How to clean road salt off your car?
 

A friend from South Dakota just bought my car. Since I live in California, I've never thought about it, but he was wondering how you clean the road salt off your car during winter.

Any ideas?

I wash it the same as I do during the rest of the year and use a high quality car wash like Zaino, plus I do the following;

1) I do it more frequently.
2) I really make a point of hosing off the wheel wells and undercarriage as best as possible.

:thumbs:

:iagree: Lots of fresh water.

Do you hoist it on a rack? It seems like it would be kind of hard to wash everything if it weren't in the air some.

Also, has this worked well enough that you haven't had any problems? That is what we kind of discussed...just trying to wash as much as possible, but I didn't know if that would be good enough.

I also don't know how much damage the salt can do in what period of time.

If I had a rack/hoist, we wife would kick me out of the house. I would be detailing all of our cars on a regular basis! :D

I will just get down on one knee and with the highest pressure shoot the underside from the front of the car to the rear as best as I can and use plenty of water. I have been driving my car alot this season in IL with plenty of salt on the road. My car was on a lift last weekend for an oil change and it looked great underneath, so I happy with the results without lifting the car.

In answer to your salt/damage question; Salt is pretty much the worst thing for paint/metal on the earth. Its best to remove it as often as possible. :cheers:

:iagree:

Hose the #$%^ out of it before you start washing.

3 bucket method, 1 for soap and water, 1 for rinsing your mitt and 1 for wheels.

Rinse mitt frequently.

Plenty of Z7 for lubricity.

Keep it well Zaino'd.

Plan on polishing any scratches and swirls left by grit in the spring with something like Fusion (ZPC).

Maybe try one of those foam guns, I am sure they will help.

You don't drive'em in the winter if you love'em!!!!!

That's what "beaters" are for. Kinda nice when you are younger, not having to worry if your $500 beater is going to rust worse than it already is.
As you get older and have daily drivers or company cars you end up trying to keep them clean and rust free.
From the rust belt,
JU

I'm lucky. My Daily Driver is an 04 M3, but I just got the C6 in December and there is now way I'm going to let her sit in the garage on a nice sunny day. I have a 60 mile round trip communte and its a blast to drive, not that the M3 isn't an awesome car, but the vette is new and I want to play. :thumbs:

I make sure she is always clean! :yesnod:

I just had a hot/cold faucet installed with garage access...lots of water and frequent hose offs...I drive it thru all Boston winters...lost only 3 days last year with snow on the road

I would think that a Corvette would suffer fewer adverse effects from salt (meaning rust, not scratches) than other cars since it has a 'plastic' body and most of the stuff underneath is aluminum.

My first vette was 10 years old (1970 model) when I bought it and the underside was welded shut by rust. Forget alignments, changing shocks required the rears to be cut off with a torch and new bolts welded on!!! The windshield leaked thru the rust holes behind the glass.
I love the old ones but they have be salt free!!!

Later,
JU