h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

>Unless you feel that the extra drag from the dirt is affecting your fuel economy.<

Your economy might be affected when you start having to pay for rust damage to be repaired though.

Keeping the paintwork and the wheel arches and stuff is pretty important for delaying this.

keeping them clean that is

although if you did remove the wheel arches it would stop them rusting, it has to be said

I can recall an early lesson in car ownership.

Don't clean, wax and polish your car and then leave it underneath a tree.

All that hard work

similar to my lesson about not parking next to brambles or other berry beary plants - not nice on the paintwork!

"Your economy might be affected when you start having to pay for rust damage to be repaired though. Keeping the paintwork and the wheel arches and stuff is pretty important for delaying this."

I didn't wash my last car for 5+ years. There wasn't a speck of rust anywhere on the bodywork. It was always parked outside.

Ooookaaay - this all depends on how fussy you are. If you're not fussy about your paintwork, swill it down with cheapo car shampoo and a sponge, hose it off, job done. Your car will be clean, if it's reasonably new it will probably be shiny. If you don't want watermarks on it, dry it off with a chamois. The paintwork will eventually deteriorate, and you may notice swirly micro scratches appearing in it, but to be honest it will look okay and most people are happy with that.

However, some people are not happy with that, and if you are really fussy about your paintwork I recommend the following.

Get the car wet with a hose - no need for any jet attachments.
Equip yourself with TWO buckets, one containing clean water, the other with a good quality car shampoo at the recommended dilution. Avoid wash n wax formulations, they can leave your windows slimy - stick to a shampoo only.

Wash the car from the top down, using a lambswool mitt or a microfibre cloth, not a sponge (risk of grit particles getting caught in a sponge scratching the paintwork.) Rinse mitt/cloth regularly in the clean water, and change the rinse water at least once.

Once you get down to the mucky bits on the bottom half, refill both your buckets.

Rinse the car thoroughly with the hose. Now is the time to open all the doors and do round the edge of the door frames, etc.

You can do the wheels with a brush - use fresh water again, and use a specialist cleaner if you've got alloys.

Once you've done all that, dry the car off with a microfibre drying towel, or a waffle weave drying towel - I personally prefer not to use a chamois.

Now you've got it dry, apply a high quality car polish, and a hydrophobic rain-repellent screen treatment to the windows.

I'm not going to suggest tyre black, wouldn't want anybody thinking I'm obsessive or anything.

If anybody still has chrome plated shiny bits I strongly recommend you don't use chrome polish - a window cleaner (the opaque suspension type) is less abrasive and better if you want your chrome to last, but I suspect the kind of people who have cars with chrome plated shiny bits are the kind of people who already know all this kind of stuff.

Well that's a comprehensive test of all cars then BBS, must be true for all then

To be fair, it's more important to clean the underneath of the car - to get grit, salt and stuff off but if you're not cleaning the top then you're unlikely to be doing that either.

Rust problems don't really hit for 5+ years either. But they're darn expensive when they do.

Can't you just drive through a puddle occasionally?

Risky - DH did that and we ended up needing a new engine ...

Mol

a puddle?

Well, you'd need a new puddle too, I guess.

aw, I wanna smiley!

Managed to tackle mine yesterday. By the time I'd rinsed off the dust, it was looking pretty clean & shiny again, but I did shampoo from the windows downwards & cleaned the windows. I have to stand on a stool to reach all of the windscreen

Fortunately, my jam jar is a smart fortwo, and takes no time at all to wash- when I can be bothered. On the plus side, whenever it goes into the garage they give it a courtesy valet. On the minus side, this seems to be occuring more and more regularly. Going into the garage, I mean.

Cleaning inside is more difficult, I mean, it's like the Tardis inside! I have yet to reach the bottom of the windscreen inside as my arms are normal size for the rest of my body, I swear it was designed with a baboon in mind.

They're certainly driven like that in my experience...