Car Wash Methods

What Manufacturers Recommend

Our system has been developed in conjunction with industry leaders who have decades of experience. The methods used at Shine Auto Wash are the same as those recommended in the Owner’s Manuals of the world’s most prestigious auto manufacturers including Porsche, Audi, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Chrysler, Ford, General Motors, Honda, Toyota and Mazda. They all recommend our car washing method because experience has proven it to be superior to all other methods.

Hand Washing: Cleaning your car… or just scratching the surface?

Many people believe the best and safest way to wash their car is by hand washing. But three comprehensive studies conducted by Mercedes-Benz, the Technological University of Munich (Germany) and the University of Texas showed automatic car washing to be far superior to hand washing for preserving automotive finishes.

The “Sandpaper Effect” of Hand Washing

For the Mercedes-Benz testing, the cars were coated with a mixture of street dirt, oily water, and thawing salt residue to make the testing as realistic as possible. The 25 washes per vehicle were to simulate a normal year’s worth of regular car washing. Half the vehicles were washed by hand, and the other half of them were washed in automatic car washing facilities.

For the tests the scientists used electron microscopes able to record the density and depth of abrasions down to 0.27 of 1,000th of a millimeter. After the 25 hand washings on brand new identical Mercedes-Benz sedans with factory finish paint, microphotography revealed a ‘dense, crisscross pattern of scratches’ on the vehicle’s finish penetrating as far as 10% into the paint thickness. Under high magnification these scratches formed sandpaper patterns attributable to the action of tiny dirt particles trapped in the pores of rags and sponges used.

By comparison, the vehicles washed with automatic car washing equipment revealed paint surfaces that appeared different. Compared with the hand washed surfaces, these were remarkably smooth, with very fine markings virtually parallel and uniform, less than .0003mm, the result of evenly moving wash materials. The machine-washed surfaces were in very good condition after the completion of the 25 washes.

Testing conducted by the University of Texas Construction Research Center confirmed these findings. In their ‘Reflective Retention’, it was demonstrated that automatic washing methods retain 300% to 700% more of the factory paint’s original lustre than by hand washing, which severely degraded the shine.

“Touchless” vs Shine’s Wash Technology

Even though “touchless” facilities boast a softer clean they are using harsh detergents and/or dangerous acids on your car’s clear-coat paint finish. In fact, the only way these touchless washes can remove road grime is by using these substances in conjunction with blasts of extremely high-pressure water. This can actually do more harm than good for your car’s finish by stripping away a valuable molecular layer of protectants from paint and wheels. It can also damage window seals and cause an etching effect in your vehicle’s glass.

At Shine Auto Wash we use calibrated water pressure, non-acidic, non-corrosive, non-caustic shampoos and cleaning agents that are specifically engineered to clean the surface of your car safely and effectively. We team these with the gentlest and most effective state-of-the-art (light and soft ) closed-cell foam cleaning material (that doesn’t hold any dirt or even water) specifically designed to effectively and safely lift dirt away from your cars finish; bringing out the best your car’s appearance.

The Perfect Chemistry

UV rays, leaf stains, tree sap, bug splatter and bird droppings: they can eat through the micro-thin layer of factory-applied “clearcoat” that gives new vehicles their showroom shine.