I have heard (I have no hard data) that hand-held, high-pressure washers (available at some service stations) are hard on vehicle paint. I have been using such washers for years, and I have been unable to detect any ill effects. However, this past summer I completed the restoration of my 71 Ford F-250, including a two-tone, clear-coat paint job (mighty pretty!). Is it OK to wash/rinse it with a high-pressure washer?

I will appreciate your comments.

Paul

 

Paul, if you have ever used a pressure washer, you might know if you hold the wand close to paint it will take it off a building, or dig crud off a deck floor.

To answer your question, yes it can take the paint off, keeping the wand tip back 6-8 inches and it will just wash it. If you were responsiable for the paint on someone else's truck you might not use a high pressure washer.

Basically it's like a lot of other things in life, common sense has to come in the picture. IMHO

John

 

I've used a small electric pressure washer that puts out 1300psi (which is probably about equivalent to the do-it-yourself carwash) and suffered no ill effects to the paint as long as I kept it set on fan spray rather than pin-point stream. But a higher pressure unit of say 2500psi+ could probably do some damage pretty easily.

It takes somewhere around 60 days (IIRC) for a paint job to fully cure, so I'd be a bit leery of using anything that puts out much pressure beyond that of a garden hose before then. Even after that I'd probably hand wash it for a while. I only used the pressure washer to get years of gunge off an older vehicle that had been sitting for a while.

 

Sprayers at your local car was wash use caustic base soap that strips wax, not even good at cleaning a block full of sludge.
Hand wash only on my fleet.

 

i just spent 10grand painting my 85 freightliner back in may. i stoped at a truck wash that used high presure oh about a month ago and it did blow off a chunck of paint on the roof about an inch round so no more highpresure for me hand mit only i got lucky the body shop fixed it for nothing mabe next time they wont