Tip: If you suspect that your vehicle has a special, unique paint job – one that might require special care to be taken when cleaning - be sure to consult your vehicle’s owner’s manual before you wash anything.
The Process
Have everything you need? Great. Now it’s time to get down to business. You’ll want to wash your car in a shady area, and you’ll also want the paint surface to be relatively cool before you begin. If there’s a great deal of heat, or worse, direct sunlight on your vehicle, you risk the soap drying onto the paint before you’re able to rinse it off, leaving noticeable streaks and soap residue. If you can easily hold your hand on the hood of your vehicle, then it’s not too hot to wash.
Run-off is another issue to keep in mind when positioning your vehicle before the wash. The run-off from your car wash contains soap, dirt, oil, and other pollutants that will go straight into rivers, lakes, and harbors if left to drain into the storm water system (i.e. into the street gutter). Storm water is not sent to a sewage treatment plant before being dumped into our waterways. If water on your driveway runs off into the street gutter, it’s best to park your car in the grass, that way the run-off will be soaked up in the lawn before it can reach the storm gutters. Though unlikely, the EPA can fine you for letting such run-off go into the storm drains.
Add the soap to your bucket of cool water. The amount of soap to use depends on the manufacturers recommendations, which should be printed on the label. The more soap you use, the more wax you’ll be taking off during the wash. You can use as little as half of the manufacturer’s recommendation and still get your car nice and clean.
Use a gentle spray of water to thoroughly wet the surface of the vehicle. Be gentle here, as a harsh spray could grate dirt across the paint surface and cause scratching. This light rinse should get most of the loose dirt off the vehicle.
Now, divide your car into five different sections: top, hood, trunk, right side, and left side. Working from the top, to the hood and the trunk, and then on to the sides, rewet, gently wash, and then rinse each section, finishing each one before moving on to the next. This top-down strategy ensures that run-off soap won’t end up on the already washed sections, and that no soap will dry onto the paint.