What’s the closest I can get to a wax job at a car wash?
Paying a professional to wax your car? Some people make a living by washing and waxing cars.
Hot wax is the standard at automated car washes. A hand car wash can offer any level of wax job or detailing that you can afford (or not).
Maybe you are looking for American Hot Wax. Which was only available a long, long time ago . . .
I can’t even tell if you’re asking how to get a car wash to provide you a wax job, any wax job or you’re asking how to achieve a carwash-equivelant wax job at home.
I guess I’m not stating it right. Winter is coming and I want whatever will protect my car the best.
Wax doesn’t make a lot of difference. Have your car washed frequently and pay extra for the “bottom blaster” option.
Oh. Gotcha now. Thank you.
Washing it at least weekly is far better than trying to rely on magic wax. Depending on where you live you may find affordable subscription carwashes. I pay a fixed fee every month for “all I can eat”.
If that’s impractical, pretty much any car wash offers hand waxing as a special service. Might cost, but it’ll be good quality and last a couple months. Depending on how nasty winter is where you are, that may be enough.
Waxing a car yourself isn’t difficult, just very tedious. If you want to go that way, run it through a carwash, drive straight home, and get to work. Any car parts store will have a variety of waxes. How carefully and thoroughly you apply it is much more important than Brand X vs Y.
Is old-fashioned car wax (carnauba wax, for example) even needed any longer? I thought the modern car finishes no longer benefited from it.
I’m still kinda a car guy & I’m close contact w pros in the biz.
Any paint, even the latest & greatest, benefits from a sacrificial layer to protect it. But wax is 1900s tech.
Assuming a newish car w paint in near new condition there are far better coatings than wax. Not cheap, but with a lifespan of several years, not several weeks.
My car has that kind of modern cetamic coating over new paint. Incredibly durable.
As a hobbyist car detailer, there are a few things I can tell you about automatic car washes:
The ones that use brushes are awful for your car, imparting small scratches that quicken the deterioration of the clear coat (the clear paint that makes your car shiny).
The touch-free ones are better in some ways, because they don’t physically scratch the car, but the chemicals are much harsher.
If your goal is to prevent rust in a cold climate where salt is used to melt ice in roads, an underbody fluid film coating, repeated each year, is your best bet if you drive a rust-prone vehicle. Some vehicles are more prone to it than others. Here in Michigan any 1st Gen Ford fusion /mercury Milan you see will have its rocker panels rusted out. But neither my 2004 Volvo s60 (bought in 2019) or my 2014 Volvo S60 (bought in 2020) developed rust over the winter.
If you can do some things yourself, spray sealants are a step up from the waxes of yore, offering more protection and less work. Some, like gyeon wet coat, you spray onto the car after it’s washed and then rinse off with a stream of water and it activates and spreads on the car, offering protection without rubbing or buffing. Others require application with a towel and then a wipe-off for a nice shine. Turtle wax hybrid ceramic spray sealant is less than 20 bucks for a bottle that will last you a year or more applying it once a month.
A full ceramic coating (meguiars m888 is a decent consumer level choice) is more involved with prep work and a bit of meticulous following of instructions to get it on and looking good, but the advantage is that it will protect for a year or more even if the “water beading” effect disappears, it’s still protecting the paint.
Griot’s Garage sells an excellent product or two. I’ve been using it for years and it really lays down a tough finish.
Residents of Waco, Texas are forbidden from throwing banana peels into the street.
Drug dealers in Tennessee are required to submit tax forms for drug sales.
In 1874, Albert Packer became the first person convicted of cannibalism.
I’m not following the OP’s question.
If the question is really “What can I get done at my local gas station car wash that’s most protective?”, then the answer is really nothing- all the “wax” that they use is some sort of silicone in the rinse water that only stays temporarily.
But if the OP branches out a little and goes to a more full-service wash place (like the place I go), you can have them actually wax your car. Or do just about anything you want.
There are also more custom detailers who really get into it- they’re the ones who will do the ceramic coatings that cost several hundred to above a thousand dollars, but I don’t think that’s what the OP is getting at.
All that said, from what I understand it’s somewhat more academic than in decades past, because modern clearcoat paint jobs are far more resistant to aerial and road crud than past ones were.
Alfred (or “Alferd” even) Packer. The namesake of one of the CU Boulder dining facilities- the Alferd Packer Memorial Grill, whose slogan is or was “Have a Friend for Lunch!”.
Moderating
I don’t know what this is, since it seems to have nothing at all to do with the topic. Whatever it is, it’s not helpful in FQ. Please stick to the facts and stay on topic.
If someone asks for clarification regarding your OP, please clarify. Don’t obfuscate or go completely off-topic.
What is a good ‘underbody fluid coating?
Lots of salt on the roads here in Calgary in the winter. I try to get my truck into the spray wash regularly in the winter, but Im not great at it. When I do I always clean its nether regions as well as I can. I spray it all with the ‘wax’ too, for what its worth.