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Wow, read this entire thread and nobody mentioned using a water demineralization system.
I have been using one for years, i started because trying to wash a black boat out in the Texas sun is one of the most frustrating and labor intensive jobs you can imagine.
Although not cheap, the time and energy it saves is priceless. You can literally wash your vehicles and just let them air dry without any water spots forming. I do go a step further and blow the majority of the water off but it is really not necessary, I just do it so that any dust or pollen blowing around doesn’t settle in the water.
Yep, over on the Pommy forum lots of them use water purifier/softener systems to (amongst other things) prevent water spotting on the car.
It's all about the level of dissolved salts and minerals in your tap water.
At my joint the only exterior tap is recycled water which has an absolutely mahoosive amount of minerals in it (waaay too much for any water softener to cope with) and if I use it on the car the water spotting is horrendous and takes literally hours to remove.
So I have never washed the F-Type using this water, instead 95% of the time I use waterless wash in the garage (Dodo Juice Basics of Bling Quick Detailer, fantastic stuff!) and the other 5% of the time I go down the car wash and use only two things - high pressure soap and spotless rinse (so zero touching of the paintwork) then back home a quick going over with the Dodo Juice.
All of the water in our house and external taps goes through filters (a pre-fliter then an aquasana rhino filter) to remove most impurities, I tested it recently (to see if it would affect fish in pot ponds) and it has zero chlorine in it and neutral ph, whereas my neighbour's registered for both.
I dont think though that it completely prevents water spotting as in my experience this occurs when dust settles in the water droplets and then that creates water marks. That said, a blast up and down the highway removes 90% of the water from the car after a wash, with only bits around the rear bumper and license plate remaining to be wiped off with a microfibre cloth. I am still frothing over how good the polish angel products are, they have really made looking after our cars a breeze.
Had a filter/softener system installed in my house when we bought it last year. Guy asked if I wanted to exclude the outside taps to save on salt. My first thought was hell no, need that soft water for the cars more than for my shower.
It should be noted for those that are unaware that there is a difference between demineralization and water softeners.
I will leave the science for google to explain properly but most water softeners leave a small amount of salt in the water, demineralization leaves nothing in the water.