Washing your van with parrafin

[New Kentish Campers]

Buy 5ltrs of wash and wax from the local Euro car parts or suchlike. After a few washes , give it a coat of decent quality carnuba wax and continue with the first product. I wax my car and van every 3rd wash and both stand up well and if done regularly, it takes little time. I live in a rural area so mud, etc is always plastered over my motors

Plain detergent, like washing up liquid will soon remove wax, etc so no good really.

[Moonrakers]

[quote="a1winchester"]I have started to use Showroom Shine https://www.greasedlightning.co.uk/prod ... 8753674627
and a cheaper, https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00 ... UTF8&psc=1thinner version, to clean my van.

Be careful with the new breeds of 'dry wash'. I had a lovely old Merc with dark paint that was kept on the street outside a flat with many stairs in London a few years ago and to save lugging buckets, I used several such products regularly. They work well, but believe me when I tell you that over time, how ever many microfibres you use, you will degrade your paint. The swirl marks, haze and light scratches these products led to necessitated a professional polish of the whole vehicle.

If you're going to use them, it's wise to only clean with the sprays between proper washes and only to remove dust and very minor grime. Unless you don't really care about paint defects building up, many people don't. Also, there is on substitute to applying wax, the concentrations in the sprays are small and will not give the hard shell of a paste.

[Moonrakers]

For anyone who, like me, finds this thread because they're a complete noob and they were looking for advice about what product to use just to wash their van and pop top, here's what I ended up learning:

All the advice I saw on the internet was about posh shampoo, special cara van cleaning products, things you wipe on without water, etc. I bought my van with some pretty heavy mouldy green slime on it, black spots all over the white roof, it has rusty bits... thought I'd need something special. Spent ages googling.

Today I washed the whole van with Aldi's 75p washing up liquid, hot water and a little green scrubby sponge thing for the black spots. It's come up beautiful!

Whether I should have then added some sort of wax product to then help address future rust... I have no idea! I definitely didn't add paraffin! Any advice welcome...

You have just applied a salt solution directly to your vehicle, into every seam and chip, the enemy of metal and paint. It's a terrible idea, which is why car shampoo exists instead. Any car shampoo will do, even the very cheapest. I'd hose it down thoroughly and was it again. Also, an abrasive green pad will damage the paint quite badly - to remove stains, soak them and uses a microfibre to rub. T-cut can be used to safely remove more indelible marks. A good wax will aid future cleaning as well as protecting paint and metal.

[New Kentish Campers]

^^^whs.

Plus the odd rub over with a clay valeting bar helps remove all the airborne crud that sinks into the paint film

[NicBeeee]

It is also important to note that you should not use car washing liquid to clean your dishes.

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