Detailer Vs Handwash

We will start off with the difference between the two.

Hand Wash

A hand wash is a convenient place to drive your car to and get it washed cheaply usually located in a disused petrol forecourt or bit of waste land next to a busy stretch of road, there are usually around 3-6 workers running around cleaning the cars, you'd pull into the property and be shown where to stop while one of the worker will spray your wheels with a cleaning chemical, this chemical will usually be brick acid (normally used for cleaning concrete) the reason this is used is the acid in the cleaner breaks down the brake dust and road grime on your wheels with minimum effort from any human input such as agitating the dirt so that the guys can just spray on leave to dwell and then rinse off with a pressure washer, your then moved on to the next stage where your whole car is sprayed with another chemical this is usually what’s called TFR (Traffic film remover) or commonly known as Truck wash which is a caustic chemical again sprayed on to minimise the need for human contact as a pre wash to remove most of the road grime prior to the hand wash. The hand wash is the next step this is done using a sponge or wash mitt that has been left in a bucket or drum of water with shampoo in for most of the day the water is commonly filthy and full of grit etc from all the cars that have been cleaned prior to yours, this is then spread all over your car to clean off what the TFR didn’t. The stages after this are a rinse down with a rinse aid and then leathered dry with a leather or microfibre drying towel that usually looks like its been dragged round on the floor for a week.

After this process you pay the guy at the end the £5-10 for their hard work and drive home on getting out the car you think the car looks great. Until later on and the sun is shining on your nice clean paint work to see what looks like spiderwebs all over the car these are called Swirl mark or wash marring which is cause by incorrect wash procedures such as the day old water used in the wash process above or the dirty drying towel. As well as this your nice chrome look sections around your windows, grill and roof bars are now covered in white rings and spots this is what’s called TFR burn cause by the harsh chemical etching its self into the delicate chrome trims. Then there is also the white bubbles now showing up on your dull looking alloy wheels where the wheel acid has not only stripped off the dirt but the shiny finish and also worked its way under the clear coat finish and started to lift it away where the alloy underneath is now corroding, its not only your wheels that are suffering its also your brake callipers, suspension, bushes, bearings and any other components around this area. So in all that £5-10 wash may end up costing your 100 times this in the future. 

A detailer is usually a one man band who is either mobile or unit based they will either come to your home address and work on your car or it is dropped off or collected and taken to a unit. In my case I am mobile so I would come to your home or work place after a discussion on the phone to what the needs are for the vehicle, the procedure to clean the car would be similar to the hand wash but with some important safe changes.

To start off the detail of the car it would be fully rinsed down with a pressure washer to remove any lose dirt or grim from the paint, wheels, tyres and under arches, then the wheels would be rinsed again and then have a non acidic wheel cleaner apply using a trigger spray bottle, this would be left to dwell for around 30 seconds and then agitated with a soft brush into all the nooks and crannies of the wheel and lug nuts etc making sure every part of the wheel is cleaned with the brush a long spoke brush will also be used to clean inside the barrel of the wheel, then an APC (all purpose cleaner) would be sprayed onto the tyres and they would be scrubbed with a stiff tyre brush to clean the rubber ready for a tyre dressing later on, after this the car would be rinsed down again and a PH neutral snow foam would be applied to the whole car and left to dwell for around 10minutes this works by softening the dirt and grim on the paintwork and encapsulating it in the foam while it slowly runs down the paintwork and off the car after the dwell time this is then rinsed off with a pressure washer. Then we get to the hand wash section which would be performed using a wash mitt but this time there would be two buckets one with water and shampoo and one with just straight clean water both buckets would have a grit guard to stop the wash mitt coming in contact with the grit and dirt at the bottom of the bucket, the procedure for this is to rinse the wash mitt in the clean water then dunk it in the wash bucket (one with shampoo) apply this to the car is straight lines a panel at a time after each panel you would rinse the mitt in the rinse bucket (straight water) and then dunk into the wash bucket, basically rinse and repeat until every panel has been cleaned with the mitt, the car would then be rinsed off again and then dried using a clean drying towel and sometimes a quick detailer as a drying aid to prevent any marring or swirl marks this whole wash procedure can easily take up to or over an hour to complete, the would then be inspected by the detailer and once the windows are cleaned and the tyres are dressed the customer would be shown the car to make sure they are happy with the results. 

The cost for a detail is considerably more than a hand wash but if you were to have the defected fixed that the hand wash had embedded into the paint it would far out weigh the cost of the detailer as they would need to be called to perform a full paint correction which can be hours if not days of work with an hourly rate to match the work. 

So when I am asked the question above I try to explain this to the customer or interested party in the easiest way possible I will add some photos of damage caused by hand washes and incorrect wash procedures and some of corrected paint after the damage has been rectified.

I hope this enlightens people to the risk of a hand wash and why they get bad press and in the detailing work nick names wash and scratch.