Two box cleaning questions

[FrayAdjacent]

Dish soap won't kill your car. Geeze people. You clean the stuff you eat off of with it!

On a car, it WILL strip any wax that is on the paint. It's a good first step to clean wax and other residues off of the paint.

I wouldn't do it by itself, because it leaves your paint unprotected. I'd do it like this:

Wash with dishsoap
Clay bar
Wash with automotive soap
Polish
Wax
Wax

[Allen K. Littlefield]

I am with Mr. Adjacent on this one. I have washed a lot of cars over the millenium and always have used common dish detergent to cut the grease and road grime before polish and wax. I would not recommend washing with dish detergent and then let it sit outdoors without immediately polishing and waxing. The steps Fray takes are what I do sans the second car shampoo but that is not a bad idea. I believe the trick is to get some wax protection back on the paint asap especially if you store the car outside without a cover. IMHO.

AKL

[thomschoon]

Too funny, if you do use dish soap use the lemon scented, it will impress the studs at the local track

[Ronzi]

The car soap peddlers will claim that irreplaceable precious bodily fluids are extracted from the paint when you use soaps intended for cleaning dishes, and once they're gone, they're gone forever. Subsequent waxing is like putting lipstick on a pig. It may look purty for a while, but it's a pig underneath.
I suspect that if you trade cars every 5 yrs or so, you'll never be able to tell the difference.

[r9i8c7k]

I have only heard of dish soap being recommended for stripping wax from a cars surface. The only person I actually know who has ever used dish soap on a regular basis is my grandmother. She drives a 1987 Buick Skylark. Either dish soap is not good for your cars surface over the long run or Buick Skylark paint jobs go from blue in color to almost white over time.

Ya, the more that I think about it if my grandmother uses it on her car you probably shouldn't. She actually uses a snow shovel to take the now off her car.