How long do you guys spend on a basic wash?

Full exterior detail, incl. ONR, glass, wheels/tires, OCW takes me 2 hours tops. If I'm hand-applying a wax instead of using OCW, it's about 2.5 hours.



Wash alone takes about 45 min. but I pretty much never stop at that.
 
BMW335i said:
How many times do you guys rinse your mitt per panel? I just use one side of the mitt, then use the other side. I rinse in between panels. I pick up some suds from the wash bucket if I need some. Now that I think of it, I have no idea why I take four hours. I spend most of my time rinsing the car, rinsing the bucket (getting fresh wash water) and rinsing my mitt out (to minimize swirls). Rinsing the mitt 3-4 times per panel sounds like alot. I am still working on my technique so my time should go down by alot once I get more experienced. (This is literally my 7th or 8th time washing a car in my life). But I have improved drastically.
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Too much time wasted by replacing wash water and rinsing.

Don't rinse - soak the car in foam with the foam gun (do a thorough job) (does a better job than a rinse ever will), then rinse that off and then re soak the car and hand wash with two to three buckets and at least two mitts.

Use one side of mitt for top half of panel, other side for the rest. Then blast the crap out of the mitt with a trigger nozzle attached to the hose and then dunk in water bucket and let it sit



use the second mitt and then do as above, go back to first mitt.



By using three buckets, each side of the car is washed with it's own bucket full of wash solution or you can have two separate mitt cleaning buckets so the wash solution is kept that little bit cleaner.
 
fdizzle said:
to me, it seems like you are going to far out of your way to avoid swirils . . a good wash mit, proper prep and two buckets with a little extra attention to what your doing has been the primary cause of me not creating new swirils or marring when I wash the majority of cars I care for.
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Agreed. I think that I've improved my washing technique enough to know that I can wash a car pretty quickly without inducing marring (save for minor marring.)



By rinsing my wash mitt often, using sheepskin, two buckets, not scrubbing or going in circles I think I've reduced most of the wash incuded swirling that people come to know.



I lost patience doing my gfs ride today and went super quickly. You know what? It's clean..I wouldn't put it in a car show cause I didn't go the extra mile on the little details but it's winter, it's raining outside, and it's clean. If I have to spend that extra hour or two in the spring to take away any tiny marring I might have induced that beats spending four hours on one wash...especially since I do them weekly or biweekly.
 
I don't know how you could have the patience to simply wash a car for four hours. That's about how long it takes me to do a light detail job. I would say it takes me around 45mins or an hour to wash my cars.
 
I can wash and dry a car with QEW in about 45 mins - same time (but more water) for a normal two bucket wash. Add another 15 mins for dressings, and I'm done!



It is a Mini though, so it's not really a normal sized car...



--Tosh
 
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