So the main cool thing to share is a bought an electric pressure washer and foam cannon.
What do I think? Well the pressure washer I picked is a 3000 PSI Greenworks “Pro” and I mostly like it, though it’s not ever going to be powerful enough to reach the top of a two story house or anything - don’t get one for to wash your house. I bought it for the car mostly, though it can definitely clean a driveway. Apparently it’s a bad idea to pressure wash a patio because you’ll strip any waterproof sealer and make holes in the surface that collect dirt. So yeah, just using it for the car + the driveway. And I don’t care a lot of the driveway, it will just be something to do.
The Foam Cannon works pretty well. This one is from Chemical Guys. Pretty much all the stuff I’m mentioning below is from them, which I’m not saying it’s an absolute endorsement, it was just simpler than trying to figure out what was the best stuff. I will share what I liked below, which was most everything. They are apparently made in the US so it’s not a bad choice. I also wanted to avoid a lot of the audiophile-level craziness that is keeping up with whatever people on Reddit think is the best version of every product from fifteen different brands and all of that.
Soap + Foam Cannon
Here’s my car:
I was expecting four inches of foam to sit on top and a suitable Foam Party rave environment but it was not to be. The soap here is “Sticky Snowball Ultra Snow Foam” and honestly I don’t totally love it because if you get it the concentrate on you before you get it on the car, it’s pretty sticky. It’s kind of red/pink, and I actually got some on my leg and assumed I cut myself with the pressure washer (I didn’t). I had to fill up the foam gun twice to cover the car. I’ll just use a different soap next time. I used a wash mitt to wash the car and sprayed it off using a 45 degree tip, keeping the gun at least a foot from the car - you want to be careful to not strip the paint off your car! I’m going to need to order a longer high-pressure water hose than what came with the pressure washer for sure.
Anyway, I think this worked and it meant a lot less chance of scratching the car putting soap on it by using a mitt to apply soap. (I previously owned a water-hose only foam gun but I have terrible water pressure, the upgrade was expensive but makes a difference)
Paint
This car is about 7 years old and has white non-metallic paint, so it’s not going to be super shiny even if I do an awesome job here. I decided to go into mostly overkill mode just to see what I could do.
Clay Bar + Lube - I’ve done this once before, basically just trying to get off any little rocks or bugs that would mess up the paint when I polish it. All clay bars are seemingly about the same so not much to say here. I hate the whole “Bug & Tar remover step” but I didn’t have many bugs so I could pretty much skip it. That may say something ecologically about there not being enough bugs, I remember that step taking ages many years before. Or maybe my last coat of wax was halfway decent.
Polish. I used “P4 Precision Paint Perfection Polish” with the “Hexforce” applicator pads. Everything by hand. I think it did ok, there were some reflections but not a lot of color in the reflections yet. Chemical Guys sells too many polishes so it was a bit confusing to find what I wanted, but I refuse to take my car to a brush-car wash and am pretty careful when washing, so there were not a lot of scratches to remove really.
Glaze. I’ve never done this before, but I used “Glossworkz Glaze” after polishing using a microfiber applicator pad. This did a bit more than the polish, but it wasn’t blowing me away since the polish did some of the work already. I think there was a bit more color in the reflections. It’s supposed to fill in holes in the paint and make things more even. If a car was in good shape, I could see skipping the polish and maybe using some of that “wax stripping” car soap instead, and then doing glaze instead of polish. It would be faster. Anyway, went on well and easy, so that’s good.
Sealing. Here I used “JetSeal Durable Sealant and Paint Protectant” which is apparently some polymer coating that should last maybe a year. This step may have improved the shine of the glaze part a bit. You’re also supposed to get some nice hydrophobic qualities that makes your car really easy to wash off, but are supposed to wax on top of sealing. This went on pretty well, though you have to let it sit for 12 hours before moving the car or doing any other steps.
Wax. I picked “HydroSlick HyperWax” which is kind of a blue gel apparently infused with Si02 Ceramic bits. After trying this, I definitely would not try to Ceramic Coat a car, because contrary to reviews, at least in the local heat and humidity, it goes on easy but takes a lot of buffing to remove possible smudges. This is also supposed to impart some very nice hydrophobic and anti-dirt properties, but I wonder how well it would bond to the JetSeal and maybe the JetSeal is why it was hard to buff off. This dries in like 2 minutes and then you have to wait maybe 3 hours before you drive it. If I did this again, I would change the final Wax.
Now that this is done, my goal is to keep it cleaner more often (because I have the Foam Cannon), use quick detailer after I wash it, and switch to some easy Spray Wax (?) that is easier to buff off every few months.
(Pictures at the end)
Glass
Glass isn’t highly exciting but got some great results here.
I tried to Windex things, that wasn’t working, and I used some Invisible Glass I had in the cabinet, which I actually don’t think works very well compared to Windex on a dirty car.
I had some Turtle Wax Chrome Polish left over, so I used that on the windows. It’s not mentioned that you can use this on glass, but I’ve done this decades ago, and now a lot of different Chrome Polishes are marketed for glass. This is a pain in the ass to do in the interior, but works fantastically well.
Once done, I finally used the Invisible Glass again before trying out Chemical Guys “Hydroview Ceramic Glass Cleaner and Coating”, which is more Si02 stuff, on the exterior. My hope is it is a better version of RainX, which tends to fog up glass sometimes. The car has not gotten wet yet, in case it has mogwai-like behaviors but I have high hopes.
Super clean glass now, w00t. Maybe it will stay clean. One can hope.
I didn’t use the Ceramic stuff on the inside since I wasn’t sure if it would fog up or anything.
Wheels
When washing the car I used Chemical Guys “Sticky Citrus Wheel Cleaner Gel” which I thought worked really well. I have tons of brake dust and it got most of it off. After using my wheel brush I washed everything off with the pressure washer.
I still had some brake dust, so I think I just used some more windex or whatever to get the rest off, because the next step I was really not wanting to glue any brake dust to my wheels.
The next step was “HydroSpin Wheel & Rim Ceramic Coating and Quick Detailer” which made things really nice and new looking. I am not sure how much the ceramic bits last but I’ve got some hopes they keep brake dust from sticking for a while. I then used “Clear Liquid Extreme Tire Shine” on the tires. I’m not sure this was required as the HydroSpin made them look pretty good, but I wasn’t sure it would stay slick looking or what.
A+ here IMHO. They look like new except for the spots where I’ve run into curbs and this was really easy.
Interior
I’m not done but so far so good.
Leather cleaner (worked fine I guess, didn’t want to use anything that would hurt the seats) and then the Chemical Guys Leather Conditioner (in the bottle, not the spray stuff). This last step was absolutely fantastic, leaving the seats looking like new and also a bit slippery.
I still have to do the dash and floor mats and actually vacuum but ah well. I’m going a bit overboard and getting separate stuff to clean those, the 1980s answer would be hose off and 409 the floor mats and armor all everything but … not going there.
Seats look better than new.
Overall
How did it go?
I think this was a success but this was a project that took almost 3 days. All by hand, which was a pretty good workout for those weird muscles between your shoulder blades that you never use.
I took this picture when it was really sunny out, so I don’t think it looks as shiny as it actually is, but it’s also not overwhelmingly shiny. I’d say this is because it’s an older car, it’s white, and it didn’t have metallic paint anyway.
In person it looks new, and that’s what I’m after. The wheels and leather were definitely the best parts (the above is also a not-great cell phone picture), and I like the foam cannon. I have strong hopes for the jet seal and the wax should help it stay clean, and I can get more into quick detail + easier wax mode (trying new wax), which may even make it a bit more shiny in the near future!
I’ve got a whole garage cabinet shelf of nice car supplies that I didn’t use up, so that’s not bad either!
As far as the Chemical Guys stuff goes, I would probably recommend everything except the Hyperwax, and the Hyperwax may possibly be more workable in a less humid/hot environment or not on top of the JetSeal. In all, a pretty good experience, even if I did take about twice as many steps as when I did this last time, which honestly was about 4 years ago. Most everybody seems to love it, so I think it’s mostly an environmental thing?
If you’ve got the space to store a pressure washer, the foam cannon is pretty cool, but if you have decent water pressure at your outside faucet (I don’t), a water hose foam gun will also get you 90% there without the fun of being able to wash off your car in seconds. The pressure washer for washing off the car and pre-washing is pretty awesome, though I also have ordered a few quick-connects for my standard garden hose for when I need to switch to a regular nozzle of filling up a bucket or whatever.
The End! Well… except for the dash, vacuuming, and those floor mats.