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Home > Auto > Car Care > Washing & Drying
For Years I Dried My Black Car With A Pile Of Towels And Still Found Water Spots And Swirls Whenever The Sun Hit The Hood. Then My Son-In-Law Clicked A Palm-Sized Jet Onto My Drill Battery, And I Finished A Wash Without A Towel Touching The Paint
I spent years and a small fortune on microfiber towels, a chamois, drying sprays and a cheap corded leaf blower, and I still couldn't get one black car dry without a spot on it. Then my son-in-law, who details cars for a living, handed me a palm-sized black jet and told me to quit wiping my paint. I used it on my next wash, and by the end of the day every drying towel I owned was in a drawer. They haven't come out since.
There was a stretch where I nearly gave up the Sunday morning meet in the diner parking lot. I couldn't face one more week of Vic, who keeps his red pickup spotless, leaning over my hood with a grin and counting my swirls out loud.
I'm 58. I bought my black sedan new nine years ago, and I've washed it myself in the driveway most Saturdays since, because I don't trust anybody else to do it right.
In the sun, though, that paint looked twice its age. The hood was covered in fine swirls, and the badges and grille had white spots dried onto them. There was always one last drip, too, that waited until I'd put the towels away and then ran out of a mirror.
If I had to put a number on it, fifteen hundred dollars went into drying that one car, and I'm not digging out the receipts to check. Every towel swore it was safe on paint. Every bottle promised no streaks. The shelf over my bench is lined with the ones that lied.
I did everything the labels told me, in the order they told me, and the paint still looked a little worse every year.
My daughter Katie and her husband, Eli, come over for lunch most Saturdays. Eli is 34 and runs a one-man mobile detailing business out of his van. He's calm, and his jokes are so dry you sometimes miss them. I had never once asked him to look at my car, which tells you how stubborn I am.
That Saturday he wandered out with his coffee and watched me work a towel over the hood. "Lou," he said, "why are you scrubbing grit into hot paint?"
I didn't have a good answer, so I got cranky instead.
"What am I supposed to do, let it drip dry? I've bought every towel they make, Eli. The hood starts spotting before I'm done with the roof, and whatever I use, I find new marks on it the next day."
He set his coffee on the porch rail and said something I never expected to hear from a detailer:
"Put the towel down, Lou. Every time you wipe that hood, you're the one putting the swirls in it. Get the water off with air and don't let anything touch the paint. Wait here. I've got something in the van."
The Afternoon My Son-In-Law Took The Towel Out Of My Hand
By the time he came back I'd finished the hood anyway. He was carrying something small and black that I took for a glue gun.
It was an StormJet 2.0, all of 0.66 lbs, with a trigger on the grip and a round nozzle on the front. His own DeWalt battery was clicked in underneath.
"The detailers I know quit rubbing paint dry years ago," he said. "A towel grabs whatever dirt the wash missed and drags it all over your clearcoat. This thing just moves air."
I laughed at him. "Eli, I've got a leaf blower hanging right there on the wall. All it ever did was drag its cord across the trunk and blow water off the hood onto the windshield."
Eli didn't argue. His was the DeWalt version, same batteries as every tool in my garage, so he slid his own battery off, pulled the 20V battery off my drill and clicked the jet onto that. "Next Saturday, wash it like you always do. Then go over the mirrors, the badges, the grille and the door shuts with this, and don't let a towel near the paint. You'll see what I mean."
After that shelf, I didn't believe anybody who told me they had the answer. But Eli wasn't selling anything.
He took the towel out of my hand, folded it over his shoulder like a waiter and set the jet down on my bench. Fine, I told him. Next Saturday.
What The First Towel-Free Wash Looked Like
The next Saturday I washed the car the same as any other week, clicked a charged DeWalt battery onto the StormJet and squeezed the trigger.
It pushed back against my palm harder than anything that size has a right to. I started at the roof and worked down, a panel at a time.
For about a second I figured it was a gimmick. I could already picture it up on the shelf with the sprays and the fancy chamois, one more thing I'd been talked into.
Then the water went. It slid off the roof in one sheet, and the paint it left behind was dry. Nothing had touched it but air.
The mirrors came next, and the badges, and the grille.
I opened the doors and did the shuts, the trunk seams and the wheels.
There wasn't a towel streak on it, because there wasn't a towel. No drips came out of the seams later, either.
I texted Eli a photo of the grille. "Explain this."
He wrote back a minute later: "Focused air. It gets down into the seams and drives the water out, where a towel would just smear it across the paint. At up to 200 MPH, it blows the water out of the badges and mirrors before it has time to spot. That's all there is to it. Now go put those towels in a drawer and leave them there."
I backed up to the end of the driveway.
The hood was dry, and the black looked deep enough to put my hand into.
I stood there grinning.
Most Saturdays I'd find little white spots on the doors under the mirrors by supper. That day I went back out twice to check, the second time with a flashlight, and there were none.
The old swirls were still there if you went looking. But drying it with air hadn't added any new ones.
That was one wash.
Why Air Did What My Towels Never Could
That evening I called Eli and told him he wasn't hanging up until he'd explained what I'd seen in my driveway.
Eli doesn't rush anything, and he didn't rush this. By the time he was done I was mad at myself, and at every dollar I'd spent on towels.
What A Towel Actually Does To Clearcoat
A towel doesn't stay clean for long. Whatever grit the rinse missed ends up in the fibers, and every wipe after that can put a mark in the clearcoat too fine to see on its own.
I did that most Saturdays for nine years. Those were the swirls I kept seeing whenever the sun came across the hood, and nobody put them there but me.
And the sun is no help. On a black car the hood gets hot enough to dry the water before you reach it, and that leaves spots. So you rub harder to get them out, which only puts more pressure on that same grit.
Where The Water Hides After You Think You're Done
Then he got to the drips:
"Lou, the water you can see is the easy part. The rest is sitting in the mirror housings, behind every badge, inside the grille, in the door shuts and the gaps between panels. A towel can't really get at any of it. So it waits, and right about when you're coiling up the hose it runs out and down a panel you just dried."
On warm paint it dries fast, and what it leaves behind is a fresh water spot on a car you'd already called done.
The StormJet reaches those pockets because air goes where a towel can't. Aim it into a mirror housing or behind a badge, squeeze the trigger, and it pushes the water OUT.
I do one slow lap now and I'm finished. Whatever used to sneak out after I walked away lands on the driveway, where it belongs.
I asked him why he hadn't told me all this years ago. He said I'd never once asked.
My towels only moved water from panel to panel. The StormJet moves it off the car, and nothing so much as brushes the paint.
What's Inside The StormJet 2.0
He knew the specs by heart, so I wrote them down:
A brushless motor at 130,000 RPM, putting out up to 200 MPH of focused air, and a variable-speed trigger so you decide how hard it blows
A reinforced carbon fiber blend body, and the tool itself weighs 0.66 lbs, light enough to hold out one-handed for a full lap without my shoulder complaining
Versions to match the DeWalt, Makita, Milwaukee or Bosch 18V–21V batteries you already own, battery not included; it runs about 10–15 minutes on a 4Ah or 15–25 on a 6Ah, and one charged battery is typically enough to dry a car
My old leaf blower meant running a cord across a wet driveway. This one has no cord and burns no gas, and since it runs on my drill batteries I never bought a new charger.
The Sunday Meet Where Vic Finally Stopped Teasing Me
The next Sunday morning I drove over to the meet in the diner parking lot.
And I'd done almost nothing to get it ready. I rinsed it with the hose and walked one lap around it with the StormJet. That was it.
I'd never done less work before a meet in my life.
I got there early and, instead of hiding in my usual shady corner, parked with the hood in full sun.
It took him about two minutes to find me.
Vic. Late sixties, a red pickup you could comb your hair in, and for years he's said hello by pointing at the swirls on my hood with that grin of his. He headed straight for the front of my car.
He stopped at my bumper and didn't say a word.
My stomach sank. Part of me wanted to get back in and drive home. But he was already leaning in over the hood.
While he looked it over, I stood back with my coffee and tried not to hover. What I was really doing was sighting down the hood in that low morning sun, the angle that always gave me away.
And what was looking back at me?
My own face, in a hood that was clean and dry edge to edge, with not one fresh water spot. I won't pretend the old swirls were gone. You could find them if you hunted. But there wasn't a streak on it, and the mirrors hadn't leaked a drop on the drive over.
He was still bent over it, squinting.
Vic straightened up. "Lou."
"Vic."
"That hood is..." He trailed off, and for once there was no grin. Like he'd walked over with his usual wisecrack ready and forgot it somewhere around my bumper.
"...spotless. What did you do to it?"
"Thanks." That's all I gave him.
I took my coffee inside and sat by the window where I could see the car. For years I'd avoided looking at it in the sun.
I was proud of that car again.
What Changed Over The Next Few Weeks
After that first wash I used the StormJet every Saturday, half expecting it to let me down like everything else had.
Week 1: The whole car was dry in a few minutes on one battery. There were no water spots on the badges or the grille, and no towel streaks on the hood, because no towel went near it. I went looking for a missed drip and never found one.
Week 3: Drying the car wasn't adding new swirls anymore, and with nothing fresh piling up on top of the old ones, the black looked deeper. My wife, Donna, came out with the mail and asked if I'd waxed it. I hadn't. I'd just stopped dragging a towel across it.
Week 6: I was drying Katie's SUV by then too. She says Eli's paying customers get more of his time than her car does. Then my neighbor wheeled his motorcycle over and asked if I'd do his while I had the jet out.
Week 10: One evening I rolled the car out and stood there until the streetlights came on. Not showroom new. But mine. Nine years old, and I like looking at it again.
Eli circled it twice and said nothing. From a detailer, I'll take that.
I never went back for the towels. I'm done chasing drips that run out of the mirrors and trunk seams twenty minutes after I thought I'd finished. I wash it, run the jet around it once, and click the battery back onto my drill.
I also quit standing under the garage light at night, tilting my head at the hood and counting marks. The only ones on it now are the old ones I put there myself.
Why The Car Care Aisle Never Told Me About This
What burns me up is this:
Walk down any car care aisle and it's all drying towels and sprays that sort of work, just well enough to have you back next month for another round of the same stuff.
If one tool did the whole job, you'd buy it once and be done shopping. There goes an aisle full of repeat customers.
Be honest. Has any towel you ever bought been good enough that you never needed another one? I had a drawer full of "the last towel you'll ever need."
So you keep buying. Towels, then a chamois, then a drying aid, then a quick detailer for the streaks the drying aid left. Get fed up and you start pricing corded car dryers, which run a few hundred dollars and need an outlet.
By my own rough math, I was spending a couple hundred bucks a year on that shelf, plus a big chunk of every Saturday morning.
The StormJet gets you off that merry-go-round.
One jet. It clicks onto the same DeWalt battery that runs my drill, and one charge usually dries the whole car.
Detailers have been drying cars with air for years. Eli says new customers still walk over to ask what that little black thing is the first time he uses it on their car.
The towel aisle is never going to steer you toward something that makes half its shelf pointless. Most people hear about it the way I did, from someone who details cars for a living.
Eli summed it up in that flat way of his: "Every garage I pull up to has the same bin somewhere. A pile of towels and a row of sprays, each one bought to fix what the last one did. I don't tell anybody to throw it out. Once they switch to air, that bin just stops growing."
Why Every Towel Dry Costs You More Than You Think
There was one more thing Eli said that I keep chewing on:
Every towel dry can drag a little grit across the clearcoat and leave marks too fine to notice. Every drop you let dry on hot paint can leave a spot that won't wipe off. One wash won't show it. A year of Saturdays will.
I made him say it again, slower.
The wash gets most of the dirt off, but never all of it. Whatever's left ends up in your towel, and the towel drags it across the paint on every pass. On a hot day the water you haven't reached yet dries where it sits and leaves a spot. You never see it happen. You just notice one day that the paint looks tired.
What stung was the next part: None of it ever resets.
Each wash starts where the last one left the paint. New marks land on top of the old ones, and the more of them there are, the less light the paint throws back, until a black car looks a little gray.
I figure I've towel-dried this car close to four hundred times.
Shine a flashlight on a brand-new black panel and you get one clean dot of light. Towel-dry that panel a few hundred times and shine it again. Now the dot sits in the middle of a halo of fine scratches. That's my hood in the afternoon sun.
I figured this out embarrassingly late. I'm fifty-eight. For nine years I thought a softer towel and more elbow grease were the answer, and the whole time I was rubbing grit into the paint I was trying to look after.
I can't take back the swirls already in my paint. I can stop adding new ones.
The way I see it, you still have time to keep your paint from ending up like mine.
Stick with the towel, and this is what's coming:
Over the next year:
A few more fine marks go into the clearcoat with every towel dry
Spots show up on the badges and grille, where water hides and dries
The gloss slips, and the hood looks hazy at certain angles
The car looks clean from across the driveway and tired up close
In a few years:
The swirls you only catch in bright sun start showing from across a parking lot
The color goes flat and the paint starts looking older than the car is
Your reflection in the hood goes soft and fuzzy around the edges
Getting the shine back means paying a detailer for machine polishing or paint correction
Here's the part nobody puts on the label:
Towel drying feels free because the towels are already paid for. The bill comes later, all at once, for marks you put there yourself, towel by towel.
The good news is you can quit running up that bill starting this weekend.
With the StormJet, the towel stays in the drawer. I wash the car like always, then walk around it with the jet, and the air pushes the water off the panels and out of the mirrors, badges, grille and door shuts.
The water's gone before it can spot, and nothing but air touches the paint while it dries.
You can live with swirls. I did for years, and I got real good at parking with the hood out of the sun.
But ask yourself this: Would you rather put the towel down now and keep the paint you've got? Or give it a few more years and pay a detailer to fix what the towels did?
I'm not telling you this to scare you. I'd have given a lot for someone to tell me the same thing the week I brought this car home.
The Catch: The 45% Off Sale Price Won't Last
Eli buys his from the official StormJet store, shopstormjet.com. Cheap look-alikes pop up online, so make sure yours is the real thing.
It's on sale for now, and I can't tell you how long that lasts. A single jet is $149.95 instead of the regular $272.95. That's 45% off.
Eli told me to look at the two-pack for $245.95 or the three-pack for $287.95. Otherwise, he said, mine would spend every weekend at somebody else's house.
He's seen it happen. One of his regular customers lent his jet out for a week and had to towel-dry his truck like the old days. He said the drips kept running out of the mirrors until dinner.
I went with the two-pack. One lives on my garage shelf. The other went to Vic, after he turned up in my driveway two Saturdays in a row asking to borrow mine.
Grab one at the sale price. The battery isn't included, so get the DeWalt, Makita, Milwaukee or Bosch version to match yours, and try it at home under the 90-day money-back guarantee.
Tap below to get your StormJet 2.0 at the sale price
TRY THE STORMJET 2.0 →- ⚡ 200 MPH of focused air, dries the car in minutes
- 🔋 Clicks onto your DeWalt, Makita, Milwaukee or Bosch battery
- 🛡️ 90-day money-back guarantee
What Other StormJet Owners Are Saying
Verified Reviews From The StormJet Store
Honestly didn't believe the hype until I tried it. My car was soaking wet and this thing dried it completely in minutes. No water spots, no chamois needed. Absolutely worth every penny.
I detail cars professionally and this is now part of every wash. Gets water out of the door rubbers, mirrors and badges, places a chamois can't reach. My customers comment on the finish every time.
He's obsessed with his car and I had no idea what to get him. Bought this on a recommendation and he literally said wow the second he turned it on. He uses it every single weekend now.
If You've Read This Far, Stop Dragging A Towel Across Your Paint
I used to dread washing the car.
Saturdays always went the same way. I'd wash it, then work my way around it with a stack of towels while every drop I missed dried into a hard water spot on the badges and grille. And the swirls that lit up whenever the sun caught the hood? My own handiwork, nine years of it. Some weekends I thought about handing Eli the keys, and I'd never have heard the end of it.
Then came my first wash with Eli's jet. I stood in the driveway watching the water blow off the hood and out of the mirrors while my towels sat on the garage bench, bone dry, and caught myself smiling with nobody around to impress.
Plain old pride in my own car.
Before that, I'd lock it with the fob over my shoulder and head inside. I didn't even like looking at it anymore.
That changed over a few washes with the StormJet. Now the paint's dry in minutes and nothing touches it but air. It didn't erase the old swirls, and I won't pretend it did, but I've stopped adding new ones and the water spots quit showing up. Last week I pulled in and saw the whole house reflected in the hood. I got out and stood in the driveway grinning at a nine-year-old sedan.
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