Read these first:-
(There are plenty of sport rims out there with different designs and size but which one of it makes it easier for the owner to clean & wash the rims. The sport rim designer may have missed this critical aspect when designing the sport rims. I have no complains about the sport rims that came with the car – it looks great but too many curves & lines makes it difficult for a good wash. http://kereta.info)
It has been months since I last visited a car wash by the road side – not that I don’t have the time for it but rather my heart sinks thousand feet down whenever the guys at the car wash put an ample amount of the “snow wash” on my car. That is because I know for a fact that the guys uses the normal household detergents for their snow wash and normal household detergents causes rust if it is not washed properly (which is why they often wash down quickly after their snow wash).
These days, I wash my car (and sometimes my wife’s car when it becomes too dirty) myself once every 2 weeks. P.s. I have never been into a professional car wash that cost a bomb for obvious reasons.
Further no matter how close you know the guys at the car wash, they do tend to leave out a spot here and there especially on the sport rims. For me, sport rim on the car is the main thing in the car that will indicate how clean the car really is and thus I am very particular about it. For me, it must be spotlessly clean.
The guys at the car wash only come back to clean after I had pointed that to them but still, the job is done on a half-past six basis. Well,, I don’t blame the guys – there are too many cars waiting to be washed and we are not paying a lot for the service (what do you expect for RM8?).
Further, although nothing beats a good jog around the taman (ha ha, it is rather a walk than jog) or a rigorous badminton session with my son (where I pick the shuttlecock from the ground more often), washing the car myself has become another good way to sweat it out. I also know that I use much less water than those jet-sprayed water cannon at the car wash – so I consider it as another “environmental saving” in my books.
Learning the lessons from the car wash, I make sure to use a proper car shampoo that is anti-rust and combines washing and waxing in one solution. And that takes care of the wash and shine on the main body and no matter how much shampoo I use (I don’t use much, just one cap full usually do for one time washing), I know that it will not cause rust in hidden places.
I tackle the sport rims last since I need to spent plenty of time on it. And I have seen some beauty on the road with really “sparkling” sport rims in morning when I head to office and I know the owner must spent considerable time and money taking care of the car. That is why I had kept pushing for the guys at the car wash to ensure the sport rims to be spotlessly clean but to no avail.
But now I decided to handle that myself – for washing and cleaning the sport rims, over the months, I have developed a special tactics to ensure that the sport rims is spotless and shiny like brand new. First thing is a soft brush to clean the edges and then I used my old used tooth brush for the hard to reach spots.
This is hard work and by the time I finished with all 4 rims, I am sweating like hell. Once this is done, I use soft cloth to clean the whole rim and plenty of water to clean off the shampoo & the dirt off and ensure the rim is clean and shiny. The last piece of “equipment” that I used to ensure no bad spot left is my fingers. I wet my fingers and run through the rim one last round.
You cannot get these kind of detailed work from the guys at the car wash for RM8. Once all these done, only then I am confident that the sport rims is indeed clean and looks brand new and this “clean, new” look will last for 2 weeks until the next car wash.
Oh, and there is another reason why I rather wash the car myself, if I have a choice. It gives me the opportunity to check on the condition of the bodywork especially if there has been rocks flying when I had drive past an overladen construction truck and the condition of the tires & sport rims (this is how I found a small crack on my wife’s car sport rims).
If I had left it to the car wash guys to take of washing, I would not have taken the time to check on these places – I know most of us don’t check either.