how do you do yours?

[firehawk]

Whilst washing ym car earlier, it got me wondering what sort of methods other people usually use. This could be a good debate aswell as allowing people to pic up tips for doing their own.

My usual method is, vac interior and clean inside windows if I need to do inside at all. I don't usually bother in winter because it doesn't take long to get filthy again. Doing the interior first means that the vacuum isn't sat anywhere near a big puddle of water.

Then I move on to the exterior. I soak the wheels, tyres, arches, windscreen and lower panels in TFR. I leave if for a couple of minutes whilst setting up the jet wash. I then rinse it all off. I then re-soak the wheels with TFR and scrub off brake dust etc with an old toothbrush. I then rinse them off again and go on to rinse down all the bodywork to get rid of the worst of the dirt. If it is really filthy, I then cover the whole car in TFR whilst the bodywork is still wet. Then it is on the spongeing down. I use the one bucket method. I start with the roof, then the windscreen and back screen. Then i do the bonnet. I then go round the car doing all the upper panels and windows first. I then go round and do all the lower panels. This is generally because the lower panels are usually the dirtiest so less risk of trapping grit in your sponge and damaging the higher paintwork. I tend to all scrub in straight lines instead of in circles. This hopefully helps to prevent swirl marks. I then rinse the whole car down. I have a rubber scraper which I use to dry the whole car down, again starting with the roof and working my way down.

If I am doing a proper job, I dress the tyres and plastics first. This is because any overspray can then be wiped off next which is when I polish the whole car. Lastly, I clean the exterior windows.

So, how do you wash yours?