Car Maintainence

[CJ]

Ideally no car would ever see a sponge, dirty, scratchy, paint stripping, dirt clinging yokes!

OT MJ but what would you suggest instead?

[Dragonheart]

A lambswool washmitt, the dirt goes up in between the fibres of the mitt instead of being dragged around the surface of the car by the hard surface of the sponge. Its sponges that cause swirl marks on cars, think of how you wash a car, in a circular motion, hence the swirls being caused by dirt, dead flies, bird excrement, tar, etc being dragged around the car.

[holio]

Leather chamois be any good for washing or only for drying?
Iv only ever used a pressure washer and then the brush attachment (uber soft and not the foggiest what its made off) but saying that iv not actually washed any of my cars since middle of august.

[Dragonheart]

Chamois is only for drying, even at that its best to use a microfibre drying towel as the chamois, if not damp enough, can have hard edges and put light scratches on the surface of the paintwork.
Don't use those brush attachments, no matter how soft they seem they are still made of bristles, they put scratches on the paintwork too.

[Dragonheart]

Topic spilt from Seb's spotted thread....

[holio]

Sorry 101 questions.
Snow destroyed my paint on my old 3series. If its on a car would you be better off leaving it or brushing it off the roof and boot and bonnet before moving off.

[Dragonheart]

Best thing to do for a start is give the car a good winter preparation and protection before the cold sets in, thats putting a few good coats of a durable and hard wax on it, that will protect the paint firstly. Obviously after giving it a major clean, detar, even claying possibly.
When it does snow, or ice, whatever, best way to get rid of it is heat the car up, turn it on and leave the heaters work their magic, brush off the top layer of snow, so that you don't be driving with a few inches of snow on the roof, and let the rest fall off as it melts while you drive. If you can't wait in the mornings for the car to warm up, (though by rights its a good practice, hence the reason I installed a remote starter), then pour some lukewarm (NOT boiling or too hot) water over the car and this will start the melting and remove a good bit of it also.
You shouldn't scratch at it or scrape it off cause you're only removing very fine layers of lacquer with the blade, I don't even use those things on my windows, I have scratches on my driver's window from something like that (before I got it) and they look awful. Someday I'll need to give them an allmerciful polishing!
Another option of course is to cover the car once it starts to snow.