Well with the seemingly inevitable impending summer of water shortages and those curtain twitching do gooder neighbours who will be all too willing to shop you if you use a hose pipe to clean your car, Or you live in a flat or have a parking space away from your house or accommodation and no outside tap or garden hose. Or you want to clean your car before it goes on a stand at one of the Many Summer Fiat car shows.... I think i have discovered a possible solution....... you can clean your car body work with as little as 10 litres of water (plus 500-1000ml in a pre spray form)
A Product called Opimum No Rinse (ONR for short) seems to be getting rave reviews on many of the Car care websites....
http://www.optimumcarcare.com/onrwns.php
Its some smart chemicals which are designed to lift the dirt off the paint and encapsulate it then trap it so it cant marr your paintwork and give the car a nice shine ... Too good to be true surely
First up what you will need to do this seemingly impossible too good to be true car wash... After all most will at least use a hose pipe and 2 buckets of water per wash others such as me a Pressure washer and foam lance to boot..
A bucket (preferably with a grit guard but not essential)
A Noodle wash mitt or Cellulose Tile Grouting sponge available from most DIY shops)....
A trigger or pump up sprayer
Some ONR concentrate
A few microfibre cloths or towels for drying / buffing
(i used some normal wheel cleaner and a brush and a watering can to do the wheels)
So first of all you need to do some mixing.... these amounts are intended for guidance only
I use 1 32 fluid oz bottle cap full (15ml) made up with 500ml of water for the pre spray (more on that later)
and 2 cap fulls (30ml into a bucket of 10l of water)
So you now have all the stuff mixed (as you can see you can easy drop 2x 5 ltr bottles of water in the car boot for a car show)
Anyway i digress.....
Now all you need is a dirty car...... And mine was filthy so bravely step forward and take the plunge you can see by the finger swipe how bad it was.....
First up mist the panel you intend to work on and overlapping panels with the ONR in the pump sprayer applying fairly liberally just to the point it begins to run off the car
AND IMPORTANTLY leave for 30 seconds to a minute for it to get to work and do its thing....
Now at this point on real dirty areas give it another spray and leave again... (rather use too much than not enough and cause damage)
then grab your wash mitt and load up with the solution in the bucket
and LIGHTLY VERY LIGHTLY!
pass the mitt over the surface and rinse out every couple of passes in the bucket rubbing the mitt or sponge against the grit guard if you have one before squeezing out the excess solution before returning to the car....
Once that area and a bit of the next panel is clean in this pic i have done the drivers door and a bit of the rear 1/4 panel
Buff it dry using a clean microfibre towel
leaving this.....
The stuff cleans that well i just used one micro fibre to dry the entire car off ... the one on the left is the one i used and the one on the right is an identical clean one soaked in water as you can see there was very little dirt picked up on the cloth and the bits that are on there are probably down more to bad technique and missing the odd bit
then as an addition you could use the ONR mix to clean the wheels (i'd use a separate mitt to avoid contaminating it with brake dust and metal filings) but i decided to give the trims a clean with wheel cleaner and rinse with a watering can
think the steps are fairly self explanatory
So there you are one clean car no evidence of swirl marks and including the wheels i used no more than 20 litres of water with minimal run off into the drains or water course (if your into hugging trees)
A Product called Opimum No Rinse (ONR for short) seems to be getting rave reviews on many of the Car care websites....
http://www.optimumcarcare.com/onrwns.php
Its some smart chemicals which are designed to lift the dirt off the paint and encapsulate it then trap it so it cant marr your paintwork and give the car a nice shine ... Too good to be true surely
First up what you will need to do this seemingly impossible too good to be true car wash... After all most will at least use a hose pipe and 2 buckets of water per wash others such as me a Pressure washer and foam lance to boot..
A bucket (preferably with a grit guard but not essential)
A Noodle wash mitt or Cellulose Tile Grouting sponge available from most DIY shops)....
A trigger or pump up sprayer
Some ONR concentrate
A few microfibre cloths or towels for drying / buffing
(i used some normal wheel cleaner and a brush and a watering can to do the wheels)
So first of all you need to do some mixing.... these amounts are intended for guidance only
I use 1 32 fluid oz bottle cap full (15ml) made up with 500ml of water for the pre spray (more on that later)
and 2 cap fulls (30ml into a bucket of 10l of water)
So you now have all the stuff mixed (as you can see you can easy drop 2x 5 ltr bottles of water in the car boot for a car show)
Anyway i digress.....
Now all you need is a dirty car...... And mine was filthy so bravely step forward and take the plunge you can see by the finger swipe how bad it was.....
First up mist the panel you intend to work on and overlapping panels with the ONR in the pump sprayer applying fairly liberally just to the point it begins to run off the car
AND IMPORTANTLY leave for 30 seconds to a minute for it to get to work and do its thing....
Now at this point on real dirty areas give it another spray and leave again... (rather use too much than not enough and cause damage)
then grab your wash mitt and load up with the solution in the bucket
and LIGHTLY VERY LIGHTLY!
pass the mitt over the surface and rinse out every couple of passes in the bucket rubbing the mitt or sponge against the grit guard if you have one before squeezing out the excess solution before returning to the car....
Once that area and a bit of the next panel is clean in this pic i have done the drivers door and a bit of the rear 1/4 panel
Buff it dry using a clean microfibre towel
leaving this.....
The stuff cleans that well i just used one micro fibre to dry the entire car off ... the one on the left is the one i used and the one on the right is an identical clean one soaked in water as you can see there was very little dirt picked up on the cloth and the bits that are on there are probably down more to bad technique and missing the odd bit
then as an addition you could use the ONR mix to clean the wheels (i'd use a separate mitt to avoid contaminating it with brake dust and metal filings) but i decided to give the trims a clean with wheel cleaner and rinse with a watering can
think the steps are fairly self explanatory
So there you are one clean car no evidence of swirl marks and including the wheels i used no more than 20 litres of water with minimal run off into the drains or water course (if your into hugging trees)
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