How often do you clean you car?

Parker cleans ours every day.

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The garage does it when servicing.

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I no longer clean the car. My wife takes it to a former garage which is now set up as a car wash about one a month whilst she visits her mum. Cleaned inside and out. They do a much better job of it than I ever could with a bucket and sponge.

I used to do an hour long cleaning session virtually every Saturday am. Then the heart attack inserted a hiatus of several months. When I started again then it was c. once a month. Now itā€™s the winter, and living in the country, itā€™s filthy within 24 hours. In the past Iā€™d still go out, regular as clockwork, and foam/rinse/foam/wash/rinse/dry/detail, this year Iā€™m saying bums to it. When the roads are no longer covered in mud Iā€™ll give it a wash. Meanwhile Iā€™m not going to bother.

However there are two events looming on the horizon that might change my plans: a) house move to terrace house with NO WHERE to wash the car or even run a hosepipe to b) the lease is up.

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Inside the car I used to do also about once or twice a year, though the inside of winscreen more often (despite the fact that no-one smokes). However, for some years now when we travel and park at the airport we have used a park+valet service, which is marginally cheaper than the airport parking and gives the inside a nit of a clean - trouble is, this year we havenā€™t flown since February, so the other car hasnā€™t been done inside for rather longerā€¦

I dust the hifi when I dust the room - which isnā€™t as often as it should be,

I also have a motor home, itā€™s 7.5m x 2.2m x 2.9m high, it gets washed a couple of time a year otherwise it starts going green!

The roof gets a good clean once every few years, itā€™s a dangerous task as itā€™s easy to get complacent stood up there with a brush and suds. Itā€™s an exhausting task not helped by some campsites which have banned washing of vans on their sites

Washing a car is positively fun and easy by comparison

So true! I donā€™t have a motor home but I do make a point to wash the roof of my suv with a step ladder and a noodle and sponge mop. Once you leave bird droppings there for long, itā€™s hard to get off.

@Innocent_Bystander, probably my superstition, I reckon dust and oily finger prints are bad for vacuum tubes. I leave no finger prints on them but Iā€™d dust my tube unit much more often than the rest of the units. I donā€™t have a TT.

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When the grime gets so thick it affect the fuel consumption.

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Annually!

Washing your car regularly is also good for hygiene, you really donā€™t know what is getting splashed up the side of your car. when you open the boot/hatch, that grime gets transferred to your hands unless you have one of those self closing jobs. Also, getting in and out of your car invariably means your clothes are going to rub some filth off the sills. Iā€™ve often noticed the rubbed clean area under the driverā€™s door on a filthy car.
Maybe Iā€™m just a little fastidious but I really donā€™t like driving a dirty car.

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Never - Iā€™m with @Dozey. They even put in air a freshener, which I then remove.

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Back in about 1970 my father purchased a pre-owned Austin Cambridge A60, it was low milage and perfect bodywork with beautiful maroon coloured shine. He owned this car for many years but never ever washed or polished it. The only thing he did do was check tyre pressures, check oil, windscreen wash, and put petrol in it.

My dad claimed that washing a car was very bad, and caused them to rust. Although i always suspected he was simply lazy and didnā€™t have the inclination.

Anyway after just a few years of the car being parked up under the sun and bird droppings, the maroon coloured paintwork took on a dreadful dull matt finish, and then one day, a wing was replaced by a garage after an accident. The accident was not my fatherā€™s fault so the wing replacement didnā€™t come with a charge, however the car now had a very bright shiny brand new wing on one corner, the rest remained a very matt dull car. The new wing stuck out like the sore thumb.

A friendly mechanic at the garage kindly showed by Dad how to polish up the paintwork, and his demonstration left a small but obvious polished up area on the bonnet, but even this had no influence on my Dadā€™s resolve to not wash or polish the car.

Many more years passed and the last we saw of his Austin Cambridge was after an MOT failure due to chronic rust in 1978, and which was bad enough to write the car off. The shinier wing was still evident, and the small area of polished up bonnet remained to be seen just, even though they had weathered in someway. The car was sold to a banger-racer for a few quid, and thatā€™s the last we saw of the poor old thing. :disappointed_relieved:

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Wash every month and polish three times a yearā€¦ mind you with a black car itā€™s clean for about a dayā€¦

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Washing the bodywork probably wouldnā€™t have saved it from the Banger Boys (Farinas were popular for the track) as the terminal rust was likely to be chassis and floor corrosion due to poor design and zero protection from the factory.
Supermarket pressure washers may look like the lazy option but when used underneath and around wheel-arch areas can help prevent corrosion.

Well, your hands get dirty from touching all sorts of things, while it is impossible to keep the car sterile, it is easy to wash hands before touching food!

Not invariably: find it is easy to avoid, though perhaps different for people with vehicles having very high sills, but I donā€™t live/drive anywhere needing a high ground clearance vehicle,

Yup, itā€™s a sad day when you have to remember to bring an extending ladder with you when you go on holiday, just so that you can clean the roof of your van!

Tbh, the roof can look rough although not visible, but bird droppings all over the skylights gets to me!

We have a fairly large veranda with white polycarbonate roofing. Itā€™s practical but I dread the thought of it full of dirt over time. Would have loved to get a motorized louvre roof that opens at the press of a button. But it was too expensive to justify.

Anally. :innocent:

Debs, Your father may have been on to something. My grandmother used to clean their Triumph Dolomite with Fairy Liquid. My grandfather used to chamois the car before it went in the garage each night, thus leaving a thin wet layer over the bodywork. The car rusted. Salt was (is?) a major constituent of washing up liquid. QED.

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Triumphs of that era rusted, regardless!

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