Will do. On second thought i might just do it luke warm lol

Very unlikely, but a wise precaution anyway. If you were pouring hot water on cold windows it might be a problem, like if it's well below freezing and your car has been sitting outside overnight and you do it. But if your car has been driven for more than maybe 15 minutes, your windows are warmed up from the inside heat, and won't crack. Snow and water don't freeze on your windshield once a car is warmed up, and hot water isn't going to crack warmed up windows made of very strong glass. Otherwise the entire car wash industry would shut down during the winter. Besides, you're pre-spraying the car with warm/hot water from the self-spray anyway.

I fill my bucket with hot water so it retains as much heat as possible before I actually get to the car wash. It's very warm, but not nearly as hot as when I filled the bucket.

^I can almost give you a billy mays garauntee that the windows will not crack, i've washed my windows with hot water right after driving it into the carwash when it was -40 outside and nothing happened.

here is what i do.

fill 4 milk jugs with water, then add desired carwash soap such as meguairs gold class (its what i've been using) then, take a 3 to 5 gallon pale, put that in your car along with the milk jugs, and grab a washmit or 2 and a drying cloth of some sort.

make sure all of these things are in your car, then proceed to drive to carwash. at carwash skip ringsing and that bs and get straight to soap with the pressure washer, i want you to soak it in soap from top to bottom and underneath the car for about 3 minutes minumum, 4 minutes max. then let the soap sit for 1 minute exactly, no shorter no longer, this is so that the soap can begin to dissolve the salt on the car and other dirt, helps it lift off the paint, any more time and your just wasting your time.

then rinse you car off this should take you approximately 4 minutes to do it really nicely...make sure you get the wheel wells and rims nicely, if you have snow then much more dirt then usual will make its way there.

once rinsed, take your milk jugs (1 gallon btw) and pour them compeletly into the bucket you brought along. Now your car is basically clean already, so what i want you to do is start on the very top with the wash mit. scrub a dub dub all the way down to about half the height of the car while occasionally rinsing your wash mit off and getting more soap on it by dunking and shaking it around the bucket. once your at half, just spend about another minute or about 50 cents to a dollar rinsing the car down once again, also spray the presssure washer on the wash mit.


Then, take your completely clean wash mit, and redunk it into the bucket and finish off the bottom half of your car including underneath the sideskirts, and right on top of the exhaust, everything.

now spend about 3 minutes rinsing the car completely, shouldn't need much water up top, because you have already washed that down. once again, get in the wheel wheels and get nice and close to the paint...approximately 16 inches away as much as possible, this will pressurize the last soap and salt away.

Procede to drying your car.

Your car will now be free of salt for approximatly 5 minutes if you are lucky since you are driving back home lol.

it is still good however to rinse it off regularly, many say that wet salt is bad for your paint, but its much worse when your paint hasn't been able to shed it for so long and can't breathe or whatever....all i know is its good to wash quite regularly.

Anyways, this is the method i use, sorry its like a novel, but hopefully this straightens things out for all people. Some coin washers get upset when you use a bucket to wash your car, if you half to just give the car wash attendee like 1 dollar and he wont bug you.

This whole process costs about 7 dollars, sometimes a bit less but no more then 8 dollars ever. Takes a little under an hour to do all of that nicely.45 minutes is a good target time, add in the drive to the wash place and back and its a solid hour and a bit, unless you live right next to one?

Oh and please don't use that foam brush they give you at the coin washers place, no matter what anyone says, those things scratch your vehicle like a semi sideswiping you. there bristles are made out of plastic. I used to use those things to clean mudd of my truck tires and rims, is that really what you want on your paint?

^^^Well done dude! Thanks for the tips!


I might just try my way though in my garage. lol

^^^no problem, helped re-inforce that i'm doing something right atleast.

if you are doing it in your garage, use the 2 bucket method, meaning before you dunk your wash mit into the soap bucket, have another bucket sitting right by thats filled with either water or water and soap, though the soap will not really help very much, just help lift some of the dirt out of the wash mit.

I still strongly suggest a rinseoff before attacking the job, and its good to rinse the soap off obviously although you can always buy ONR (optimum no rinse) meaning you don't have to rinse it off.