Are pressure washers bad for cars?

They are fine, they work best when you shove them deep up the tail pile.

>Are pressure washers bad for cars?
Why are they even necessary if a mitt is going to be used after hosing off with a firm spray from a garden hose? With a continuous stream of soapy water and a mitt, that should get the car clean without the one extra step of pressure washing first.

It's more of a thing for older people, at least that is what I see where I live. You hook up a foam cannon to a pressure washer and let the foaming suds do all the work, then you rinse it off and dry. I personally use the two bucket method because I'm OCD about my car being clean.

>It's more of a thing for older people
That's what I'm feeling. And those "youngsters" that buy pressure washers still end up using microfiber mitts or pads to wash the car as part of their detailing.

>You hook up a foam cannon to a pressure washer and let the foaming suds do all the work, then you rinse it off and dry.

Both pressure washers and "lots of foam" don't clean my car of the sticky grimy film. I borrowed the neighbor's harbor freight pressure washer (loud, ugh) and tried to pressure off the dirt. Only the large pieces came off but all the smooth fine dirt liked to stick even on the rims.

In the same session, I then tried to apply a foam spray from the water hose to foam up the car. It isn't a foam cannon, but there is certainly a lot of soapy liquid. I even used a higher concentration. I let it sit awhile and refreshed the soap to prevent drying out. I followed up by using the harbor freight power washer (noisy) figuring the soap should have loosened the hold of grime. A lot of it came off but a lot of dirt still remained on the sides of the car. Obviously, the car cannot be waxed with that grime.

So, the only way to get a car clean enough to wax is to use some sort of wiping method such as a microfiber mitt or a microfiber pad which has those big fat noodle things on the surface.

>Are pressure washers bad for cars?
They never clean off all the dirt on a car. If all you want is a quick rinse of dust, pollen, and bird poop, then use the pressure washer. But if you're going to wax the car, you still have to use a wash mitt or something that touches the car.

>I hear different things. that it strips the paint or it drags debris across your car.
Any debris in the water will be accelerated by the pressure and damage the car. City tap water does have occasional grit in it. But it's so infrequent it's nothing to worry about.

Just look in your toilet tank and you see sediment at the bottom of the tank. I have a lot of sand in mine. There would be more sediment, but refill agitation usually washes out most of the sediment.