Cleaning the salt from Cars.

Joey the lips

Forgive the stupid nature of this question but its genuine.

Now that the current freeze is almost over I want to clean the salt to prevent corrosion of my car.

Do i just pull into a self service and give a good blast all around under the car to wash off the salt or is there a specialised method to tackle it.

Is it enough to give it one good wash or will repeated be needed.

Just bear with me. I dont clean my car much... It acts as an anti scratch device.

andyseadog

most self service car washes used recycled water (filtering the rinsewater from the previous car to cut down on usage) so if you go to a selfservice really your just washing your car with a slightly diluted salt water which really isint great. so if at all possible get a valeter to do it for you or do it at home.

if you leave it for another few weeks, one wash may be enough, but if you do it in the next few days, you would really want to be doing it again as every time it rains (as you can see) there is still plently of remnants of grit and salt on the road which will just splash back onto the car during a rainy drive.

personally i'l be putting the car on axle stands just once in around a month and im going to give it a thorough going over because it can, will and has gotten into every crevace.

Lurching

Plenty of high pressure water to get at the nooks and crannys underneath, in the wheel arches and panel gaps.
Use a decent car wash detergent and sponge, and go for it!

Joey the lips

So just blast the hell out of underneath with a pressure washer and suds.

and use a sponge as normal on top.

Poly

When you get it cleaned, you could give the arches a lick of waxoyl if you're feeling energetic

Gary ITR

Coming into October I went at the underside of my car with a wire brush, cleaned all the crap off. I'll be doing the same again once we've had a good lash of rain to clear the roads

As for the visible bits, she got a good layer of wax before the first freeze and then another in between the two bad spells. It's up with a valetor as we speak having a rinse and a hoover

peasant

Joey the lips wrote: »

So just blast the hell out of underneath with a pressure washer and suds.

Nope ...no blasting! Gentle showering is the thing to do.

Most of these power washers are far too strong. Hold them close to the underbody and they'll peel of the protective coating (and flush the salty brine into previously inaccessible metal folds) ...making things a lot worse than if you hadn't washed it at all.

You want to flush sticky, salty dirt deposits off the underbody and out of the nooks and crannies without damaging the undercoat. Moist, briny deposits will just sit there else and fester, so they need to be gone. But you need to do it gently. So take your time and use lots of water but from a safe distance.