How Long Do You Leave Mud on Your Jeep?
Do you let Mother Nature serve as your Jeep wash, or do you carry a pressure washer in the back?
Any Jeep, by definition, is an off-road vehicle. And while many of them never leave the tarmac, that isn’t the case here at JK Forum. Here, our members wear their mud as a badge of honor, and they wear it proudly. But since the Jeep Wrangler is, of course, a vehicle underneath all that brown gooey goodness, shouldn’t you occasionally wash it off? Or do you just let Mother Nature take care of that? It’s a burning question that matt852 presented here in the form of a poll.
“I would like to hear how long you guys let your JKs be caked in mud and how the paint and metal are doing. The longest I’ve left mine was one week and the paint was alright.”
Of course, some feel that frivolous things like actually washing a Jeep are just plain silly.
“I leave the mud on till it washes itself off,” said coltc2000.
“Wash my Jeep,” asks zking1776. “Isn’t that why it rains? I do wash it at the end of winter to get the salt off and once or twice in the summer.”
Others prefer to wash their rides more frequently.
“Generally a couple of days,” said Kalamari.“Looks cool, but I eventually get tired of getting covered in dirt whenever I’m near my Jeep. Dirty hands when I open the door, dirty pants getting in and out, dirty shirt or jacket whenever I lean into the cargo area. Yeah, probably the 2-5 day range. In fact, I’ll be washing it tomorrow. It’s been almost a week.”
And some apparently don’t waste any time at all!
“I carry a pressure washer with me,” said Fattony.
Aside from being neat freaks, it seems that some of our resident Jeep owners have discovered other issues when leaving mud on too long.
“I used to leave the mud on till it rained,” admits bkw. “But after last year with some of the local mud around here that I believe was mixed with acid rain it stained the Jeep pretty badly. However, two hours with a clay bar and some serious elbow grease removed all the spots and stains. Also, the stink from old mud and rotten leaves near the exhaust really kicks up a bad smell. Now I’ll at least rinse the mud off with a hose, if not wash her down completely. And I’ll always get all the crud out from on top of my transmission armor to keep it from stinking.”
