinse water for the washer is connected to the deionization tanks so, the micro fiber towels and cloths are rinsed in soft water (pure H20). Probably 99% of folks wash their micro fiber with regular city or county water, which contains some percentage of desolved solids. When you dry your micro fiber, the minerals will harden and become imbedded in the microfiber. Think about it. If you leave city or county water on your car it will form spots from the minerals. Same thing happens inside your microfiber.

 

[Holmes]

I'm by no means an expert, but the key is to wash your car frequent enough so that the film/grime/contaminants are not "taller" than the lubricant/surfactant film (soap+water). Any particle larger than the film will scratch the surface, so long as it is harder than the clear coat (Which isn't very hard). So you can do whatever you need to, to get the large particles off without applying downward force (High pressure washer) or a foam cannon (Which doesn't get the particles off the car, but essentially is a heavier-duty surfactant which suspends it in a very thick film).

Here where the water is very hard (Crazy hard, over 20 gpg) if you use unsoftened water, you will get nasty calcium/magnesium spots that will not come off. You will also get that if you do a final rinse. Even if you do soften the water the TDS is so high that you still get spots, but they are much softer and wipe off relatively easily...If you have enough time.

Because of all of this, I use a "waterless" soap system. It does use water, but I can spend a buck and pickup a gallon of distilled water to make up my batch. Use about a dozen microfiber cloths. You can wash it in your garage so the sun doesn't evaporate the water as fast, and you don't get skin cancer standing around in the sun. The key is to keep the car wet, also, use the microfiber cloths liberally. They are cheap and washable, so buy yourself a 20 pack on Amazon and use all of them. This method only works good if you don't have much film on your car. If you do, then it's probably not the best thing to use.

I'm a hypocrite myself though, I have a bad back so I don't get out and wash it very much. 1 wash means 2 days of bad back pain. Because of that, I'm good at getting scratches out.

I second using a hard clear coat protectant. I'm old school and don't know as much about the newer formulations, but I use Meg's Synthetic Paint Sealant. It's cheap to buy a lot of it. Yeah, it probably means you need to do it more often though. Once the scratches are there, then you can play around with various compounds to try and eradicate them. A pro can use his/her eye and touch, and tell where to start, using the most aggressive needed and working their way down. For the average idiot like me, I start with the least aggressive and work my way up until something works, and then moves back backwards to finish it off. It takes more time and product to do it the idiot way, but it does work. I've found a simple cleaner wax works most of the time to get rid of extremely fine scratches that can only be seen under a light, when you look at a certain angle.

Agree with all you said. Nice write-up.

 

[CrashOverride]

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I seriously love your setup. Oh how I miss garages that were longer than 20 feet. I have 90psi cold (untreated), 55psi cold and hot treated (Charcoal filter and water softener). Previous owner of my house didn't run a softener, so my hot water heater is probably a honeycomb of calcium though. I'd rock a washer and dryers, but with 20' length, I don't have the room.

 

[Holmes]

I seriously love your setup. Oh how I miss garages that were longer than 20 feet. I have 90psi cold (untreated), 55psi cold and hot treated (Charcoal filter and water softener). Previous owner of my house didn't run a softener, so my hot water heater is probably a honeycomb of calcium though. I'd rock a washer and dryers, but with 20' length, I don't have the room.

Thanks! I appreciate your comments on my water treatment system. When I put that system in I also replaced the water heater in my garage. The water heater doesn’t run de-ionized water. But, the original was installed long ago, before I had the 5 micron particle filter and the carbon filter. So, it had some dirt / sand / mud, that got trapped in the bottom. Didn’t want that getting in my microfiber during the wash. The Porsche is gone so I have one bay free waiting for the Mustang which has a EDD of 1/29/2019. I really need to get in the garage and pressure / acid wash the floor and put down some concrete sealant to make it look nice. Didn’t realize how bad the floors looked until I saw the photos I posted. I wonder if I should go garage floor paint or use some type of vinyl tile. Any suggestions?

 

[Johnnybee]

I wonder if I should go garage floor paint or use some type of vinyl tile. Any suggestions?

Epoxy. And, as with many things, proper prep is 80%+ of the results.

 

[CrashOverride]

... I wonder if I should go garage floor paint or use some type of vinyl tile. Any suggestions?

When I bought my current house, I could see the square pattern of tile. I asked my neighbors about the house and they told me the guy that owned it before me had a Ferrari and he put in Italian porcelain tile (No joke). A few owners later, I can see where someone removed it, and then built a man cave (They were stupid and used the cement nails...we have post-tension slabs). It was all removed before I bought it. I ran 15amps for lighting, 20 amps for plugs, 15 amps for outdoor plugs and a 50amp 220 outlet. My house was not plumbed for a water softener so I had to get creative but I made it work. A plus is that I have a utility sink in my garage.

But getting back to your question, when I bought my first house, my buddy and I were going to epoxy the floor. I found a company that made (No joke) FDA-cleared food grade epoxy...Much better than the regular stuff. My buddy bought it for me as a housewarming present. I never got around to it because A. I'm lazy and B. It was "green" concrete. Now that I'm in the new place, I'd like to do epoxy, but the floor would need an awful lot of prep work because it's covered in paint, oil, etc...

I thought about vinyl tile, but it gets really hot here. 115 on a bad day. Add in the heat from the cars, and I'm fairly sure when I moved the car, I'd take the vinyl with me. That being said it would look awesome, and not cost a fortune. (In my head I see a checkered flag). I don't think a porcelain tile would be smart (Way to slippery). My dad painted his floor back in the 80's. Looked like crap and peeled away very quickly. If you didn't want to putz with the floor too much, they have that interlocking lego-style floor. Not cheap, but looks nice and pretty easy to do.

 

[Ebm]

Honestly, I've had good luck with waterless wash and wax systems. Get several microfiber towels with high GSM to trap the dirt in the towel. The wash and wax comes in a bottle. It's very high lubricity to avoid scratching paint and to leave a defense layer behind. The key is to wipe dirt with one part of the towel and then buff with the other part of the towel so you aren't wiping dirt against your car. Also, take strokes like you are mowing your yard. Do NOT do a Mr. Miyagi and wax on and wax off in circles!

I know a lot of people are skeptical about this cleaning and waxing method, but it really does work. My car beads up perfectly, although I'd rather my car sheet water instead of bead water because of potential water spots after the fact.

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