The soils that affect your car can change depending on the period of time, season, and geography. For example, the type of birds pooping on your car can affect the size of the feces and the volume as well depending on how many of the birds out there.
The type of insects, trees, and so forth will also determine what type of tree sap, fruit, and bug splatter you'll be cleaning out. There are also times when you can clean your car easily with a single wipe or so and other times when every wipe appears like you're leaving film on the vehicle.
Therefore, you need to change your cleaning style depending on the soil you're cleaning out.
Dialing In for The Type of Soil
- Some Soils Have Oil and Others Are Water Soluble: The difficulty of cleaning out the soil on your car depends on whether it contains oil or not. The water-loving type is more water soluble and the oil-type requires more soap and suds. If your washes are leaving film over your vehicle, then that means you're experiencing heavy oily soil and you don't have the right heavy-duty cleaners to clean it off completely.
- Chemicals That Can Clean Both Types of Soils: During high pollen seasons, dusty areas, and heavy bug conditions, it's recommended that you use low and high pH cleaners at a temperature of 120 degrees. During times when there's hazy film on your vehicle after it's been washed, you need to rely more on solvents and surfactants to do most of the work. You can spare yourself loads of trial and error every time there's a seasonal or geographic change with your car parking by looking for cleaners that can clean both types of soils.
- A Major Misconception of Soil Cleanup: Some cleaners increase the amount of heat and chemicals in order to burn off the surface. This doesn't help at all but increases your aggravation, electricity, and chemical expenses. You should understand these periods of change in soil and dirt so that you know how to properly clean them off before the soil bonds with the paint, necessitating either sanding or claying.
- Heat Isn't Needed When Cleaning Oily Soils: During times of heavy, oily, hazy, and filmy soils, you can turn down the heat on your cleaning because the chemicals used to clean them, the surfactants and solvents, don't need heat to do their job better. In fact, the heat can damage your cleanup instead of help it. The chemicals will instead work the best when you turn the heat down because the high temperature (as well as the high and low pH combination) helps set the oil on your car surface, which scorches the outside layer and blocks the cleaners from doing their cleanup.