Pressure Washers

Cleaning your vehicle after a lengthy overland trip, 5000 miles tour, weekend trip along Salisbury plain and even after a long winter is a necessity.
Pay special attention to the underside of your vehicle. By administering periodic vehicle cleaning maintenance, your vehicle will last alot longer and be less susceptible to early part & MOT failures. The rubber bushings on the suspension components alone are very susceptible to the salt that is common on the UK roads in the winter. Mud from fields and tracks if left on the chassis will erode the metal and cause premature rusting if left long enough.

The Pressure Washer:

To my knowledge you cant really go wrong when buying a pressure washer. Just make sure it has a lance, plenty of heavy duty hose between the lance and the machine, a plug to attach the water hose pipe to and of course a power cable lead.

There are as many different types of brands and models of pressure washers as there are 4x4 vehicles, some cost alot and others are much cheapness.

If you want to maximise your power washing needs there are a few features to look out for. This is particularly helpful especially when dealing with mud and dirt common to our beloved vehicles.

Lance Functions: When choosing your pressure washer make sure the you check that it has an adjustable lance tip, this allows you to focus your water beam from thin to wide, useful when needing to blast of lumps of clay or just wide spraying the vehicle to get the soap suds off.
Also look out for a ball bearing tipped lance, this small ball bearing oscillates in the end of the lance laying the water down in an oval pattern, this again is also useful for suborn mud but also useful if you want to remove moss or algae from your patio or bricks.
If you are going to be pressure washing a large vehicle or area it is alot easier to do if your lance has the trigger lock feature, look out for this when buying.

Soap/Cleaning solution inlet: Most mid levelled priced pressure washers come with a section of piping with a small filter attached to the end. This allows you to insert the pipe in to your desired cleaning solution and it will mix in with the water about to be used from your lance on the vehicle. This is particularly effective at removing all kinds of dirt and is very good at time saving. Most pressure washers with this inlet function will have an open/close valve between the machine and the pipe. When you are not using the cleaning solution inlet pipe you simple close this valve shut to avoid filling your system with air.

Hot/Cold Functions: If you need to wash large quantities of vehicles on a professional level you want to look to spend £500-£3000 on an Hot pressure washer. These use a fuel based furnace to head the water that is stored inside the machine. These machines are large in size and can hold numerous litres of water. These machines come supplied with many attachments, extender pieces and usually 2x inlet pipes and 2x lances, one long one short.
The pipe that runs from the machine to the lance will be of heavy duty construction, similar to the pipe found on construction hydraulics and jack hammers. With these hot/cold pressure washers you have the option to select what the temperature output is and also what pressure is available.

Soaps/Cleaning solutions: As good as the halfords car shampoo is save your money and buy something abit more industrial. Mud, dirt, oil and more oil that is common on 4x4's need something abit more stout than autoglym. What you want is a "Traffic Film Remover" or TFR. This is the stuff you want to use.

Last of all, a little safety warning: When you have finished with your pressure washer, and you need to disassemble the machine for storage, dissconedt the power, then the water hose pipe from your property to the pressure washer then squeze the trigger on the lance to RELEASE pressure before detatching the lance from the pressure washer hose pipe.

Some 4x4 owners might laugh at your shiny, clean vehicle, saying its not a true 4x4 unless its covered in mud but rest assured you will have the last laugh................ Your's will last longer.

Jason

One further tip - make certain that when cleaning a vehicle on a driveway or alongside your house, after cleaning the vehicle remember to move said vehicle then clean the drive. I didn't, so after cleaning the RR it was naturally surrounded by puddles so thought nothing of it, packed away the the ol' Karcher and went back inside. Upon returning at night it resembled the Somme before I even reached the driver's door, but of course I couldn't see that. Opps!

And was I off out in my boots? Of course not, I was about to spend a night on the town so was wearing my best shoes - well, only shoes! BIG MISTAKE!

Personally i am not an advocate of cleaning a vehicle with high pressure washers, those used commercially are limited to 1000 PSI at 300mm for cars and light vans, commercial vehicles and plant are a different matter and they can be rated much higher.

Pressure washing can force water into many areas of the vehicle its not designed to go into and accelerate wear, or even trash many components on a vehicle, the most common are CV joints, steering track rods, various ball joints, or anything with a rubber boot as high pressure water fired directly at them can easily force its way past these rubbers, then we have brake calipers and oil seals at various locations, and sliding joints on prop shafts..
Door locks, windscreen wiper spindles, door handles, window and sunroof rubbers, and even lights may be affected, and once any seal is broken it allows all sorts past and into the item; than we have freezing, this time of the year (in the UK) any ater getting into an item will freeze and expand, this can cause numerous problems.

How did we manage before presure washing??? we washed our vehicles undersides with a hosepipe with a jet end on it, this was sufficient, and we did it when it was wet as wet mud is easier to remove.

A tip to clean the bottom of your car in an easy way is using a garden sprinkler
Something like this: http://www.gardenawinqel.nl/Product/2595/Gardena-Gardena-Sproeier-Comfort-aquazoom-2501.html
Just leave it below the car for a while and you will have a lot less work.

cadarn wrote:

A tip to clean the bottom of your car in an easy way is using a garden sprinkler
Something like this: http://www.gardenawinqel.nl/Product/2595/Gardena-Gardena-Sproeier-Comfort-aquazoom-2501.html
Just leave it below the car for a while and you will have a lot less work.

That's what I do. Clean the car as you would normally, then leave the sprinkler under it for about 2 hours. While pressure wahser are great for some jobs I don't personally like using then for the reasons stated by Assassin.

cadarn wrote:

A tip to clean the bottom of your car in an easy way is using a garden sprinkler
Something like this: http://www.gardenawinqel.nl/Product/2595/Gardena-Gardena-Sproeier-Comfort-aquazoom-2501.html
Just leave it below the car for a while and you will have a lot less work.

One of these sprinklers for us mere mortals, three needed for the Dutch Barge surely?

Should be needed. But hey, I hate cleaning.

Complete waste of time setting up sprinklers, just find yourself another English ford!

Yep that's me Tom.
The best way of cleaning the bottom of your car and FUN too.
It was a nice drive Ridgeway and the Salisburry Plains, as stated in another post "best driving area".

You do have to be careful when using pressure washers - I took a large amount of paint off the front bumper once when using a Karcher presuure washer - got a bit too close with it. Decided to take the rest of the paint off instead of a respray - Car had a black bumper at the front and a silver one on the back - lol.