Hard Well Water Makes Spot-Free Detailing Nearly Impossible
31 posts across 4 communities in the last 30 days; 87% from r/AutoDetailing.
“Good to know, thanx. Putting together a system soon, just using a filter to fill 5 gal bucket and pump spray before drying now. Can't wait to use the pressure washer for final rinse before drying 👍”
“I haven't used PW but S0.03 performs better on my car than that. Perhaps the automatic wash chemicals are too strong and stripping it. I can't imagine it lasting very long with anything but PH neutral hand washes.”
“I would use distilled water. I use P&S Absolute, not ONR, but I would imagine the same issue would happen if you left it sitting around and it was diluted with tap water.”
Detailers are grappling with water quality issues, exploring solutions like DI tanks and discussing the effectiveness of different products. Some express concerns about environmental impact and seek alternatives to traditional cleaning agents.
SOURCES (60)
“For just rinsing the car, both work about the same and you won't notice a difference. The real reason people go DI is the convenience factor, you hook up a resin tank to your hose and get spot-free water on demand. Distilled works great but…”
“I see people talk about deionized (DI) water for detailing. How about distilled water? submitted by /u/coderoncruise [link] [comments]”
“Im trying to wash my black truck and I want the most shine. submitted by /u/Nesquick19 [link] [comments]”
“You must not wash your car a great deal. I wash weekly but I also have several other tinsels washes I use. I have ads/ hero, Wolfgang, Kcx rrw, they all work well [re: ONR, deep sale on amazon]”
“Got a gallon of v6 on my shelf. Wet season is approaching for us and I’ll be doing rinseless washes for the most part of rest of the year. [re: ONR, deep sale on amazon]”
“ONR is a rinseless wash. Basically a way to wash your car without a hose. It can be diluted to a ton of different uses, window cleaner, interior cleaner(detailer) etc. super versatile but is generally diluted so a little goes a long way. There’s some great YT vids out there about it too [re: ONR, deep sale on amazon]”
“So I THINK I'm doing it in a simple way: Hose down care pretty thoroughly with a garden hose spray whole car down with ONR from a garden sprayer wipe car with SSS using ONR with one bucket and a grit guard dry car off go over all the left over water spots with ONR detail spray way and shop towels for windows (optional) go over with Griots 3 in 1 I'm sure is just cause I'm anal and have a new black car, but holy cow it takes me like 1.5 to 2 hours and thats without doing any internal.”
“👆I’m here currently in my journey. Minus the NYC stuff. Use P&S express instead. Use the 3:1 as a long term protectant and Tec/Beadmaker in between. Love Rinseless too. ONR or RRW. [re: If you could put together the ultimate chemical list, for your own car(s).]”
“Thank you! Will look into it. I do like onr because it saves me the final rinse and let me dry directly. Do you think i can still combine the two? [re: Hybrid wash with ONR and struggeling]”
“Since i am short on time, i opted for the ONR to skip the last rinse step. Seems like that wojt cut it [re: Hybrid wash with ONR and struggeling]”
“Your self serve car wash gonna let you sit there for hours doing this stuff? Might be easier if you try to see if you can rent a bay in your area”
“In case you did not read their entire post: they asked for products less than $350.”
“Griots isn’t the budget option for anything. I mean I like them. They’re local to me. But I had to laugh seeing their name brought up here.”
“I have a mini split heater/AC and a permanent pressure washer setup and I still do rinseless washes most of the time. If necessary I rinse my vehicles down with the pressure washer outside but then I pull them into the garage for the rinseless wash & dry. Soooo convenient, especially when it’s hot or cold outside.”
“Good to know, thanx. Putting together a system soon, just using a filter to fill 5 gal bucket and pump spray before drying now. Can't wait to use the pressure washer for final rinse before drying 👍”
“Ooooo that distilled water with a pump sprayer is a good idea. Wasn’t too sure about dropping too much money on a Deionizer. But already have a pump at home”
“That’s the chlorine charcoal filter. It significantly extends the life of the resin by taking out the chlorine before the water hits the DI filters. This has worked really well.”
“https://preview.redd.it/y4dcyia5doth1.jpeg?width=4284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d8554f8b96ada879d28245a932268133bae92f54 https://a.co/d/08Z9kRxz”
“i have this and love it i also ordered a new package of resin for future use during sale , cart is helpful , inexpensive connecting hose from amazon all quick connects https://preview.redd.it/7s4i05azcoth1.jpeg?width=4284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1d285bc84ecabb60bdf9a82f3632971ca3a6dd19 high gloss trim air dry nice reflection”
“I recently bought the CR Spotless Pro RO system but I do 3-4 cars a day, for a guy who is a weekend warrior, the CR spotless system with the bypass probably the best bang for your buck. Buy replacement resin on Amazon for 1/3 of the price don’t be fooled into thinking you have to buy the overpriced CR Spotless Resin for $120 which is ridiculous. It can be bought in the same volume for $45-$60. Use it for the final rinse only and it was last a decent amount of time. Spotless water thru out the de”
“Griot’s makes one for about $300. It can refill the resin tank when necessary. Adam’s also has a similar unit for $250”
“You are exactly where I was. I already have this greenworks, I just have to get the foam cannon option with it and some soap, then maybe I can save a bunch of money by not having to go to the car wash! Fast-forward a year later and I have buckets on wheels, shelves overflowing with detailing chemicals, hose reals bolted to walls, and cabinets dedicated to microfibers. It’s not the worst hobby. It involves some moderate physical activity and can be a good way to de-stress! But it isn’t the most e”
“I’m just doing ONR and then I put some Griots 3-I’m-1 on it. I could easily just do ONR and it would look pretty good. I pre spray it with ONR but you can just use a sponge and a bucket and then dry with a decent towel.”
“I usually get whatever neutral schampoo that is on sale. Sonax, tershine (local swedish), Bilt Hamber. I tend to use the sonax the most since its cheap and does the job.”
“Aye the rinseless wash is actually pretty good from “lenos garage”. Spot free and dries right 👍”
“Right on! The towel may help, but the blower is a great additional tool to hit all of those water pockets. It seems like each of my side mirrors can hold 13 liters of water. 😅 Keep up the good work!”
“Does your daily get water spots frequently? Being in tropical zone, always under the sun & rain, my car needs to be wash every 2 weeks and easily clogged after 1-2 months. Carpro reset for maintenance wash, and Carpro descale for that acid wash. Read that a lot of people in the subreddit only do acid wash once/twice a year but i'm here doing every month or every other month. I'm guessing the detailer i've sent it to probably used a generic brand ceramic coat. Probably wil DIY nex”
“I haven't used PW but S0.03 performs better on my car than that. Perhaps the automatic wash chemicals are too strong and stripping it. I can't imagine it lasting very long with anything but PH neutral hand washes.”
“Don't forget to hit the trash and recycle bins. Alkaline prewash and a pressure washer works wonders on them also.”
“I am setting up a hard water system that uses dolomite and vermifiltration to maintain a stable range of parameters. The goal is very stable lake quality hard black water. I've never used an RO/DI system before because our tapwater is decent. In this case, I want the system to have an auto top off valve in the sump. I also want to drastically minimize water changes. Currently I change water whenever the TDS is over or at 300. I am in the process of breeding and acclimating neocaridina and my”
“I'm extremely happy with my Active 2.0 (original version) that I've had for a couple years. I've never wished for more pressure or more gpm and I like the compact size and relatively light weight. My TDS is about 170 and my total hardness is (ppm) is in the 80 - 100 range. I don't have DI water but if I did I would want it for rinse only so you might want a DI system with a bypass.”
“sometimes some distilled water or DI water is the perfect product to clean windows...”
“Definitely! I'm kinda working on 2 things simultaneously... Adding rinseless wash to my existing mixture and adding the citric acid powder to a pH neutral soap. The soap experiment is not working out great so far... If you just add the powder into the soap, it doesn't dissolve. If you dissolve it in water first then the soap becomes very watery and runny. I'm having fun though, and I find it very ironic that ADS just released 2 acidic products (one soap and one liquid) at the exact t”
“interesting . they built a new one down the street that claims it has filtration for water that is reused but who knows the truth . i've been in north east my whole life and a diluted salt water rinse is certainly better then caked on salt and snow mix”
“No. I must try it. But info I found on internet says its tottaly fine with regural tap water because it have water softening properties. Is this true? I mean, it depend on hardness of source water for sure but mine isnt that bad. Overall, it is very strange then. I tried doing it many times, even from different bottles of ONR and result was always the same. After couple days solution was stinky and color gone.”
“I would use distilled water. I use P&S Absolute, not ONR, but I would imagine the same issue would happen if you left it sitting around and it was diluted with tap water.”
“I like ONR. I started with another Rinseless and found the ONR to be the easiest to use for my weekly washes. Its super cheap compared to other and usually a good price on Amazon too. My local detail supplier carries it too. I'm starting to try other OPT products too.”
“This project really got away from me. I didn't know what I was getting myself into.... Here's the setup and what I learned. I'm on a well at 600 ppm TDS, which spots cars badly. Built a system so the final rinse dries with zero water spots. The thing that made it work was an RO stage before the DI resin. Watched a youtube video on this. Why that matters : DI resin gets used up by every ppm it removes. Feed it 600 ppm straight and it dies fast. Feed it 10-15 ppm and it lasts ages. So”
“If it's garage kept and you don't have a pressure washer setup yet you'll be good with a rinse less wash process every week or bi weekly.”
“Thanks! I've been bouncing a few ideas off of ChatGPT, and it pretty much told me the same thing. For the next iteration, I'll be adding in small amounts of rinseless wash (will be trying both ONR and KCx Rrw). After that, ChatGPT's recommendation was to try some adding some IPA to make for a cleaner/easier wipe off. What are your thoughts on that?”
“https://preview.redd.it/43zrzogkboqh1.jpeg?width=2048&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ec32c7a89dc2ddb60055f6bc5cd2182c12059681 I highly recommed adding a CR Spotless DI system for rinsing without any spots. Game Changer. Cart looks good!”
“I bought the onr kit with the big blue towel and red sponge. Is it harmful to continue to wipe the car once the towel is saturated? I need more towels but didn’t think of it being bad. I also just used the red sponge without spraying the car first-is there any harm in that? Sorry for so many questions. How do I clean the red sponge after-I’ve used it twice but haven’t tried cleaning it I’ve been really happy with overall results with just a bucket and ONR but I want to make sure I’m not risking”
“Thank you! I’ve tried meguiars bug and tar, p&s but off, Adam’s car shampoo and mothers. I followed dilution and dwell. I’ll look into bolt and kock”
“that's funny man bc I suck at plumbing and had like $800 in pex fittings and valves and ended up only using less than half of what I bought lol. nice system. I have an active 2.3 and a cr spotless. currently building my ro system”
“ive finally used up my croftgate rinseless wash. always thought the results were "good" but looking for great. looks like the recommended product now is ONR. any other opinions? have a couple of garage queens with ceramic and a couple of daily drivers submitted by /u/ToughScreen1397 [link] [comments]”
“This makes me so happy you posted this. Another person suggested the same exact thing. I would just buy a 1 gallon as I feel 2 gallons would start feeling a bit heavy even though I know these things come with straps. I looked at those HDX sprayers but Home Depot also has these sprayers which appear to have better reviews and by the looks of it, slightly more sturdy/durable. I’m super interested in this because IK sprayers have an absurd amount of complaints about them needing to be repumped so m”
“I have no issues using sprayway or stoners and washed waffle weave microfibers. I wash them twice in my front loader in warm water with kirkland free & clear detergent and select the maximum number of rinses on the second wash, which adds 3. I do tumble dry them on delicate damp dry in my heat pump dryer, which doesn’t get nearly as hot as a traditional dryer.”
“I bought a gallon of Rags to Riches. It was like 30 bucks. It's a little more expensive than regular detergent but I spent a bunch on towels, might as well spend a little more (a whole 10¢ more per wash than Tide Free and Clear) washing them.”
“I haven’t done rinseless in a long time. Time consuming but works when the car isn’t too dirty. What rinseless are you using?”
“Yep. Everything else is just to keep you there longer. Also a good idea to bring a microfiber cloth to dry the car with to prevent water spots”
“That's because I haven't tried rinseless yet. I did buy a gallon of ONR and also the DIY rinseless wash. I'm looking forward to using it on my 11 year old Jeep. I'm gonna clean the car with rinseless then do a trim restore with ADS trim plus. Might do that on Labor Day.”