Review: Cobra Super Plush Jr Microfiber Towels - How to safely wash your car with a waterless wash

[Mike Phillips]

Review: Cobra Super Plush Jr Microfiber Towels - How to safely wash your car with a waterless wash




The Cobra Super Plush Jr Microfiber Towels






Waterless Wash - What is it?

A waterless wash is a way to clean you car when you don't have access to the normal water hose and bucket method. In my opinion, the best and safest way to wash a car is to hand wash using the traditional water hose and bucket method but there are simply times and situations where this is not possible.

For example,

1. Winter time when temperatures are extremely cold outside.
2. If you live in an area of Government restrictions.
3. If you live in an area of drought where car washing is not allowed to preserve water supplies.
4. If you live in an apartment or condo where washing is not allowed.
5. If you're traveling long distance and stopping at hotels along the way.

For instances like the above, a waterless wash is an alternative method for getting your car clean. The key is simple and that is to use a LOT of towels.


Won't a waterless wash put swirls and scratches into my car's finish?

Good question and the answer is "yes" if you only use one or two towels.


How many towels do I need?

Figure a minimum of one towel per body panel and two tales for larger panels like a large hood or roof.


Why does using a lot of towels make washing a car without running water safer?

It's all in your technique, which I'll show below but the key concept is this, after you use a towel to wipe a section of paint, you flip the towel to a clean, un-used side to make the next wipe. By never using a side of the towel that's already been used you avoid cross-contamination. It is cross-contamination, that is where you take the dirt removed from a section of paint that is now on the towel and then rub this dirt-on-towel over a new section of paint. Theoretically, washing a car by flipping your towel to a clean side often and/or switching to a clean towel you never rub removed dirt over a section of paint.



Gather your supplies

Here's what you'll need to safely wash your car using the waterless wash technique.

A clean supply of high quality microfiber towels. Figure a dozen at a minimum and more is better.
A quality waterless wash. There are dozens of these on the market and it's likely your brand of choice has a product in this category.
A clean bucket to place used/dirty towels into so they don't end up on the floor where they can get contaminated.
A brush for cleaning the wheels.
A dedicated wheel and tire towel for wiping down the wheels and tires. (Never use your paint care towels on wheels)



Always have a clean table or workbench to place your towels.





Here's a stack of 24 new towels that I have dedicated to ONLY be used for waterless washing.





Remove the tags

Seems like a no-brainer but I've see lots of people in my life using microfiber towels on their car's paint with the tag still attached.




Technique Tip

These tags are held on by a small amount of adhesive, the technique to remove the tag 100% along with all the adhesive is to remove the tag S-L-O-W-L-Y as this gives the adhesive glue time to RELEASE from the fibers. If you simply yank the on the tag you'll tend to rip the paper tag in half leaving the portion that didn't have any adhesive in your fingers and the portion that was attached to the towel still on the towel.






Griot's makes a great waterless wash and the sprayers are also really nice in that they will spray down a large volume of waterless wash.







My personal recommendation

For your special towels, have a dedicated storage container to protect them from becoming contaminated and to also dedicated them for specific detailing tasks. You can pick up a wide range of types and sizes of storage containers at most department stores.





Your Clean Dirty Towel Bucket

The words might not make sense so let me explain. Before placing any used towels into this bucket I personally washed it and wiped it clean and dry. I know 100% for sure this bucket is CLEAN. As I use towels to clean the car, after using a towel, I place it into the bucket. Therefore the only dirt or contaminants on the towel are from the dirt and contaminants that were on the car.

After I'm done washing the car the towels in this bucket will go directly to the washing machine. They will be washed, then dried, then inspected and folded and then stored in the above clean storage container. I have complete control over the Microfiber Towel Cycle. You MUST have protocols in place like this to preserve your towels so that you can have confidence that any time you use them they are clean and un-contaminated.






Technique - How to correctly use a waterless wash

Cleaning a car without a hose means thinking differently about the waterless wash than you normally think about products like spray detailers. Spray detailers are for removing,

1. Light dust
2. Fingerprints
3. Smudges

A waterless wash is for removing actual dirt and road film off of a car. A waterless wash has more cleaning ability than a spray detailer. Spray detailers tend to have more shine and gloss ingredients, this is why you should use a dedicated waterless wash for cleaning your car and save your spray detailers for light cleaning in-between normal washing.



Step 1: Spray down a lot of waterless wash.

The goals is to remove dirt without scratches and to do this you want LOTS of LIQUID on the surface. The liquid, that is the waterless wash is your LUBRICANT. Lots of lubricant plus lots of towels equals safe cleaning.

Spray down a heavy or wet application of waterless wash so you can see a layer of the liquid on the surface but no so much that the waterless wash is running or streaming off the paint. This just wastes product.








Step 2: Fold your microfiber towel 4-ways to give you 8 sides of the towel to wipe with.

Hold the towel like you see in the picture below so that the leading edge (of the folded towel), picks up all the dirt and traps it onto the towel.






Continue your wiping pass from one end of the panel to the other end of the panel. In this example I wiped from the windshield side of the hood to the front of the car.




Step 3: Lift the towel to make a second and even third wipe only now all the dirt on the car will be picked up in the middle of the towel or when you make a third wipe, at the back of the towel.

Using this technique you can actually get 3 wipes pers side fo the towel and never cross-contaminate the paint.




As you work around the car, place used towels in your clean dirty towel bucket.





And that's how you do it!






Review


First lets go over some scientific jargon as it relates to microfiber towels.


GSM
The The Cobra Super Plush Junior Microfiber Towel are heavy GSM towels. What does GSM stand for? GSM stands for grams per square meter (g/m2). Material with a higher GSM weighs more than material with a lower GSM. High GSM fabric is typically thicker, and if there is a pile, it is more plush. Heavier GSM towels will absorb more liquid than lighter towels. The Cobra Super Plush Junior Microfiber Towel has a GSM of 600, which is fairly hefty. This high GSM offers plenty of absorption with a towel that's very plus to the touch.


The Polyester to Polyamide Blend

The Cobra Super Plush Junior Microfiber Towel has a 75/25 blend of . Polyester and polyamide are polymer fibers, most microfiber for cleaning is made of a blend of the two materials. These filaments have different characteristics:

Polyester

• Wicking ability/Capillary Action
• Stiffness
• Scrubbing
• Less Expensive

Polyamide

• Absorbent
• Elastic/Stretch/Flex
• Softness
• More Expensive

The goal with your choice of microfiber towel is to use a blend that offers a balance of the characteristics listed above and with a 75/25 blend of polyester to polyamide that's what you get with the The Cobra Super Plush Junior Microfiber Towel.



The Practical Aspect for using Microfiber Towels

Now that the above is out of the way, here's what's really important and that's the PRACTICAL ASPECT. When I'm using a waterless wash I like a microfiber towel that has a high absorption rate so will blot up all the liquid off the surface. A plush nap is helpful because any dirt on the surface can bury into the weave instead of being trapped against the weave when wiping.

These are really nice towels with a quality heavy duty construction. I have a LOT Of these towels in Autogeek's Show Car Garage and we use them primarily for,

1. Waterless wash - wiping off the waterless wash.
2. Claying paint - to wipe off the clay lube.
3. Rinseless wash - spreading out the wash with one towel and wiping off the wash with a separate towel.

If you're looking for a quality heavy weight, plus microfiber towel you can use for all of the above PLUS also use for things like,

• Compounds
• Polishes
• Waxes and Sealants
• Spray Detailers
• Spray Waxes
• Spray Boosters
• Panel Wipes

Then these are great choice but like any towel, the key is to have protocols in place to keep your towels clean when not in use and also to have protocols in place for the washing, drying, inspecting, folding and storage aspects of your microfiber towels.



On Autogeek.com


Cobra Super Plush Junior Microfiber Towel - 16 x 16 inches

Cobra Super Plush Deluxe Microfiber Towel - 16 x 24 inches

Cobra Super Plush XL Microfiber Towel - 25 x 36 inches

[Mike Phillips]

Continued....


How to get the most miles out of your Cobra Super Plush Jr Microfiber Towels

If you understand how easy your car's paint can be scratched - then the below will make sense to you. To keep your microfiber towel INVESTMENT clean and ready to use the next time you're detailing your car - you MUST have protocols in place to process your towels. I call this,


The Microfiber Towel Cycle


The microfiber towel cycle goes like this,

1: Have a clean place out of open air to store your clean towels.
2: Use towels
3: Towels go into clean, no air vent clothes hamper or laundry bag
4: Wash and dry towels.
5: Clean place to fold and inspect towels.


After inspecting your towels your back to storing them in a clean place.


Everyone needs a dialed-in system for hey they use, wash and dry, inspect and store their towels.

Why?

It takes HOURS to machine polish a car.

It takes SECONDS to put swirls and scratches back into the paint because your towels are contaminated.



Microfiber is grabby!

The nature of microfiber is that its GRABBY. If you've ever had callouses on your hand and used a microfiber towel, you probably noticed the towel grabbed or snagged onto the rough edges of the callouses. The individual microscopic fibers are GREAT at removing compounds, polishes, waxes, coatings, etc. off surfaces. This is one of the reasons we like them. They work better at removing substances off surfaces than traditional wiping cloths like T-shirts, diapers, cheesecloth and cotton terrycloth towels.

But in the same way they excel at removing care detailing products, i.e. grabbing excess residues off of surfaces, they also excel at grabbing things you DON’T want in the weave of your towels.


Foreign particulates that are common on the ground or on a car,

• Dirt
• Sticks
• Leaves
• Bugs

Wind and leaves

Every time we open the garage door at Autogeek, the wind blows in leaves that gather outside in front of the door. They dry out, and if they get onto a towel, the break-up and now you have tiny sharp dry leaf particles in your towels. Same goes for dirt, dead bugs, etc.


You need a system in place to process your microfiber towels

Everyone, both professionals and enthusiasts need to have a SYSTEM in place to manage their towels. To manage the things that are going to TOUCH scratch-sensitive automotive clearcoats.



The Autogeek Laundry Department

Here's our washing machine and clothes dryer. I'm the Head Laundry Dude.





We go through a LOT of microfiber detergent as I use this to was both the towels and all the buffing pads we dirty.





Homemade laundry baskets. What's actually important is whatever you use - KEEP IT CLEAN.





The Clean Dirty Towel Bucket

Do you have a Clean Dirty Towel Bucket? Do you have something? That is something that's CLEAN to put your dirty towels into as you detail your car? If not - get one.

What's the idea?

The idea, or what the words mean on the bucket is - this is my CLEAN bucket where I can place my dirty towels. The point being I'm keeping my towels from getting sticks, rocks, leaves, etc out of the weave by having a bucket that's CLEAN to put my dirty towels into.







From the bucket to the washing machine

After a detailing task, take the towels to the washing machine and wash them. By doing this you've kept the towels as clean as possible and now they going through the washing and drying process.








I tend to only run loads about 3/4 full so there's plenty of SWISHING going on with the Agitator.







Top Loading Washing Machines with AGITATORS are the BEST!

Nice. The Agitator creates really good swishing action which is a tick on the violent side. This gets your towels clean. Modern or new top loading washing machines no longer have an Agitator. In their wisdom, wash machine manufacturers removed the agitator and replaced it with a VANE. Here's the deal - the VANE does SQUAT and lots of it. There's simply zero agitation, at least not enough to get your towels clean with the new VANE-STYLE washing machines. When you need a new washing machine, think outside the box - call your local Appliance Repair Store and tell them you want a good condition used Maytag Top Loader with an agitator or a Whirlpool Speed Queen Top Loading Washing Machine with an agitator.






Nice and clean...





Now into the dryer....





From the dryer to my clean laundry box....





Back to the garage....






Clean work surface

Part of the Microfiber Towel Cycle is having a clean place to inspect and then fold your towels.






ALWAYS CLEAN THE SURFACE

I never know who's been working in the garage or what they've been doing so before I place clean dry towels on the workbench I first give it a quick wipe with whatever is closest to my hand. In most cases it's a glass cleaner.







Now that I'm confident that workbench top is clean I can use it with confidence.





Ready to inspect and fold





How to inspect your towels

First LOOK at them. Next FEEL them with your clean hands.






Fluffy Weave vs Flat Weave

Some towels have 2 different types of weaves with one side being fluffy or having a long nap and the other side having a flat weave.

The Cobra Super Plush Jr Microfiber Towels have a fluffy side and a flat side. This is the fluffy side.




It's actually a very tight nap or loop of material but the loop is longer on this side.





The other side has a flat style weave.









Towel Folding Technique

I have 2 tips for folding your towels.

1: When folding the towel - fold it so the flat weave side is out and the fluffy weave side is folded to the inside. This is an extra precaution to help keep your towels un-contaminated as the flat weave side is a lot less likely to become contaminated than the fluffy weave side.

2: When you stack your towels, use the serpentine method of laying one towel down with the fold to one side and then lay the next towel down with the fold on the opposite side. By doing it this way your "stack" of towels won't fall over.







See what I mean by serpentining the towels as you stack them up?





Store your towels in a clean place

If you don't have dedicated storage like cupboards then get some plastic storage containers.





The big picture is to keep your clean, inspected and folded towels from becoming contaminated.




KISS = Keep it Simple Simon

[Mike Phillips]

More...

And of course, you don't have to use plastic storage containers to store your microfiber towels. Just be sure any storage cabinets or other places are clean and out of contact with air-borne dirt and dust.









Big Picture

Have a system in place to clean, inspect, fold and store your microfiber towel INVESTMENT so you get the most bang for your buck as well as ensure anytime you work on your car you're always working forward in the process, never backwards.


It takes hours to buff out a car and only seconds to put scratches back in -Mike Phillips

[Mike Phillips]

More....


And EVERYONE should have one of these in their garage.

Always clean on the inside.

[Mike Phillips]

Continued...



How to safely do a waterless wash without scratching the paint




I share a lot of tips and techniques throughout the video. I like to use the waterless wash technique to muscle cars and classics but they are also great for anytime you cannot wash a car with a hose and bucket.

And of course - how to do this washing technique without scratching the paint is the key thing.

[TrustJesus]

Yup, these good towels. I bought the same one and will buy again. I’m looking forward to perfecting this as I am mobile and this post has helped me a lot. Thanks

[TrustJesus]

Hey Mike, what if the clients car has a lot of bugs on the front grill? How will doing waterless wash /stuck bugs affect the wash process?

[57Rambler]

These are really nice towels with a quality heavy duty construction. I have a LOT Of these towels in Autogeek's Show Car Garage

I have a bunch of these towels myself, they are a major part of my MF arsenal (in addition to Forrest Green Edgeless and PFM's). I like to use them for QD, rinseless wipe off, and final buffing. The size and square shape also make them very versatile and easy to work with.

Homemade laundry baskets. What's actually important is whatever you use - KEEP IT CLEAN.

Recently there was a revolutionary new product developed for the laundry industry ...

Top Loading Washing Machines with AGITATORS are the BEST!


When you need a new washing machine, think outside the box - call your local Appliance Repair Store and tell them you want a good condition used Maytag Top Loader with an agitator or a Whirlpool Speed Queen Top Loading Washing Machine with an agitator.

Amen to this. Additionally, if you have a nice agitator machine, maintain it. They are very simple to work on and parts are readily available.

[Mike Phillips]

I have a bunch of these towels myself, they are a major part of my MF arsenal (in addition to Forrest Green Edgeless and PFM's). I like to use them for QD, rinseless wipe off, and final buffing. The size and square shape also make them very versatile and easy to work with.

Yeah - I'm a fan of SQUARE towels.

Recently there was a revolutionary new product developed for the laundry industry ...

Yeah, but I have the boxes and what I like about the boxes is there's now openings on the sides. Just a little thing.

Amen to this. Additionally, if you have a nice agitator machine, maintain it. They are very simple to work on and parts are readily available.

Agree. Traditional Agitator style washing machines are the only way to clean.

[muaddba]

So, silly question from a guy in Michigan...is a waterless wash a good method for cleaning your car in the winter? It gets COLD here, and I don't have a heated garage (it's unheated, detached), so how do I handle getting the salt and crap off of it during the winter?