How To Wash A Coach

Time to give the coach a wash. It is a big job. At least for me. Roughly 5 hours to give it a good cleaning not including dressing the wheels.

We had the coach professionally detailed in March of this year and I opted to coat the coach with an expensive ceramic treatment.

The detailers spent 3 full days on the coach and they did an awesome job. When cleaning the coach, I don’t want to introduce scratches or swirls into the finish even though the ceramic coating provides a significant amount of surface hardness.

For a coach this size, it can be a bit of a challenge to wash it well and to preserve the finish.

Here are the tools that I use when washing the coach.

The list includes:

• Pressure washer
• Simple Chuck Spotless Water Deionizer
• Foam cannon
• Buckets with grit guards (one for soap, one for rinse)
• Chemical Guys Honeydew Snow Foam soap
• Sheepskin wash mitts
• Dozens of high quality microfibre cloths
• Ladder

I tackle one side of the coach at a time. I use a day that I know will be relatively mild and not too hot. I follow the sun and always work on the side that is in the shade or on the side when the day approaches dusk.

The coach gets a thorough foam bath first. I attach the foam cannon to the pressure washer and lather the side thoroughly. I let the soap settle for at least five minutes and then I provide a very light agitation of the surface with a sheepskin wash mitt. Working on a relatively small section of the coach, I will use one bucket to rinse out the wash mitt and the other bucket to load the wash mitt with soap. That part of the process entails a lot of ladder work.

The surface is thoroughly rinsed by switching the water source of the pressure washer to route through the deionizer. The deionizer will provide a spot-free rinse although I do use microfibre clothes to soak up most of the excess water on the surface.  Depending on my level of enthusiasm, I may just let the water dry off the surface. That saves time. But yesterday I towelled off most of the coach.

Keeping a clean, largely swirl-free finish is important to me. The coach looks as new today as it did when we first took delivery four years ago.

Few motorcoach owners invest the time and effort into washing their coach this way. Many will hire the job out to a mobile wash service. Some of them do good work and some do not.

For me, I enjoy the process and the outcome. And I put in a quality effort.