There are two types of soil you're trying to clean from your car with products like KevianClean Carwash Shampoo and KevianClean Wheel Cleaner. First, it's the type of soil that loves water such as salts, dust, and pollens.
Second, it's the type of soil that's oily, such as road oil, tar, and tree sap. When cleaning these soils, you need three cleaning agent types. The first one is the cleaner that's reactive such as alkaline and acids. The second one is the bonder, which includes phosphates. The third one is the associator like solvents and surfactants.
Reactive cleaners include high and low pH products, which mostly washes in a touchless manner to get rid of the widest range of soils, whether they're oily or watery.
How Different Cleaners Wash Different Soils
- Reactive Cleaners: High and low pH reactive cleaners do their duty of cleaning soils by exerting most of their efforts on the soils themselves, which causes them to leave the vehicle surface and keeping the paint finish untouched. The removal energy typically increases with the addition of heat. It's the same effect you'd see from bleach with how it removes the dirt from your white shirts and whitens the fabric altogether with sun exposure, even though excessive bleach can damage the fabric in the long run.
- Bonders or Phosphates: Meanwhile, bonders work by changing polarity on the soil. To be more specific, they change soils that are positively charged to a negative charge to get rid of their bondage with your car paint surface with the help of flowing water. In other words, the glue that bonds soil to your car can be undone with a hose and the appropriate application of your bottle of bonder or phosphate product within your hands.
- Associators: Associators include terpenes, solvents, and surfactants. They're the cleaners to beat when it comes to cleaning out heavy oily soils. Terpenes incidentally include turpentine, which is used a lot in oil painting so you know it's dependable in getting rid of the nastiest tar or oil spills all over your car paint. These cleaners "convince" the oil to leave the surface it's on and stop being so sticky, as though it's being liquefied by the solvent or surfactants.
- Other Variables: When cleaning a car, you need to take into consideration other variables as well. Temperature and geography have a huge impact on how and how often you should clean your vehicle. You should clean, polish, and wax your car more often in areas near the sea or with inclement weather to prevent corrosion. In drier or hotter areas, dry your car with a rag quickly before it sun-dries the water and the dirt trapped within it into caking dust.