# Let's talk about touchless washing



## Prestige car care shop (Mar 29, 2014)

Hello Detailing world members 

Happy new year. 

So iv been playing around with a system for a while now on a coated surface and i wanted to see if you guys have come across a process & a system that has provided a complete touchless wash approach. or your views on this subject in general and if its possible for maintaining a coated vehicle with this concept.

Now am aware we may all have a different view on this so here is my thought process. Now to keep the subject on course this i purely for coated vehicles. The reason being is most coatings will last well over 2 years, the protection provided should be hardcore enough to take a bashing from the elements as well as the chemicals we clean the surfaces with. Not only that, being that it's a coating, logically it should be easier to clean & maintain.

So the main reason we are coating a car is to lock in the corrected finish below. Every time we wash a car we will inflict damage to this finish with contact from washing/drying in some way shape or form. After investing time and money into a full correction & coating we really want to keep this standard of finish for at least 1 to 2 years. So what if we have a process and a set of chemicals to eliminate as much of or if not all contact. 

Now the problems we face are...(add to the list if you see a potential problem) 

1. Finding chemicals that will remove all the day to day dirt & grim without needing to use a wash medium or have physical contact on the paint. 

2. A process that can be replicated and added to if needed (for example adding in a stage to remove tar spots)

3. Drying ( forced air drying would be ideal imho) 

4. Adding more protection/ topper to the coating 


These for me where the main focus points when testing & playing around with the concept. 


Lets talk :thumb:


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## noorth (Jul 10, 2019)

Very interested in this has well.

Going forward i was planning to get a solid 2 year coating like Kamikaze Miyabi Coat or Carpro.

However, i only want it to last 12-14mths - so my intention is to use more harsh chemicals for my washes, especially after 400 or 500 kms of highway driving. And to be frank i don't enjoying washing my car very much.  I love machine polishing and applying LSP's!

I recently went through a touchless car wash that advertised "heavy duty soap". It cleaned my car VERY well. After i was under the blowers for a minute or so i pulled in the parking lot and used tacsystems aqua waterless has a drying aid. The car looked like i just waxed it! I don't have a full blown coating, i have cosmic V2 from Polish Angel.


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## Prestige car care shop (Mar 29, 2014)

noorth said:


> Very interested in this has well.
> 
> Going forward i was planning to get a solid 2 year coating like Kamikaze Miyabi Coat or Carpro.
> 
> ...


This is pretty much my view as far as the length i want the coating on my car for because i will want if off for something different etc

So you hit the nail on the head with using harsher chemicals because for me the life of the coating isn't the major point for me. The main concern when testing was not to cause issues with the finish of the coating. I have a rinse on rinse off protection product which would add back protection property's, again without touching the car.


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## HEADPHONES (Jan 1, 2008)

Here's my experience with touchless washes
https://www.350z-uk.com/topic/125658-todays-touchless-wash/


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## noorth (Jul 10, 2019)

HEADPHONES said:


> Here's my experience with touchless washes
> https://www.350z-uk.com/topic/125658-todays-touchless-wash/


Nice! Took a quick look. I will be looking at it more later.

I'm actually very intrigued about touchless washes especially since i went through the touchless car wash last week.

If i lived near this touchless car wash i don't think i would clean my car by hand very often.


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## atbalfour (Aug 11, 2019)

Nice theory but sadly don't believe it's possible.

Coatings need to be unclogged to perform anywhere near their full capacity. Mechanical washing is in my view a key component in doing so - otherwise you lose the self cleaning properties, for me the coatings biggest benefit. 

Plastering a 95% clean surface with layers of cheap spray on protection will keep beading topped up but likely reduce gloss (4+1 doesn't equal 5 when it comes to LSPs, more like 2) and coat the residual 5% of dirt and embedded contamination making it a PITA to subsequently remove with chemicals. I've tested this, take a really contaminated panel, put three costs of a semi chemical resistant LSP on it and an iron remover will do very little to remove the contamination buried beneath. 

Coatings are sold as bulletproof armours and crazily chemical resistant but if you look closely they nearly all have listed pH tolerances of 3- 10/12. You'd need strong alkaline, perhaps even caustic chemicals to remove all dirt in a touchless manner, therefore the trade off will be chemically eroding the coating and its hydrophobicity, gloss and self cleaning in exchange for a swirl free wash regime. 

There will be some that dispute the fact that strong chemicals capable of touchless cleaning will erode even the longest lasting coatings when used above manufacturers dilution guidelines on a repeat basis - there is a reason YouTube channels including car craft use strong cleaners, APCs when trying to accelerate coating degradation in testing.. because such chemicals do greatly accelerate wear. 

Interesting topic and interested to hear others thoughts too. 

Sent from my LYA-L09 using Tapatalk


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## noorth (Jul 10, 2019)

> [Plastering a 95% clean surface with layers of cheap spray on protection will keep beading topped up but likely reduce gloss (4+1 doesn't equal 5 when it comes to LSPs, more like 2) and coat the residual 5% of dirt and embedded contamination making it a PITA to subsequently remove with chemicals. I've tested this, take a really contaminated panel, put three costs of a semi chemical resistant LSP on it and an iron remover will do very little to remove the contamination buried beneath.


besides the fact that i have yet to see iron removers do much of anything on paint work.

what does this even mean...?



> Plastering a 95% clean surface with layers of cheap spray on protection will keep beading topped up but likely reduce gloss (4+1 doesn't equal 5 when it comes to LSPs, more like 2)


man you overthink this stuff.

Do you have an instrument to measure a coatings "full capacity".

I know my personal full of syit meter is tingling.


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## grunty-motor (Aug 11, 2016)

Very interesting topic and something i have been "playing" about with a little. Not had a great deal of success on a dirty car - I get about 95% and then end up going over with a mitt:lol:

I comnemplated doing 2Contactless to every 1Contact wash, but it as the drying part that got me. If i used a towel to dry then there would be the 5% on the towel afterwards. If i used just filtered water and put it in the garage it still looked like water spots. I think it is dust - back lane where i wash is dirt, not tarmac. I have a cheap cordless leaf blower that doesnt blow dry the car......maybe that is the stage i need to invest in - a proper forced air unit.

I'll watch this thread with interest


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## atbalfour (Aug 11, 2019)

noorth said:


> besides the fact that i have yet to see iron removers do much of anything on paint work.
> 
> what does this even mean...?
> 
> ...


While written late at night on a mobile and by no means perfectly I do think it makes sense. There are some detailing for beginners videos on YouTube which may be more up your street.

Its not rocket science, if you apply a coating, let it cure and wash it 2 weeks later that is full capacity, as good as it's going to get. While every product's performance will fade to a degree, a coating should and can retain a good level for far longer.

If it becomes less slick (some coatings are), loses ability to bead or you see a reduction in gloss then those would be characteristics that show a clogged or weakened coating to some degree though in majority of cases it's still there. It's personal preference whether you buy a coating for its underlying scratch resistance protection (I no longer buy into that) or visual and self cleaning performance. If its the latter then not cleaning it fully, hitting it with strong chemicals, leaving a chance of dirt build up then sandwiching that between layers of cheap spray protection, don't expect it to maintain the characteristics or capability of the coating you've paid money and spent time to install.

I'm not going to respond directly to your other comment, thankfully there's an ignore list and if you think I'm full of sh*t then you should use it.

Sent from my LYA-L09 using Tapatalk


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## Itstony (Jan 19, 2018)

*atblafour*
With you on that, no panacea for this at all. 
For a daily car the nearest, easiest plus effective way I found was with the KC products, Decon Vb diluted, Nanomagic shampoo. Using Pw diluted through the foam lance and rinse off repeating the Pw stage every third wash. As near as touch-less goes, truly excellent gloss and slick. Convenient, not cheap and not exactly the direction most of us are looking for. 
Horses for courses.


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## roscopervis (Aug 22, 2006)

atbalfour said:


> Nice theory but sadly don't believe it's possible.
> 
> Coatings need to be unclogged to perform anywhere near their full capacity. Mechanical washing is in my view a key component in doing so - otherwise you lose the self cleaning properties, for me the coatings biggest benefit.
> 
> ...


After a lot of experimentation over the last year with different concoctions on a freshly coated car, looking at different coatings and their chemical resistance, leaving the car get very dirty, trying different toppers and checking their chemical resistance etc, I tend to agree with Adam here.

The coating I have been basing this on has been Feynlab Ceramic (v1) and Topcoat on top. Not the most well known coating brand, but they have been pioneers and have a long history in the business. It isn't the most hydrophobic pairing, but it is hydrophobic and it doesn't over the best self cleaning, but it is ok at this. It does have a very specific look, like Zaino - very candy pop which I like. I've used several QD's, rinse sealants and sealants as toppers (in a specific area on the car) to see how they went also.

Anyway, I have used touchless washes for a long time before this coating, mainly to keep the cars looking half decent and to get the salt off in winter. It has typically been Autofoam at 4% applied at the petrol station jetwash, with some dedicated non fallout wheel cleaner on the wheels. During my experiments, I have tried Autofoam up to 9%, included Surfex up to 5% with Autofoam at 4%, used a wheel cleaning fallout remover on the paint and a few other things too. What did I learn?

No.1 - If you want to avoid swirls, don't touch the car. It's better to do an ineffective touchless wash to get rid of the salt etc, but leave it looking dirty than to do a half baked job to do a touch wash to the car badly.

No. 2 - Nothing can get rid of the worst traffic film, especially the stuff you get in winter, it sticks, no matter what you use. That means you'll always need to do a contact wash at some point, depending on how fussy you are.

No. 3 - Contamination builds up quickly, whether it be from hard water, tree pollen/sap, fall out etc. That means that Adam is very right in saying topping coatings frequently when you have this stuff on the paint already firstly doesn't allow for the coating to show how well it's doing and secondly traps this contamination in layers of protectants. If applied frequently (and if they are pretty durable themselves as is most often the case), they just get built up in a stratigraphy of contamination in the protection which, because of its durability, becomes harder to remove. In turn, this can lead many to think the coating is doing worse than it actually is. Even the strongest alkaline cleaners don't remove these contaminants so if you want to maintain your coating, you should lightly decontaminate your coating once every 2-3 months depending on mileage and let the coating do the work.

I have developed a quick and I think safe way to wash may car at the petrol station jet wash, but it does require several mitts, a waterless wash product, a wheel brush and 2 pump sprayers/foamers plus some Fse if I'm feeling time rich.


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