Cleaning power and sud
 

While shopping for new car wash soap, I often come across descriptions or details of the products with "suds" in it. Mostly because people are used to associate suds with cleaning power. Now that's proven to be false. There's no relationship between suds and real cleaning power. That begs the question: what is a good car wash soap?

Personally, I learned it the hard way by putting regular detergent into HE washing machine and the suds was ..... everywhere (inside and outside of the washing machine). The clean up wasn't fun at all. Then I Googled and found that suds should not be an indicator for cleaning power and there are detergent that are designed for HE washing machines (less suds). Does suds actually provide positive properties for a normal car wash? Perhaps suds stay on the car longer? If the car is covered with suds, isn’t it hard to tell which part of the car has been thoroughly cleaned?

Any personal experiences with a good car wash detergent?


*Edit:
I guess some foam will help lubricating & lifting dirt . However, I still like to know people's recommendation on a good car wash. :)

What you're more worried about is lubricity - the ability to isolate and trap dirt particles. Good car soaps have lots of lubricity even though they may not be sudsy.

A good, easy to get car wash is Meguiar's Gold Class. Easily found almost anywhere that sells automotive cleaning products.

I use simple green automotive car wash, its cheap, so you can use as much as you want, it strips cars a bit when concentrated, and i add ONR to it for that extra lubey lube.

worked well so far.

my personal key to cleaning tough dirt / grease is to NEVER scrub hard, that marrs the shit out of the paint, and likes to embed dirt deep into washmitts

i recently tried both types:
p21s, which has no suds at all. it goes on incredibly slick and will bead water very well for a soap.
poorboys, which does not feel particularly slick on your paint but suds like crazy!

honestly the p21s works better although its not as convincing that its working because it doesnt sud at all. nowadays, i foam gun the poorboys first to lift the dirt, then use poorboys + a capful of p21s in my bucket for the wash. good combo but expensive when you do it that way (p21s isnt really cheap)

meguiar gets my vote

Meguiar Gold Class and Duragloss 901 is about the same price.