[AT] OT: Car Cleaning tip

[Phil Vorwerk]

At the risk of bringing something up that is common knowledge, I realized
something this year that I wish had dawned on me years ago.

I have a black SL, a mixed blessing.  Looks great when clean but shows
everything.  I had sworn many years ago that I would never own another black
car, but when I found this one everything else was so right that I went
against my long standing rule.

One of the frustrating parts of washing a black car is trying to get rid of
all the water spots.  I had gone to using only soft water, and bought a
special car wash sprayer that had a filter that was supposed to give you a
spot free rinse.  Besides the resulting low water pressure from the filter
that made rinsing the car rather tedious, I was underwhelmed with the
results - still a lot of streaks or water spots that were left, even using a
high quality, clean, chamois.

This spring I was getting ready to wash my SL when I had an "Aha!" moment.
On the shelf I had a couple of water filters that I had bought to fill my
hot tub.  For the heck of it, I decided to use one of the hot tub water
filters instead of my special car wash filter.  Unbelievable.  I have never
been able to get such a clean, streak and spot free finish before.  And the
best part is these filters are not expensive to use.  The cost was less than
$20.00, and it is supposed to be good for 8,000 to 10,000 gallons before
replacement.  This one has at least 5,000 gallons run through it already (my
wife uses it to change out the water every week in our 500 gallon fish pond)
so I think the rating is pretty legitimate.

Anyone else tried this?  I hope I'm not bringing up anything that is already
commonly done, but I'm so thrilled with the results that I just had to share
it with the forum.  Black cars do look just awesome when they're clean.....

Phil
Sunny Courtland, MN