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View Full Version : Pioneer Express Car Wash in Hamilton - a review



zmz3
01-17-2011, 11:21 PM
Hello everyone,

I have seen some people ask about car washes and which to go to and which to avoid. While I do hand wash my cars in summer, I certainly cannot do that with -15 outside and salt has to stay off the paint. And so, for the past several years, I have been using both the Canadian Tire 'touchless' express car wash and I have recently tried the Pioneer Express Car Wash.

The Pioneer Express Car Wash is not touchless, however, like many other generic car wash places, they have massive cloths that go back and forth and clean, and eventually ones that dry your car before the blow dryer. Having said that, many other generic car wash places with these cloths still don't clean nearly as good as this, at least in the Hamilton area.

Well today, I gave my Mazda 3 a basic express wash, which I thought was expensive, coming to $9.59, partially due to no gas purchase. It sucks because at the Canadian tire touchless wash, the people are used to me so I usually get ultimate with gas, even though I never buy any gas from there.

Anyways, the process took about 3 mintues and the car came out decently clean, definately cleaner than Canadian tire touchless which I have been using for years.

The only down side to this, is that since its generic, it's not exactly designed for cars with long antennas, and while it might not break it off, it certainly doesn't help that those massive washing and drying cloths put a decent amount of stress on it. I assume people with the stubby shark fin atenna will have no issues and I do recommend it for people.

With touchless, I notice that most of the time, the sides of the car has some white areas, where as today, I found none of that, and the car looked great!

Will definately go there more often once I get the stubby shark fin attena installed ;)

For now, I will keep that salt of the car every 2 weeks :)

Hope this helps!

bryansbestwax
01-17-2011, 11:31 PM
Get some ONR and wash it in the garage, or outside as long as it is above freezing. This is much better for your car.

cohenh
01-18-2011, 05:49 PM
Get some ONR and wash it in the garage, or outside as long as it is above freezing. This is much better for your car.

What's ONR?

leungly
01-18-2011, 07:17 PM
ONR = Optimum No Rinse (a rinseless wash soap) - http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-744800996428313622#

Yeah any soft touch will likely do a better job than a touchless however the liklihood of inducing swirls in the paint/clear coat are greatly increased. Like all things there are pros and cons with any choice.

Like Bryan mentioned, yeah ONR and above freezing is somewhat manageable depending on ones propensity to freezing their fingers/hands off. I've done it once or twice at the zero or plus one mark.

cohenh
01-18-2011, 09:01 PM
Nice, I didn't know there was such a product. How does it do on salt covered cars?

leungly
01-19-2011, 10:36 AM
Honestly it's hard to say. I would personally rinse off as much as possible with a hose or use a touchless wash prior to an ONR Wash if I had a lot of caked on salt. Being extremely gentle with the wash media would probably be part of my process.

http://myg37.com/forums/body-interior-exterior-lighting/215740-optimum-no-rinse-onr-is-not-infallible-2.html
This guy seems to have had some trouble (from the initial post) but another guy also posts on page 2 about how he had a very good experience so a lot of it might come down to technique and diligence in rinsing out the wash mitt and such.

http://forums.redflagdeals.com/salt-concentration-onr-how-do-you-wash-your-chamois-after-993030/
More discussions.