Follow these 10 awesome Tips to Clean Your Car like a Pro to get your car in show and shine condition this summer #MidasLiquids
Regardless of your car and budget, Randburg Midas have the perfect car cleaning and detailing products for you. Pop in and let us help you!
1 It’s all about beauty
Think of the surface of your car as you would your face, it needs to be properly taken care of in order to have a healthy glow.
Today, it’s easier than ever to do that yourself: Techniques developed by professional detailers have trickled down to passionate car enthusiasts. Auto paint has been improved from the days of lacquer covered with carnauba paste wax, and now it’s more durable and shines longer than ever.
If you’re considering some DIY detailing, proceed with caution. The pro detailers who provided us with these tips are practiced with rotating buffers that clean and resurface paint with wool or charcoal-coated foam pads, and they warn that such machines are not for an amateur Saturday-morning project. But the following 10 steps will help your home detailing go smoothly. The order for detailing tasks, the pros tell us, is important, and begins with the unpainted surfaces of your car.
NOTE: When to See a Pro
When your paint has a scratch that goes down to the metal, the only way to fix it is by sanding and filling the scratch with paint using a tiny pinstriping brush. Pros can blend this type of fix with surrounding paint, but that takes experience. To find a pro, check your local car clubs and shows; usually a few names will surface. The detailer should interview you about your expectations, and then suggest how to exceed them.
2 Start with Compressed Air and Stiff Scrub Brushes on Your Carpets
The first step, is to fire up the air compressor and blow dirt from the nooks and crannies of your car’s floor onto the middle of the carpet, where you can easily vacuum it up. Stiff brushes also loosen dirt from the carpets and upholstery. If you’ve got leather seats, use a conditioner with aloe or similar.
3 Duct Clean to Keep that New-Car Smell
Compressed air from a small, portable compressor is an easy way to blow dust and dirt out of heating and air-conditioning ductwork. The trick is to aim the high-pressure air at the walls of the ducts behind the vent grilles, where dust and dirt stick and cause musty smells. If your car has a cabin air filter you can change it, or remove it and blow the dust and dirt out.
4 Use Non-Acid-Based Tire Cleaners
Acid-based cleaners can cause bare alloy wheels to oxidize and pit, and they can damage wheels painted with color or clear coatings.
Use a degreaser on wheels, but avoid detergents because they can damage paint if splashed. Again, remember to go in the correct order: Wheels and tires should be cleaned before you clean and protect your car’s paint.
5 The Best Carwash is a Hand Wash
“We recommend hand washing. Hand washing gives you a chance to experience the tactile shape of your baby, and it’s also a great way to inspect and familiarize yourself with the car’s surfaces.
When water evaporates, it leaves minerals and dirt on the surface of your car. So when you’re done with the wash, dry the surface with a micro fibre cloth.
6 Once is often not enough
Often it takes more than just a wash to get your paint clean. Bird droppings and man-made pollutants settle on the paint and, after a while, can saturate through wax and clear coatings into the color coat underneath. With your car still out of the sun, run your dry hand across the surface of the paint. If it feels rough, it needs to be cleaned again.
7 Polish to Smooth Out Paint
The purpose of polish is to smooth the surface of the paint, which will make it shine and help your car look newer. (Some polishes contain wax, which also protects the paint, but the wax doesn’t smooth the paint itself.) When you polish your paint, you can use an oscillating polishing machine. The pros use a rotating polishing machine, which works faster but will harm the paint if you’re not careful. For DIYers new to detailing, oscillating buffers are more forgiving.
8 Protect Paint with Wax
You car had a new clear coat when it left the factory, but that coat wears off over time and leaves the paint to fend for itself against the elements. That’s where wax comes in. Wax is sacrificial and will wear off over the course of a few months, but in that time it will absorb stains and small scratches before those hazards make it to the paint. We’re told older folks prefer paste wax, while younger ones like liquids. The choice is simply personal preference—both products do the job equally well. Finally.
9 Wax Every Season
Between paint cleanings and wax applications, you’ll find you’ve picked up stains and scratches. Using liquid spray wax that can touch up these spots between waxings is a good idea but not a substitute for a real wax coating. Because there is no definitive way to tell when wax has worn off, stick to a schedule: Give your car a wax job every season if the vehicle spends every day outdoors.
10 Make the Glass Shine
Clean the glass last, because it will have grime and dirt from the other steps. And find a glass cleaner without ammonia, which most household glass cleaners contain. Ammonia is bad for vinyl upholstery and the instrument panel. Plus, it stinks.
You’ll get the best look if you buff glass with a microfiber cloth, which does a great job of getting rid of cleaner residue. That residue, as well as oils from your skin, causes streaks and spots on the inside of windows. Clean glass also looks great. Pro tip: To reach the inside of the rear window on sedans and coupes, use the back of your hand with the microfiber cloth and you’ll find you can get much farther down the glass.
11 Details, Details, Details
Remember to roll the side windows down slightly so you can get at the top edges. Sometimes glass must be polished because minerals have been deposited and need to be physically ground off by a pro.
For more information on our impressive range of car care products and more, please contact us www.midasrandburg.co.za | (011) 789-4411 | marco@midasrandburg.co.za | 191 Bram Fischer Drive, Randburg.
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Source: http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/how-to/g99/10-tips-to-clean-and-detail-your-car-like-a-pro/
