[grommit]

1. Does Dawn dishwashing liquid wash it off like it washes off wax? Since it is a polymer sealer, I am guessing it does not, correct?

2. Should I polish the car first? Their website says to wash and claybar, but nothing about using any type of polish. Does it depend on paint condition?

3. Is it good to use on glass?

4. Can I use it on my headlights, or will they get too hot?

Thanks!

 

[Jesstzn]

1. Does Dawn dishwashing liquid wash it off like it washes off wax? Since it is a polymer sealer, I am guessing it does not, correct?

2. Should I polish the car first? Their website says to wash and claybar, but nothing about using any type of polish. Does it depend on paint condition?

3. Is it good to use on glass?

4. Can I use it on my headlights, or will they get too hot?

Thanks!

1) No it won't wash off Zaino

2) wash / Clay / polish till happy if needed / Dawn wash / Zaino

3) Some use it on glass with no issues .. I don't apply paint products to glass as I have experienced streaking / smearing

4) Yes .. wheels too

 

[grommit]

Jesstzn,

Thank you for the information and quick response.

So, if you want to remove Zaino, how do you remove it, if Dawn does not strip it off? I think I may have Zaino'd some hard water spots in, and when I do the full detail in the Fall, I want the surface perfect. Use a polish to remove them? I was thinking Menzerna.

 

[AntWrig]

Jesstzn,

Thank you for the information and quick response.

So, if you want to remove Zaino, how do you remove it, if Dawn does not strip it off? I think I may have Zaino'd some hard water spots in, and when I do the full detail in the Fall, I want the surface perfect. Use a polish to remove them? I was thinking Menzerna.

Yes, any abrasive polish will do. Never, I repeat NEVER use Dawn on your car. Your better of using a paint cleaner or a abrasive polish.

 

[jwil]

Dawn is for dishes, not cars, it doesn't matter what Autopia says about it. If you want to strip waxes and such from paint, use a good paint cleaner or mild polish that will take the stuff off the right way, as it is meant to do. Something like P21S paintwork cleansing lotion or Pinnacle paintwork cleansing lotion works well as well as mild polishes like Einszett express polishs

The acids and chemicals in Dawn are extremely harmful to paint and it doesn't matter if it's only on for a little while. You may as well wash the car with acid rainwater or diluted bird poo.

 

[woodster76]

I don't know if I can agree about the Dawn dish soap to be bad for your car? I have been detailing cars for a while now and this is mine. I use it always to strip wax, but it won't strip Zaino thats for sure. Here is a pic of mine after a dawn wash with clay and P&S Xpress Wax. Bottom line is everyone has different preferences of stripping wax. You tell me if Dawn is damaging to paint.

Wood

 

[AntWrig]

I don't know if I can agree about the Dawn dish soap to be bad for your car? I have been detailing cars for a while now and this is mine. I use it always to strip wax, but it won't strip Zaino thats for sure. Here is a pic of mine after a dawn wash with clay and P&S Xpress Wax. Bottom line is everyone has different preferences of stripping wax. You tell me if Dawn is damaging to paint.

Wood

Taken from Meguiars online...

Everyone's entitled to his or her opinion. Claiming high alkaline products like Dawn will never harm the paint finish in my opinion is a little misleading. Dawn is a strong detergent wash designed for breaking down animal fats, grease and oil. Brand new paint is fairly impermeable, but over time with normal wear and tear, all paints become more permeable. Washing with strong detergents will accelerate the deterioration process.

High alkaline, strong detergent washes will dull your paint. It certainly will not make it deeper, more reflective, and glossier.

Dawn is also known to dry out and eat at rubber seals. Now why would you want to do that to your car?

 

[Jesstzn]

Geeezz .. let the fear mongering begin .. Yes Dawn is high alkaline and yes its not the nicest on paint and rubber but christ .. no one is saying use Dawn weekly ..

Dawn is not going to make your paint fall off or your rubber rot off from around your windows if used once a year as part of a major detail prep in the Zaino protocol.

I agree .. if your using it for you weekly wash your goofy.

Some here think nothing of using Simple Green on thier cars or things like Tarminator that contains Xylene and many other products like that then go ballistic when they hear the word Dawn.

BTW to remove Zaino a less invasive way than a polish is to use Rubbing Alcohol 50/50 mix with water.

The polishes and cleansers mentioned above if I'm not mistaken all contain oils , I know the 1Z does and this will have to be removed before the next Zaino application .

Alternate to all the above to remove Zaino is Klasse AIO and it also preps the surface and is Zaino safe.

 

[AntWrig]

Geeezz .. let the fear mongering begin .. Yes Dawn is high alkaline and yes its not the nicest on paint and rubber but christ .. no one is saying use Dawn weekly ..

Dawn is not going to make your paint fall off or your rubber rot off from around your windows if used once a year as part of a major detail prep in the Zaino protocol.

I agree .. if your using it for you weekly wash your goofy.

Some here think nothing of using Simple Green on thier cars or things like Tarminator that contains Xylene and many other products like that then go ballistic when they hear the word Dawn.

BTW to remove Zaino a less invasive way than a polish is to use Rubbing Alcohol 50/50 mix with water.

The polishes and cleansers mentioned above if I'm not mistaken all contain oils , I know the 1Z does and this will have to be removed before the next Zaino application .

Alternate to all the above to remove Zaino is Klasse AIO and it also preps the surface and is Zaino safe.

Who uses Simple Green or Tarminator to wash thier WHOLE car? The real question is Why even use a product not intended for automotive paints? I for one would NEVER put DAWN on my car or one of my customers cars.

 

[binaryflow]

Zaino rocks! :thumbup:

 

[Jesstzn]

[Who uses Simple Green or Tarminator to wash thier WHOLE car? The real question is Why even use a product not intended for automotive paints? I for one would NEVER put DAWN on my car or one of my customers cars.

Call up Sal Zaino and tell him you know more that he does .. I'm sure he will appreciate it. And as far as the fear mongering goes .. there is such a thing as pointing out the *possible* issues you can encounter as opposed to "Never, I repeat NEVER use Dawn on your car" with no reasons given.

Zaino specifies Dawn for a specific reason and thats to clean the surface of waxes and oils prior to the first layer of Zaino .. The reason they don't say "Use a paint cleaner" is because not all of them are oil free.

And I'll repeat again once a year will hurt nothing .. and the quote from Meguiars site.. good point but also good marketing .. Lets all pay $15 a bottle when $0.20 worth of product will do once a year.

As for Tarminator on the whole car .. right.. but its ok to use Xylene on the hood ?? .. People will us Tarminator all over the hood and sides without a thought because it is a boutique product when Mineral Spirits will do a safer job at 1/10 of the price.

And we all use all kinds of products throughout our detailing and some were *never* intended for automotive use.

And there is reference to chemicals in Dawn ( Ethyl Alcohol and Protease ) ... All most paint cleansers are is chemicals.

Here is the MSDS for Dawn .. Have a look .. its pretty passive .. Now look up some of your paint cleansers ( if you can find them ) and see which looks more scary.

 

[Saabfan]

Dawn is my choice and I have been detailing cars for years, even professionally on the side when I was much younger. This info about Dawn being bad for your car is hogwash. I suppose newspaper will damage the glass as well?

On a full detail I always start with Dawn, then clay, Zaino car wash, polish, wax, and boost. Example: http://www.misplacedyankee.com/clean.html

I just Zainoed the 04 Passat for the first time this weekend. I will post pics on my site soon...

 

[jwil]

I love the way that these questions about detailing always bottom out in a pissing contest on who is right. It's always "I'm right, here is my car, isn't it shiney?" Ya know what? I've never had a real professional detailer tell me to use Dawn, and by real pro I mean the people that make a living doing concours level detailing and that's all they do.

OTOH, I have had someone with years of experience in chemistry, specific to soaps and lubricants, give me several very good reasons NOT to use Dawn on a car. *waves at AtomicAlex*

It's a simple thing for me, find a product that is meant specifically to clean and prep automotive finishes before waxing, and is compatible with your wax system, and leave the dish soap next to the sink.

see....isn't my car shiney too. :wink:

 

[AntWrig]

[Who uses Simple Green or Tarminator to wash thier WHOLE car? The real question is Why even use a product not intended for automotive paints? I for one would NEVER put DAWN on my car or one of my customers cars.

Call up Sal Zaino and tell him you know more that he does .. I'm sure he will appreciate it. And as far as the fear mongering goes .. there is such a thing as pointing out the *possible* issues you can encounter as opposed to "Never, I repeat NEVER use Dawn on your car" with no reasons given.

Zaino specifies Dawn for a specific reason and thats to clean the surface of waxes and oils prior to the first layer of Zaino .. The reason they don't say "Use a paint cleaner" is because not all of them are oil free.

And I'll repeat again once a year will hurt nothing .. and the quote from Meguiars site.. good point but also good marketing .. Lets all pay $15 a bottle when $0.20 worth of product will do once a year.

As for Tarminator on the whole car .. right.. but its ok to use Xylene on the hood ?? .. People will us Tarminator all over the hood and sides without a thought because it is a boutique product when Mineral Spirits will do a safer job at 1/10 of the price.

And we all use all kinds of products throughout our detailing and some were *never* intended for automotive use.

And there is reference to chemicals in Dawn ( Ethyl Alcohol and Protease ) ... All most paint cleansers are is chemicals.

Here is the MSDS for Dawn .. Have a look .. its pretty passive .. Now look up some of your paint cleansers ( if you can find them ) and see which looks more scary.

If Sal loves DAWN so much, then why is he making a paint cleaner to remove the DAWN step completely from the Zaino process? :suspicio:

Could you list the MSDS for dawn.

 

[jwil]

Here is the MSDS in question:

http://216.178.79.158/leonardpaper/pub/msds/81300/P-08095.PDF

 

[Jesstzn]

It's a simple thing for me, find a product that is meant specifically to clean and prep automotive finishes before waxing, and is compatible with your wax system, and leave the dish soap next to the sink.

Ok .. we are talking Zaino here .. scroll up to the original post .. and to fall in line with jwils above .. I quote the Zaino site and #3 in the Application tips .

Quote 3. I would definitely recommend you remove the wax buildup on your paint. Just use Liquid Dawn (hand dishwashing liquid) as a car wash. It has a high alkaline content which cuts right thru carnauba wax, paraffin, silicone oils, etc. This will get your paint finish squeeky clean and wax free.

I don't advise making a habit of washing your car with Dawn. But for this scenario it's fine. High alkaline products like Dawn are tough on polishes. It will never harm the paint finish though. Unquote.

It will be great for Sal if he developes a cleaner to replace the Dawn step .. great for the finacial bottom line. Sal is no dummy .. he knows very well there is already an acceptable prep step out there besides Dawn for pre Zaino .. its called Klasse AIO but if he suggests it it does 2 things .. Makes the prep step for Zaino expensive and reduces sales on al already expensive system.. and also eliminates the need for him to develope a cleaner of his own that he will price between Dawn and AIO.


Now you have to remember we are talking Zaino/Dawn here not just Dawn as a stand alone.

I assume from some of the statements above if you all were going to apply Zaino on your car you would apply it over any cleaner wether it had oils or not and risk having no bond between the sealant and your paint.

Or would you use the *proper* step that is known to work for *this* scenareo.

Do you know if P21S paintwork cleansing lotion or Pinnacle paintwork cleansing lotion works well as well as mild polishes like Einszett express polish are all oil free?

 

[jwil]

If I were going to apply Zaino* I would use a fine polish, Einszett Express Polish, to be exact, followed by a 1:3 dilution of alcohol and water to remove the oils that I know are in the 1z. My specific complaint is with using Dawn on a car, not what you use instead to clean it.

As I said, use something specific to automotive finishes that is compatible with your wax system. If Klasse is specifically compatible, then use that. If you are using a wax system that is so completely incompatible with other polishes and products on the market then that raises a different question on the real benefits of that wax. It's fallacy to think that one brand is so utterly complete and all encompasing that it's all you need to use.

From my experience, different manufacturers make great products in different areas. Some make great polishes, others great waxes. I'm sure that Zaino makes some fine products as well, but I haven't seen any compelling reason to use their products over say, Pinnacle. And I know that Pinnacle doesn't lock me into using their formula.

But hey, that's just my opinion, and with that I'm out of this discussion. This has gotten to that silly pissing match stage I mentioned earlier.

*I wouldn't use Zaino.

 

[woodster76]

Agreed Jesstzn

You haven't led me wrong on my detailing and my car is to show for it.

Wood

Geeezz .. let the fear mongering begin .. Yes Dawn is high alkaline and yes its not the nicest on paint and rubber but christ .. no one is saying use Dawn weekly ..

Dawn is not going to make your paint fall off or your rubber rot off from around your windows if used once a year as part of a major detail prep in the Zaino protocol.

I agree .. if your using it for you weekly wash your goofy.

Some here think nothing of using Simple Green on thier cars or things like Tarminator that contains Xylene and many other products like that then go ballistic when they hear the word Dawn.

BTW to remove Zaino a less invasive way than a polish is to use Rubbing Alcohol 50/50 mix with water.

The polishes and cleansers mentioned above if I'm not mistaken all contain oils , I know the 1Z does and this will have to be removed before the next Zaino application .

Alternate to all the above to remove Zaino is Klasse AIO and it also preps the surface and is Zaino safe.