Are pressure washers bad for cars?

The cheapest I've seen it is $20~ for a 5sqft one. Are you sure it's not fake chamois? By fake I mean made from pig or goat leather rather than the obviously fake synthetic.

>I hear different things. that it strips the paint or it drags debris across your car.
Both.

>How should i wash my car?
Bucket and sponge, rinse with a hose, chamois leather to polish.

>Chamois is also acceptable, but only if it's the real thing which is pretty expensive.
I have the real thing. In my opinion, it can scratch the paint if any grit gets onto it. A plushy microfiber with grit is still able to dry without scratching due to the plush. Chamois tends to have a lot of weight and stiffness even when wrung out, so that increases the chance of scratching.

>chamois leather to polish
"no"

yea I'd agree, but it's better than a pool towel or something. The idea with chamois is the same as the waffle weave, no pressure just soaking up water and making sure there's no foreign debris on it.
Also even with plush you can scratch, which is why you should still spray it with a bit of quick detailer for lubrication before applying any pressure and buffing.

>How should i wash my car?

I use a switchable soap dispenser on the end of my water hose that I bought from Harbor Freight. It has different types of spray patterns and I can adjust both the volume of water and the rate of soap from zero to a lot. I spray in one hand and use the microfiber washmitt with "noodles" on a pole in the other hand. It works very nicely.

One advantage is that I don't have to walk back to buckets. Another is that I don't have to bend over a bucket. Another is that I don't have to carefully swirl around the mitt in a bucket. Yet another big advantage is a stream of fresh clean liquid soap so I can wipe with the mitt and the liquid washes away the dirt particles and grime. I can also rinse the mitt right on the spot. Having the microfiber noodle pad on a pole (walmart item) lets me wash the roof and sides from a distance. I don't press down and just let the natural weight of the item do the work for me on the roof and other horizontal surfaces.

Drying out and spotting while cleaning is easily prevented because I just squirt some more water over there by squeezing the pistol grip. Liquid only comes out when I want it to. So it saves on water usage. It's not like I have to fill up two separate 5 gallon buckets to the 4 gallon mark.

PREVENTING WATER SPOTS:
Wash your car on a rainy day. After it has been raining for awhile, there is no more dust in the air, so the rainwater coming down is pretty clean (unless you are in smogland). I let the rainwater do the final spotfree rinse for my car before I take it inside the garage to dry it off and wax it later.

Found the no-rinse autist.

You rinse the car, then polish it with a dampened chamois leather cloth. You rinse off the grit first, so it doesn't get under the cloth.
You polish it smoothly with a flat cloth. You dampen the cloth first so it doesn't scratch. Then you apply a firm pressure, and polish until the watermarks vanish and the paint gets shiny again.
There's no grit under it, because you just rinsed that off with the hose.
It works on the windows, too.

>Found the no-rinse autist.
Well, considering this is me:
do you want to try again?

The only thing you should POLISH with is a plush microfiber towel lubricated with a bit of quick detailer.
Chamois is okay for drying (still not ideal), but it should not be used for polishing or with applied pressure.

>switchable soap dispenser from Harbor Freight
Have a link? That'd be a great thing to have.

Not unless you're retarded

Ones with attachable bottles where you can put car soap, degreaser and other chemicals are rad

I use mine on max all the time. And I have almost the exact same one as the dude above this post.
Only damage I have ever done was stripping the paint off the *inside* of my rear bumper. Guess that area didn't get primed so the paint wasn't stuck very well.
For interest,