dcxray

I'm a newbie, just bought a , '01 GS300, Silver metallic, 99,000 mi. The car is mechanically sound my problem is with the paint (swirls, scratches, pits etc.), and leather interior. The posts I've seen in this forum assume that the reader has a waterhose, driveway or garage. I just moved to a condo that has no garage, hose (or outlet for one) and no driveway. I could use a few suggestions or ideas on a way to do as thorough a job as possible of restoring my paint with these limitations. I absolutely want to do the job myself. ANY help/suggestions will be appreciated.

vborder

What i just to do was have a buddy with me and go up to the car wash, and spray it off and then spray with soap, while your buddy spray with soap, you take your mit and clean while he's doing that

Thats all i know unless you have relatives nearby, you can go to their home

toyemp

I would recommend ProtectAll Quick & Easy Wash (QEW). Can be found at most RV stores (and some WalMarts). Only need 1 gallon of water to wash the entire car. Do a search and you will find a lot of reviews on the product over at Autopia.

Even though I do have a garage and hose, I use QEW most of the time so that I can wash the car in the garage and not have to worry about making a mess and water/soap drying on the car before I get to it.

dcxray

Thanks for the replys. I have always had a driveway, garage and hose and feel like a fish out of water trying to figure out how I'm going to detail this car without them. It never crossed my mind I might not be able to at least thoroughly rinse my car at home. ProtectAll Quick & Easy Wash sounds good and I'll research it. On all my previous cars I have used Dawn then various polishes and waxes and done the job by hand in the driveway. I really want this first detailing of the GS300 to be one that allows me to get out imperfections and restore the paint as much as possible.

picus

QEW or Optimum No RInse and Shine (same concept) are both good options as mentioned above. I've recently switched from QEW to Opt No Rinse just because ONR leaves a slightly slicker surface and can be diluted to make a quick detailer; otherwise they are very similar. I've been using rinseless washes in one form or another for over 8 years now without any issues; highly recommended.

OutlawTita

iTrader: (1)

I just recently switched from QEW to the Optimum No Rinse. Both products work great.....you will be nervous the first few times but I have never had any marring from using either. In fact I believe them to be safer than regular car wash soaps.

toyemp

Talk about timing. My order of ONR just got delivered by the UPS man 10 minutes ago. I wanted to compare it to QEW. Obviously, haven't been able to try it yet, but first thing I noticed is that like all the other Optimum products, it smells horrible! I'm sure it works fine, but I just wish that Optimum would put some kind of scent into their products. Doesn't have to be strong (in fact, I don't like products that are overly scented) but at least enough to hide the raw chemical smell. One of the reasons that I stopped using their regular wash is that I couldn't stand the smell.

picus

Adding a scent sometimes negatively impacts the products. I agree that Optimum needs better manufacturing facilities, but I know their chemist is a pretty smart guy, so I trust him to put what's needed in it to make it work right.

(I agree it smells bad).

Oddly, OCW smells great.

drck1000

I haven't had a chance to try ONR, but their car wash and spray wax smell pretty nice. Smells like coconut and pineapple.

hendjaz

Picus, I believe you are a fan too of poorboys Spray & Wipe. Do you use it much the same as No Rinse and if not when do you use one instead of the other? Is spray & wipe more for a quick clean for slightly dirty car and No Rinse more for a thorough wash (w/o rinse) that can be used before further detailing, something like that? Thanks.

picus

Exactly like you said; Spray and Wipe is truly waterless and is for light dust only. I use it fairly often (1-2x a week) just to get the light layer of dust off my car and make it shiny again. Just spray liberally and wipe with a mf cloth lightly, flip the mf after each wipe and replace with a clean one as needed.

QEW/ONR are true washes; you can do any kind of washing you would normally do (horrible bug guts, tons of mud, etc...), the first time you use it it is intimidating (neither create ANY suds, they just make a solution of really slick water), so putting what feels like oily water on a dirty car is like , but as I said I've been doing it a long time without any marring, all black cars (and I use it on customer cars). You just need to use caution like any wash; clean mitts, one panel at a time, switch mitts often, pre-soak (with ONR you can presoak with the ONR qd solution) horribly dirty areas, etc...I do this about once every 10-14 days and use ~2 gallons of water. It makes for a big puddle around your car, but you don't need a hose and aren't spraying anyone elses stuff.

Cheers.

dcxray

QEW/ONR sound perfect for my situation followed Toyemp's suggestion and found great information on both products at Autopia forum. For this first job I think I'll go to a DIY wash and pressure spray then use 2 buckets with QEW/ONR. Thanks to all for ideas and suggestions. What about the wheels?

toyemp

For waterless wash/touch-ups, I prefer Werkstatt Quick Wash over PB's Spray & Wipe. I only wish they sold it in larger bottles (it only comes in 500ml bottles).

I wash all my cars (all black) weekly using QEW and about every 3 or 4 weeks, I will do a traditional wash just to rinse off all the areas I can't reach with a wash mitt (brake pads, inside of wheels, door jambs, etc). I've gotten it down so well that I'd say I only get an ounce or two of water on the garage floor at most.

toyemp

QEW works great on wheels too. I save them for last and use an older washmitt and separate towels just for wheels so that I don't contaminate the rest of the car with brake dust.

picus

Hey toyemp; I haven't tried werkstatts quick wash - what do you like about it better than S&W? I've been using S&W forever and a day without a problem so I'm just wondering if I should give QW a try.