I have noticed that the hoods of many convertible cars show unsightly streaks and I had often wondered how this occured.

There was an interesting question in last week's Sunday Times In Gear (Car Clinic) supplement, regarding streaks on the softtop of a two year old Mazda MX5, which appeared to give the answer.

The writer said that the marks had been caused by over-enthusiastic use of a power hose, and that using a cleaner and protector had only made the marks worse. He asked the experts what he could do about it.

Unfortunately - if you have this problem - the reply said that this sort of damage is fairly common, and is not repairable, and that a replacement hood would be required. They added that even a standard garden hose should only be used with a very gentle spray. They did not reveal whether some hoods (due to the materials used) are more susceptible to this damage than others.

 

I gave mine a quick wash this morning as I had to clean my old car as its up for sale. We've got a Karcher pressure washer but I couldn't bring myself to use that at full power on the hood!!

I just used the gentle option or avoided washing it as it wasn't dirty.

 

I never wash mine, you're not supposed to.

I've treated mine with hood protector and now all I do is rinse the dirt off with the hose on a light spray and it lifts the dirt and beads off the roof.

 

I got a power washer, what i do is aim it up at the sky and let the water fall onto the hood..kinna mimic raining...never aim directly at the hood.

 

Of course you are supposed to wash them, they are nylon nothing special, using a lance/power steamer is a though for the aforementioned reason.

Wash your softtop as you would the rest of your car, ie with the shampoo you use, or whatever, rinse off with a sprinkler style cold water hose, then dry with a drying towel, or synthetic chamois depending on your choice/method of drying.

Then you can if you wish apply your 'roof specific cleaners and protectants'.

I will just add a caveat to this: wash the roof with whatever you wash your car with as long as the product doesn't contain wax, like those rubbish 'wash n wax' all in one type products as they will make your roof streaky. In fact never wash your car with anything that states ' wash and wax all in one, no need to wax your car just use our super horrible greasy stuff, that will leave nice greasy marks all over your car' you know what I am talking about, avoid those products

 

i hammered mine with my karcher on full power when i first got my S, got all the dirt out (roof was going green!), treated it, never full powered it since

 

I love it when you talk about cleaning cars Paul, you make it sound like a Marks and Spencers advert

 

ahahaha


@ Ste yep if the roof is very bad in the first place, it may well be worth attacking it with the steam cleaner, but only in those circumstances IMO of course