FXM

Anyone have any reccomendations for the best car wash/polish for bathing your HHR? Also looking for a good fabric cleaner. Fortunately I have two wonderful golden retrievers, unfortunately they are most of the time wet and dirty.FX.

catzcradle

Someone convinced me to try Optimum "waterless" car wash. Now, it's technically, not waterless, but it doesn't require the use of a hose, just a couple buckets and about 3 gallons of water.

I didn't believe it, but was offered by the neighbor that if I didn't love it, he'd buy it, and polish the swirls out.

Uh, WoW is all I can say. Stuff is like magic dirt lifting juice. 2 caps in 2 gallons, and a rinse bucket. Wash a panel, and dry. no rinse, no fuss. Works wonders on chrome wheels also.

http://www.amazon.com/32oz-Optimum-R.../dp/B000E9TS6O

I'm ready to toss my old meg's shampoo. This allows me to wash in the garage. I use one bucket without grit guard for the wash, and a grit-guarded bucket for the rinse.

Fabric Cleaner. So far my favorite is Adams carpet and upholstry cleaner, though the Griots carpet cleaner seems to work just as good.

Polish, do you mean wax? or pre-wax polish? Hand or Machine?

I generally use a dual-action machine polisher, but for hand polishing the whole car, I've used Griot's fine hand polish and Adams Revive polish and both work well. For locally available, Meg's scratch-X for local scratches, and you can use Meg's show car glaze for hand polishing the entire car.

If you want something simpler, Meg's cleaner wax does a pretty good job.

For the last coat, depends on how often you want to wax or seal. If you wax every 2-3 months, of everything I've tried, I prefer meguiars NXT Tech Wax 2.0 Super easy on/off, really slick. If you prefer less often & less steps, I've found nothing better than Griot's one-step sealant. It polishes and seals the paint, and is good for "up to a year" though I'd go every 6 months.

web-stores


http://www.griotsgarage.com

http://www.adamspolishes.com

http://www.meguiars.com/estore/

Best advice that I've been given is to find something you like, and use it often. This came from the Meguiars class I took last year.

dandhcomputers

Turtle Wax Car Wash

rommer

Dri Wash Solutions Classic Car Wash, no if's, ands or buts!

Totally waterless, washes, seals and protects in one easy step. Spray on wipe with a cloth and then remove any remaining haze with another clean terry cloth. No swirl marks, no water spots and it looks like you spent hours washing, drying, waxing and detailing your car!

Was turned on to this a few months ago and I now use it on my cars, boat, inside and out as well as around the house.

Incredible stuff which you have to see to believe. Only catch is you need to use their applicator bottle for proper results but that's cheap.

I am NOT a distributor of this stuff, but I should be considering how many people have bought the stuff after seeing me use it, and here is a link to the product. http://www.driwashsolutions.com/cata...products_id=29

Chevy SS

+1 for Griots

doogal123

Ok, this is going to sound like a commercial for Adams Polishes, but here it is, because this is what I use...

For car wash I use a Foamaster foam gun (goes on the hose) with Adams Car shampoo in the container, and a 2 bucket/grit guard system and 2 Adams wash pads.

Rinse off the HHR, then foam the HHR down, let sit 3 minutes (no worry, Adams Car shampoo won't hurt the finish if it dries), rinse, foam again, and then (without waiting, wash the upper half with one wash pad (scrub pad on each grit guard in each bucket after a couple of wipes with the pad on your paint) and then switch to the the 'lower' pad on the 'mid-door-and-lower' area of the HHR. Rinse and water pool the surface, then mist with Adams Detail spray and dry with Adams White waffle weave drying towel. Check out junkman2008 videos on youtube to see how this works. (it does!). The car will be very clean afterwards, and the finish will look great. The idea is to not create swirls on the finish while you wash.

I didn't believe it until I tried it, but the Foamaster foam gun really gets a lot of the gunk free of the finish before a wash pad ever touches the surface. My HHR is black, so anything I can do to minimize creating swirls is used. I live near the beach, and sometimes the wind puts a fine bit of grit on the paint, and just rinse, foam, rinse process removes about 90% of the grit before I ever touch the paint. (Yeah I was surprised)

For a car finish I use Adams Americana Paste wax (goes on and off super easy and quick) over Adam's Machine Super Wax (paint sealant, applied with a Porter Cable 7424 - sealant lasts for about 5-6 months on my lives-outside DD).

Fabric cleaner - Adams Carpet and Upholstery Cleaner - no soap residue to attract dirt, and it takes out all kinds of stuff (like chocolate fingerprints on my HHR light gray headliner! .. don't ask).

briand

Adams has a set of videos on their site that explains the process as well. I haven't decided if I'm going to try their products yet, and the videos are obviously marketing pieces to help sell Adams products, but they are something you can see to learn a bit more about them.

http://detailersdomain.wordpress.com...l-videos-2009/

I have had success with the one Griots product I've used and its the only product that is consistently on my car care buggy in the garage. :)

Bilcar

JaxWax is great stuff!! Need to buy online. Works for me and they sell everything you could want.

briand

Good ole ONR as the kids in the detail forums (autotopia being one) refer to it. Its a No Rinse wash. Demos that I have seen of ONR show it being used as catzcradle described but without the rinse step. The ONR wash bucket has two sponges (one for the top 2/3 of the car and a second for the bottom 1/3) and then drying towels. The person demoing ONR wiped the car with the sponge then dried the section of the vehicle with a drying towel.

Now it was a video on the Internets so it may or may not be true. :)

urbexHHR

Wow, this whole thread is like advertisements....

I use Meijer brand car wash because it's cheap. For wax, Meguires is good...but I'll try others.