Ok, all I have right now is a laptop and my camera won't connect to it. This is an outside car: 24/7/365 with an average of 94 miles round trip to work. Except for the hood and the right front fender, the car is single-stage red Suzuki Aerio. It's not a beater, it's my primary car, I just don't get to clean it up in the winter, I don't have anywhere to take it and a coin-op only gets so much dirt off ... I don't use coin-ops for anything ... so the car was never cleaned since Oct.
First, I started with the rims and tires, using Simple Green a brush and an old mf for the rims. I know, I know Simple Green isn't the best choice, but my CC aluminum rims are already peeling and corroding ... how much more damage can *I* do? Then I rinsed off the car using a heavy spray. Some areas (front fenders before the tire, A-pillar and the tops of the doors) did sheet some, but it was slow. The horizontal surfaces looked dead, no beading or sheeting with the rinse off.
Using a new microfiber wash mitt and a mild solution of Deep Crystal car wash, I started on the roof. I could immediately feel the drag on the mitt almost as though I were rubbing it against a Velcro panel. Since it's cloudy and cool, I washed the entire driver's half of the car, switching to an older lamb's wool mitt for the lower half of the car. Unlike the mf mitt, the lamb's wool glided smoothly over the surface. Then I rinsed that side of the car with the heavy spray. There was no immediate sheeting or beading that I could see, but after watching for a few minutes, I noticed that the vertical panes of the car did kind of sheet, although VERY slowly. The hood, roof and trunk appeared dead. One weird thing: The A pillar, which runs over the windows and becomes the C pillar around the back window WAS beading the water. Not great, but it was noticeable and occurred fairly quick after the shower of water was moved away.
Then I went to the passenger side and repeated the process with nearly identical results. Again the A pillar was the odd one out and beaded water. I didn't dry the car I just walked around it watching the actions of the water The vertical panels were *sheeting* a little faster and there were now individual lines of water droplets going down the sides. The hood was full of flat, weak beads, but you could see a pattern of lines running from the top of the hood to the front edge. And the roof, which I had thought completely dead, was nearly dry with only a few areas of water droplets remaining.
I had to end my observations there because OF COURSE it started to rain ... heavily. But I did watch out of the window and saw the same pattern of very slow sheeting. When the rain stopped, I went back outside to discover that the majority of the water was no longer on the car, the car was covered in flat, weak water beads and the roof was nearly dry (with a fresh coat of wax, my roof will hold hundreds of water beads until I drive away or dry them off, it won't dry like that). At that time, I could have easily used some Ultimate Quik Detailer and finished drying off the car.
And of course it started raining again and I had to stop my observations.
What does this all mean? I have no idea. Is there a miniscule amount of wax left? Is the water reacting the way it was because the wax was gone, but the car was highly polished before it was waxed?
Now just for giggles, let's look at the appearance side of the coin. Once all of the stuck on dirt was removed, the car still looked really good, not perfect, there are some minor defects that need polished out and you could see that when the water was pooled on the paint, the color was a lot darker than the dry areas (it looks the same color wet OR dry after a good polish/wax). Of course this could just be a result of the ss paint fading over the winter, no surprise there.
Well, I hope you got something out of this ... what I got out of it is that my car needs some Ult Polish and some more Ult Wax SOON.
