What is Road Film?
It is the hardest film or dirt deposit to remove from your vehicle. Road film is mostly seen in early spring and early fall or during long, dry periods. The grime and film that is on the road does not get washed off the vehicles. It consists of electrically charged dust made up of rubber, tar, oil, etc. This is mostly seen on the windshield which is called "eyebrow" and on the lower half of the vehicle. It is a film that can easily be wiped off with your fingertip but cannot be easily washed off. It could be removed in the automatic bay if we use a low pH soap which could, over time, dull the finish of your vehicle. This is the only product that would attempt to remove road film because the acid dissolves the film. So in our customer's best
interest, we don't use this soap. Road film can be removed easily by washing and scrubbing by hand in the self serve bay. Also, other types of soil take different pH soap. We try to match the soap pH for the soil in our area. For instance, most of the pH soil is gravel and tar roads. A vehicle that comes in and was in a black dirt field, takes a different pH soap to get clean. That is why sometimes vehicles don't get cleaned properly. An example is different types of laudry soap works better than others on different soils. A really dirty pair of pants sometimes takes extra washes to get it clean because of the pH soil.
We are constantly testing and adjusting the soap to give you the best results. Washing your car more often helps keep film from building up on your car and puts a protective coating (such as Rain-X ) on it to help keep it clean and make it easier to clean. We hope this helps you understand the concept of washing.
