Car Care Guide
JR Automotive Aftercare Guide
Safe Washing Process & How to Best Maintain Your Vehicles Appearance
It is important to regularly wash and maintain your vehicle’s paintwork after paint correction and coating. We recommend the use of a pressure washer for all washing and rinsing duties, but a vehicle can also be rinsed with a hose pipe and spray nozzle attachment.
If you don’t own a pressure washer, instead of using snow foam in ‘Step 1’, instead apply Citrus pre-wash with a pump action spray bottle and thoroughly rinse the car with a hose pipe, paying special attention to the dirtier parts, to remove as much dirt and grit as possible. This will reduce the risk of scratching the paintwork when the contact wash ‘Step 3’ is completed.
Generally speaking, it is best to wash the paintwork when it is cool, as hot panels dry quickly causing streaking. Additionally, when the paint is hot it is softer, making it more prone to scratches or marks if contamination occurs during the washing or drying processes.
Step 1
Non Contact Pre-wash
Firstly, cover the car (preferably when the paintwork is dry) with a layer of the Snow Foam pre-wash product from Autobrite Direct called ‘Magifoam’. Alternatively, another pH-neutral pre-wash product of your choice can be used for this step, such as Citrus Pre-wash, linked below.
Using a pressure washer, spray the snow foam onto the car and leave it to dwell for 5-10 minutes to break down the road grime & remove large particles of dirt. If in direct sunlight, rinse the snow foam off before it heats up and dries on the paint.
Next, rinse the snow foam off with a pressure washer.
The kit linked below includes snow foam and a foam lance and you can choose the connector for your brand of power washer on the website:
MJJC Foam Cannon V3 & Bilt Hamber Touchless Snow foam
Alternative if no pressure washer is available, as mentioned above, use Citrus pre-wash
Please note, coating safe, pH neutral Snow Foam is recommended, Autobrite snow foam is our approved snow foam pre-wash. If you have queries of other brands of snow foam, please contact JR Automotive for advice.
Step 2
Wheels
Clean the wheels with a non-acidic wheel cleaner to remove the brake dust & dirt. Spray the product onto the wheels, avoiding the brake discs where possible, and use a wheel-specific brush such as the ‘EZ detail brush’ (linked below) to clean the wheel barrels and the valet pro detailing brush for the face of the wheel.
Once thoroughly cleaned, rinse the wheel with the hose or pressure washer before moving on to the next one.
Recommended Wheel Cleaning Products:
Wheel Cleaner;
Bilt Hamber Auto Wheel Cleaner
Alloy wheel brush;
Detailing brush for face of alloy wheel;
Step 3
Contact Wash
We recommend using two buckets for the wash process; one for holding the car shampoo and water, and the other with plain warm water to rinse the wash mitt between uses. Rinse the mitt, dunk it in the shampoo bucket and begin washing the panels one by one, starting with the roof.
We typically rinse the mitt in the rinse bucket after we have wiped half a panel, to minimise the risk of mitt contamination and hence scratching. After washing a half panel, dunk the mitt into the rinse bucket and then into the shampoo bucket. Wash the car from the top to the bottom, this reduces the likelihood of creating new scratches. We recommend leaving the very bottom sills, and bottom of the rear bumper, until after the rest of the car has been done. This is another step to ensure we are not dragging leftover mud, grit, etc from the more soiled areas of the car across the paintwork which could introduce marks.
Following the contact wash, rinse with a pressure washer or hose.
Recommended products:
Gtechniq G Wash Car Shampoo;
Microfiber wash mitt;
Wash bucket & grit guard;
Shampoo (wash), Rinse and wheels bucket set & two bucket set
Step 4
Dry
Once your vehicle is fully clean, spray a microfiber towel with AutoGlym Aqua wax until damp to the touch (for ceramic coated vehicles this can be replaced with Gtechniq’s product called ‘C2 V3’) Whilst the panels are still wet from rinsing, use the microfibre towel containing aqua wax (or C2V3) to remove water from each panel. Then immediately, using minimal pressure, buff the panel with a second dry microfiber towel to remove any waxy residue or misting. This second buff isn't always necessary, especially when a high quality drying towel is used.
The aquawax or C2V3 acts as a drying aid and also applies an additional wax layer on top of your paint coating to add further protection, longevity, and hydrophobic properties.
Wring out the microfibre towel when it becomes saturated and continue the process, one panel at a time. Once the towel has been wrung out, lightly apply more aquawax/C2V3 to the towel and move on to the next wet panel to be dried.
Gtechniq C2V3 Drying Aid & Sealant or Auto Glym Aqua Wax
Large Microfibre drying towel, to be used for the aqua wax application;
Microfibre Towels for C2 or Aqua wax application and other cleaning duties
For the next level safe drying process, using a touchless car dryer, such as the BigBoi Blowr Mini linked below, removes contact from the drying process. Typically we recommend this for coated vehicles.
As always, we are happy to answer any queries you may have so please let us know if we can help in any way to help you maintain your vehicle. Further product links can be found below.
Also, we offer various paint maintenance packages that offer the above (and more) depending on the vehicle, and coating, to be maintained.
Kind Regards,
Richard