A Lesson in Cleaning and Detailing Your Car

Dirt happens. Unfortunately, so do french fries down seats, soda spills on carpet, and unidentifiable smears on windows. All cars – but family cars especially – need cleaning eventually. Here are some tips:

Exterior

• Clean 1 section at a time. Start with the roof and move down, getting the bottom sections last. This will prevent the need to re-wash as dirt drips down.
• A mild, liquid soap is all you need to clean your car’s exterior. It will cut through grease and gunk and won’t hurt the finish.
• Use lots of water. Soak the car thoroughly before washing, and, when rinsing, there’s no such thing as “too rinsed.”
• Hose off your sponge or cloth before dipping it to get more soap. This will keep your soapy water from getting dirty.
• Don’t spend too much on fancy polishes. If you really want a shine, an inexpensive polish or wax will do just fine bringing out your car’s shine.

Interior

• Even if your vehicle is built to be rugged and has rubber mats to protect from mud and wetness, DO NOT hose out the interior. Vehicles aren’t made to handle that kind of flooding. Remove the mats to clean them.
• If vacuuming alone isn’t getting pet hair or pieces of lint out of seats or floor mats, try using a cleaning brush along with the vacuum. Rub gently with the brush to get the pesky debris out of the fibers and vacuum simultaneously to get rid of them forever. Also, lint rollers (or tape rolled around your hand so the sticky side faces out) can be useful here.
• A tooth brush is an excellent tool for getting into cracks where crumbs and dust collect.
• Think mild. You only want to use mild all-purpose cleaners on your vehicle.
• Test any cleaning product you use on a tiny, unnoticeable bit of material or fabric before using it to make sure it won’t discolor or damage your interior.
• If crumbs or debris are down a crack and the vacuum cleaner isn’t working, try blowing the objects with a keyboard blower (or hook your vacuum hose up so it blows instead of sucking if your vacuum has that capability). Once the crumbs are out of the crack, they should be easy to pick up with a vacuum.
• If you have a dirty seatbelt, try mixing a drop of a mild laundry detergent with some water. Then use a cloth to rub the solution onto the seatbelt to get it clean.

A clean vehicle is a comfortable vehicle. Be sure that your comfortable vehicle remains an operational vehicle. Bring it into Golden Triangle Auto Care for a free 30-point inspection. Happy driving!