Dish Soap or Offical Car Wash product?

[Duncan]

So my co-worker tells me she washes her brother's car with dish soap (she doesn't drive, but she's nice to her brother so she helps him wash his car). When she told me that, i apparently had a shocked look on my face. When she saw my shock, she goes "then what am i supposed to use?" i told her that there is such thing as actual car wash products to wash your car with. Funny how she didn't know because there's basically a special washing product for everything and anything from hair to toilets.

Anyways... i guess you know where i'm going with this. I've always thought that dish soap isn't a good product to use to wash your car because it's kinda designed to take anything and everything off of a surface. Which probably means it'll eat into your wax a lot quicker than normal car wash soap which means you have to wax your car more often. I doubt that the dish soap will eat into your clear coat and paint, if the wax is gone but who knows...

So being the google generation that we are, i checked to see what other opinions are on using dish soap to wash your car. if you pull up a dozen sites, you'd probably get a 50/50 mix with each side stating their reasons. "no way will dish soap harm your clear coat and wax" or "dish soap is too harsh and will strip your clear coat and wax" blah blah blah...

just wanted to get opinions on it. I know none of us probably use dish soap and will probably never use it, but what are your thoughts about when people actually do use dish soap to wash a car?

[jeSteR]

Easy answer... if you use a carnuba based wax (Mothers, Meguire's, Swissol, Zymol ) then dish soap is a big no no. As you said it'll eat away at the carnuba. But if you use a polymer based one (Zaino, Dr. G's Optimum GPS) then you can use dish soap before the first application, but after that there are much better products out there with less abrasives and more lubricants.

My personal preference are Zymol for carnuba (Lighter colour cars) and Zaino for polymer (Darker colour cars)

That being said, I haven't had the time to do $h!t on our cars for the last 5 years. They both look like crap.

[nature boy]

I never use dish soap, if i were to though, i'd dilute it so bad that there wouldn't be a point. Car wash soap isn't that expensive and it lasts forever.

[Duncan]

i just had an idea... i'm gonna go empty out nathan's car wash and replace it with dish soap and see if he notices the diff haha

[Duncan]

So i was talking to my coworker to see if she recently washed her brother's car with dish soap again, and she said she dug into his bucket of car products and he actually had car wash soap... go figure...

anyways, out of curiosity, considering she used dish soap to wash the car, i wondered what she did to dry the car. I asked her and she said she uses paper towels... lulz

oh man, dish soap isn't THAT bad, but using paper towels to dry the car!? might as well drag sand paper across the side of the door... good grief!

[se7entse7en]

Paper towels to dry your car? I don't even bother drying glasses. Air dry all the way!

[geForce]

[joel]

tell her to upgrade from paper towels to puff kleenix! if it's soft enough for your nose, imagine how gentle it is on your car!

[Duncan]

she's not pulling my leg... if you met her, you'd understand she's pretty ditzy when it comes to things like this... she's your stereotypical girl who has no clue about anything to do with cars...

she said to me "but i use the soft bounty paper towels though!" and i just laughed...

kleenex would probably rip lol...

[geForce]

So does she go through a whole roll of paper towels to dry one car?
I'm surprised she'd even bother drying the car... girls don't usually go through that kind of trouble for cars.

One time while we were doing a church fundraiser carwash, I was washing someone's rims and Marrian asked me why I'm washing the wheels... they're just going to get dirty again anyway. haha

[nature boy]

if she used paper towels on the windows, that'd be fine. i've used shop towels to spot try at times, but never the whole car. i also use shop towels to wipe down my door jams.

speaking of which, i noticed my father-in-law has a new fancy pressure washer parked right behind my car in the garage. i also noticed a new suspicious looking scratch along the back of my bumper.

[Duncan]

maybe you can use the pressure washer to buff out the scratch?

[nature boy]

sounds like a pretty good idea. i can't see anything going wrong with that. i'll try it.

[Duncan]

make sure you put the nozzle right up against the scratch so you get the full effect of the water pressure

[nature boy]

even better idea. i'll do it.