cleaning the bottom of a car

what methods and cleaners should be used to clean and protect the bottom of a car? i read something about steam cleaning but that would get expensive to do it yourself.

A friend of mine used to go to the "do it yourself" car wash, lay down on the floor and clean the bottom of his Buick Grand National.
That is too extreme for me. A piece of 3/4" plastic plumbing pipe about 4' long with a 90 degree street L on one end and a hose connection on the other works fairly well for getting the salt off. A cap on the end of the street L with 3/16" holes drilled in it seems to be what works best for me. Just use a hose valve shutoff where you screw it on your hose. Keeps from spraying yourself in the face and allows you to reach all the way under the car.

Charles

thx for the help :)

If you're looking to clean grease n grime off the bottom, Simple Green does wonders. If you can rig something up like what Charles suggested but with a bottle...kinda like the garden or pesticide things that attach to your hose...then that should get the job done :)

Another idea could be a plain old lawn sprayer. The kind that you plug your hose into and lay out on the lawn and it creates a spray shower. It may not seem like a whole lot of direct pressure, but when it is only a few inches from its target, that's enough pressure.

Get one of those, and somehow rig in the aforementioned bottle-thing-a-ma-bob, and you've got a pretty good tool. I for one would take it to the do-it-yourself wash and do it the way your friend did it, since the cleaning brushe has a nice long stem and bristles that dispense soap (probably quicker to scrub than just to spray).