Has anyone any recommendations please for a pressure washer to keep 4 cars clean once a fortnight, one of which is a Range Rover which off roads/green lanes and gets plastered with mud. The sheds have an array of choice, many of which look flimsy. Or is there a better value 'industrial' source anyone knows of? I don't want an enormous unit but do need one that is up to the job and has a good reliability record.
Thanks in advance for any contacts you can suggest.
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AT
You will get what you pay for.
We use several types at work for cleaning equipment including all of our trucks and our packaging plant. The one that gets the most use is a top of the range Karcher hot wash with detergent etc, its constantly being looked at maybe twice a month, but its used for about 4 hours a day overall. A Kew washer that is only used a couple of times a week has never been looked at in the last couple of years. All of these are industrial units. On past and present experience overall I would recommend Karcher but not ones that you get at the "warehouses" go to a local Karcher dealer and have a chat with them.
Bill
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AT,
I rate pressure washers as useless for paintwork, soft brush and bucket far better.
I have a £50 "no-brand" pressure washer for very light duties including engine cleaning (where I do not want any more pressure!). That is fine.
Depends on soil type for cleaning off the 4x4. We live on Fenland peat so that will hose off ours easily. Some clays need a very powerful washer.
For big jobsI also have access to the type of machine I guess Bill uses....as big as a sofa with a throbbing power source. That'll shift any type of dirt, paint, loose trim etc!
MM
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I used to service pressure washers/steam cleaners. The brand we dealt with was Warwick. Really good, powerful, well made and built in such a way that they can be fixed not thrown away. However I suspect they are serious money. All the breakdowns I went to were due to mis-use, such as not releasing the pressure after switching off, not running the unit until cold water came out the lance and using the filthy dregs out of diesel car fuel tanks - this cost a VW dealership hundreds to repair the damage.
You really get what you pay for. That said I wouldn't put a pressure washer near anything I owned - well maybe a patio or a wheelie bin....
Steve.
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Having spent just an hour with my Karcher cleaning 10 years of grime from the the patio last weekend, I would definitely not use it for cleaning the car. Mine has a brush attachment which reduces the pressire, so much so that the old bucket and sponge is an atractive option
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I regularly use a fairly weak pressure wash for quickly removing the majority of soiling from paintwork, alloys, wheel arches and also the general underbody. This is as a preliminary to using a brush and car shampoo on the paintwork and alloys.
Oz (as was)
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See my advice in loads of other threads about covering your lock barrels with tape before using a hose or pressure washer. Also grease the locks afterwards (and in any case at least once a year).
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Yes, best recommendation "use a bucket and sponge"!!!
High presuure water on paintwork, wheel bearings, rubber door seals etc.
Are you nuts?
Also you get a very low volume of water. much better to get a few gallons in a bucket and gently float off the muck, then dry it well and polish.
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I bought a 110 Bar Karcher unit. It is next to useless for car cleaning. A word of warning, pressure washers at close distance can damage tyres & rubber. The hose conection on my machine started leaking soon after I bought it.
These are my experiences, A steam or an industrial unit may be more successful but I would advise against the smaller DIY units for use in car cleaning.
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All depends how you use them.
I tend to chop and change between hosing off with the ordinary hose and using the Karcher.
If the car is just lightly dirty then I use the hose, if it's got a fair bit of muck on it, then I use the Karcher to remove most of the thick stuff, then carefully wash with a big bucket and sponge before rinsing.
Done this since we first used a pressure washer about 8 years ago and never had a problem. Also, it's on a more diffused spray, so it is still high pressure, but you would have to really get in close to build up a pressure capable of damaging anything...
I find this helps prevent swirls as most of the thick dirt has been removed before you start using the sponge on it...
Blue
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I live in rural Staffordshire and cars are regularly covered by a mixture of clay/mud/small stones/bitumen drops and horse carp. A nice mixture which the horse manure - comprised of fine grass fibres and a binding material - causes to stick carefully to the sides of the car.
Any pressure wash strong enough to remove the mix also removes paintwork!
I find soaking with a hose and then sponge and washing wax works very well, followed by hosing off and drying.
Would I use a high pressure cleaner? Not unless I wish to test the rubber seals for strength, drive water into steering joints and remove wax protection. As for steam cleaning!:-(
OK for lorries/commercial vehicles! Essential in fact.
Would I use them on drives? NO: removes tarmacadam.. ok for stone but my 18th century gravestones used as paths are already badly worn:-)
madf
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Has anyone any recommendations please for a pressure washer to keep 4 cars clean once a fortnight, one of which is a Range Rover which off roads/green lanes and gets plastered with mud. The sheds have an array of choice, many of which look flimsy. Or is there a better value \'industrial\' source anyone knows of? I don\'t want an enormous unit but do need one that is up to the job and has a good reliability record. Thanks in advance for any contacts you can suggest.
Have you tried the range of j.c.b. power washers very sturdy and reasonably priced?
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