Washing Microfiber

Keeping good care of your microfibres will make them last a long time and give you way more value out of them. I have some 5-6 year old towels that still perform great. Taking correct care of your towels is very important. A few things before the wash begins:

• If you have towels with extreme dirt levels or from especially dirty areas wash them separately.

Sort out white coloured stuff if you want it to stay white

• a towel that has not dried will clean better vs. a towel that had time to dry. If possible, keep your towels wet until the wash

A good pre soak in some MF detergent will take care of many things -rubber is one of the things that will almost never come out, if you have those classic black rubber stains they will stay in, that is why you should use separate rubber towels where you just accept the stains.

• have throw away towels on hand, for a few things washing the towel is just not worth it vs getting a new one
• Microfiber towels should Neve the washed with regular laundry together

Now to the actual washing, after you sorted your towels: I wash my towels at 400-600 RPM, 40-60 degrees Celsius on the delicate setting with an extra rinse. I know those settings might not be available to you on your washing machine, but please don’t be feared by a little temperature. The number of towels that really can’t do heat is few (I can think of exactly one) and those are at best hand washed anyways. Most regular microfiber is rather temperature stable an can do 60°C some even 90°C, but that is only for deep clean and before you do that you should contact the towel manufacturer.

After the wash I dry my Towels in the Dryer on the most delicate setting there is. If your towels still don’t look nice a good brushing out can help. I personally am a big advocate of real car specific microfiber detergent. If that is not available to you you want a detergent that is as free of softeners as possible. – If you didn’t get the desired cleaning results one way of remedy can be washing the towel with a regular laundry detergent as those are much more potent in many cases vs. our car detergents. After that immediately do a second wash with MF Detergent to remove all the stuff we don’t want in our microfibres that I’ve mentioned above. On the topic of vinegar that many people seem to add to their wash I want to add that vinegar is one of the most aggressive chemicals against some types of gaskets out there, so please check with the manufacturer of your washing machine before using it, it might heavily degrade the gaskets over time depending on which kind of gasket is used in your specific machine.

Addendum: Which towels should you separate?

• Colour

Some colours get easily discoloured by other towels, especially white ones or lighter colours. Wash those separated.

• non coating sealant towels

Those can mostly be reused. They sealant can however over time reduce the water absorption of the towel. Best practice is to let those soak first and then wash them separate.

• Coating Towels

Those will very likely not be reusable on paint anyways. Immediately dunk them in a bucket full of detergent and water after use, don’t let dry, wash separately from anything else. I like to follow Yves from Gyeons method, which is cutting an edge off so you know those towels are for places where scratches don’t matter only.

• Tar Towels

Most tar removers and tar itself are such a pain to remove that it’s best to just dump them. If you don’t want to do that the same, extend wash process should be followed and they should be checked after as they might need mutliple rounds. Also beware of the dryer as any left over solvents could be a fire hazard. -towels fallen on the ground Totally depends on your ground, do a damage analysis first, can be straight into the dump or with the regular towels. Check how much and what kind of contamination they have.

• New towels

New towels should definitely be washed first. They also often give up colour residue from production for the first washes. This can in the worst transfer in your paint and ruin it. It is advisable to first let them soak to get rid of the worst colouring agents, then washing them separately once before you put them to use. Especially bad are red and black towels from my experience.