I really do detest this time of year. Being a skier, it’s not really winter that does it, it’s winter in central Scotland. Cold, windy, wet and dark. Frosty, no problem. Snowing, sweet. Wet, windy and dull all the time, someone kill me.
Also, it’s a nightmare keeping the car clean. The roads are just grim; salt, grit, grime and all manner of other crap constantly being mixed with the rain and splattered all over the car. I’m coming to accept weekly washes are pretty much going to be required until, oh, June.
I don’t pretend to be a detailer, in fact, I’m only really just getting back in to washing my car after my E46. Towards the end, the cleaner it was the more you saw the rust creeping in and all the scars from the general public being clowns in car parks. So I largely didn’t bother, but I’m back to making an effort with the F32.
So here is today’s assembled arsenal:
Didn’t end up using half of it owing to the weather being true to form and having to alternate washing with hiding in the garage trying not to get washed away in the rain.
Car was last washed a couple of weeks ago so actually hasn’t faired too badly given the state of the roads.
Gave it an all over blast with the jet wash to start.
Just bought some Auto Finesse Iron Out to use on the wheels and decided to give the sides a dusting as well to see how much debris had landed on the sides. Also used Auto Finesse’s Citrus Power on the sides, front end and mirror caps since they pick up the most grime.
New Halfords special wheelbrush (lower) was really good, there’s not a lot of clearance between the MSport Plus callipers and the wheels but it got in there. Old Halfords wheel brush (top) really is crap, the wire bends with the faintest hint of pressure, only use it for the lip of the rim and the face of the spokes and it’ll be getting replaced for even those duties.
The Iron Out works brilliantly, the trigger bottle is terrible. It may sound daft but I genuinely don’t get how they expect you to use it. If you have the top of the bottle in the pad of your hand allowing 2 fingers on the trigger, you end up dousing your fingers. If you move your hand further down and use just the one, it rotates around as you squirt making it really awkward to control where the spray is going. It also really needs a fast finger on the trigger to get it to spray rather than squirt.
Pretty horrific amount of grime from just 2 wheels, change of rinse water for the other 2!
Slightly surprised at the debris on the sides, really didn’t think it would show up much. Still, blasted that and the Citrus Power off (also, great product but also a great spray bottle on that one) then rain stopped play for a bit.
Didn’t get any pics of the rest of the wash really due to having to dart about getting it done when weather permitted. The Karcher do-hicky isn’t bad for what it is (a tenner out of B&Q a while back) but it’s not really anything like a proper snow foam. The rain was kind enough to assist rinsing it off. Then it got a 2 bucket wash, I must invest in bigger buckets with grit guards.
Again, pretty horrific amount of muck despite the car not looking that bad from 10ft away
Rain and light conspired to bring things to an end at that point so hopefully the weather is half decent tomorrow morning for cleaning the windows inside, Rain-Xing the windows outside and giving the door shuts a once over.
I also need to invest some time in the tailpipes