How to Wash a Car with A Pressure Washer?

Want to improve your car’s appearance? Then it is required to wash your car regularly. The experts suggest washing your car or truck once every two weeks. From the many cleaning tool, an electric car pressure washer for car detailing may come in handy. Also, it is a faster and effective way to clean your car’s exterior. Basically, a pressure washer is very easy to carry, but you should read this blog properly if you’re new to it.

Here we’ll give you a brief idea about how you can wash your car really faster by using a pressure washer.

Why Should You Use a Pressure Washer?

The days of using sponge and detergent are long gone! On top of that, this process is time-consuming and requires more effort. It isn’t easy to allocate that much time from most of our busy schedules. So, pressure washing saves both time and effort for you. It is time for you to upgrade from a typical garden hose to a good pressure washer. The robust stream of water does a great job in breaking up stubborn dirt, road grime, tough soil, bird droppings, bugs. Pressure washing makes the whole cleaning process faster.

How to Clean a Car with a Pressure Washer: 5 Easy Steps

Pressure washing is always better than any other method of cleaning your car. It is a fast process and gives you the best results. Then again, it consumes less water. You may use car wash brush some time for regular cleaning work. But to get the best finish, you should use pressure washer, understand all the procedures first. So, let’s get started!

1. Placing the Car and Timing for Wash

Before starting, you need to place the car in a proper place. Try not to choose a location with loose pebbles. It may worsen things up. Sometimes a random burst of water can lift small stones off from the ground, and it may cause damage to the exterior. It is always better to do the cleaning process in the morning and afternoon time. This time has less amount of sunlight. If you have to clean during hot summer noon, you must place the vehicle under some shade or pick a place with shadow. Otherwise, you may face immediate drying of the water and cleaning agents, which is not good.

2. Rinse with Water

Unwind the water hose and electric cable. Now plug in the electric cord to the socket. Now you should start rinsing the surface with plain water. It is safe to use a 25 to 40-degree nozzle to avoid damage to the paint. This process will help to remove loose dirt and typical mud off from the exterior.

• Hold the nozzle on feet from the surface and start spraying in a top-to-bottom manner.
• Get closer to the tires if they are a bit grimy.
• Move a bit farther back and slow down the stream when spraying on the fragile elements like lights and view mirrors.

3. Apply Cleaning Agent

Now it’s time to soap it up the surface. The most pressure washer has a detergent tank in-built. Use a compatible cleaning agent for the surface of your car.

• Follow the user manual to fill in the cleaning agent
• Attach the tank nozzle to the end of the spray wand
• Cover the whole outer surface starting from the bottom
• Get close to the wheels if they contain stubborn dirt
• Once you finish covering up the exterior, let the soap sit for a few minutes. If soap dries out too early due to summer heat, try applying it multiple times

4. Rinse the Soap

Now you have to rinse the soap off from the surface. Follow these tips to rinse the detergent off your car successfully.

• Start spraying in a top to bottom manner. Point the stream towards the ground. It will let the soap flow downward
• Disconnect the detergent tank
• Keep the wand 3-4 feet apart from the surface
• Spray on the wheels by getting closer to remove excessive dirt

5. Time to Dry

If you want to dry the surface with a cloth, you should choose one that contains high-quality microfiber. The typical fabric has rough surfaces that may cause scratches to the paint

• Lay the microfiber cloth flat on the surface and slowly pull it toward you
• Repeat the process in each area until each portion is dry
• If the cloth soaks up, wring out the water and start again
• If you want to have a touch-free drying process, then you can consider using a leaf blower. For this, use the leaf blower on the high throttle

Precautions You Might Want to Consider

If you are well aware of the precautions, there will be no chance of damages. Now we will talk about the protection that you should follow to prevent any damage to the exterior.

1. Always try to read the manufactures user manual if you are using a pressure washer for the first time
2. Do not pressure wash the interior items
3. Keep the nozzle at a minimum safe distance to avoid damage to the surface
4. Do not keep the water stream at a single point for long
5. Decrease the stream speed at the fragile components of the exterior
6. Do not apply the stream in a bottom-to-top manner. The dirty water will drain down, and you will have to do the process again

Final Thoughts

Did you find our guidelines helpful? We have tried our best to break out the cleaning process in a very simple way. Let us know about any hesitations; we’ll help you out for sure! Lastly, be well aware of the precautions to avoid any damage to any fragile components and paint. Don’t worry, you can wash electric car with pressure washer as well. If you are new to this, take your time understanding the steps. Try to read the pressure washer manual to operate it properly. And last but not least, do some test run before starting to avoid significant mistakes.