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A lot of people detail or clean their car for aesthetic reasons and that is all very well, but there are far more important reasons for detailing one’s car. Most individuals spend roughly the same percentage of their money on a car. I mean that as they get a better job, they tend to buy a better car. Therefore a car is a sizable investment for most drivers.

It makes sense to safeguard one’s investments and even if you cannot make your car grow in value, you can at least take every measure in your power to reduce the speed of its depreciation. One of the foremost ways of doing this is by frequent maintenance and detailing a car ought to be regarded as part of your regular maintenance programme.

Car detailing as part of a maintenance programme also has a safety aspect. You assume that if your brakes are not serviced in the correct manner that there is a greater chance that they may fail one day and you ought to expect that if you do not take proper care of your car’s bodywork that it might rust and be less protective in case of a crash.

So having said that here are a few tips to help you protect your investment and perhaps even your life.

Windscreen wipers should be kept clean and unworn at all times. Have you ever sat in a car with bad windscreen wipers while it is raining? It is very frightening. If it has not rained for a while, then you might not have noticed the dust and grit building up under the windscreen wiper blades.

This abrasive dirt will soon scratch your windscreen, especially if someone accidentally switches them on when it is not raining. A scratched windscreen is bad enough, but if the blades are tatty, they will not wipe away the rain sufficiently for you to see clearly either.

You should make a point or regularly lifting the blades from the windscreen and checking and cleaning them. You will soon see if the rubber is starting to perish or fray and you will also notice a line of solidified dust (or worse) on the glass. Wet both the wipers and the glass before attempting to clean them in order to soften up the dirt.

Use a sponge or chamois leather on the glass, but use an old rag on the rubber blades, because they can devastate a new sponge or costly chamois leather. Keep this rag for cleaning other abrasive parts of the car like the wheels, registration plates and bumpers.

While you are cleaning the windows of your car, it is a good idea to get into the practice of finishing the cleaning of the outside with vertical wipes and the inside with horizontal ones (or vice versa, if you want). This way you will know which side those annoying, and often distracting, streaks are.

While we are on the topic, it is not a clever idea to hinder your vision by having furry dice or anything else hanging from your rear-view mirror. These symbols are meant to bring good luck and safety, but they are the precise opposite. Similarly nodding dogs and large speakers on the rear shelf are obstructive and window stickers of any kind are silly. Transparent glass is intended to be looked through not looked at.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on many subjects, but is at present involved with auto interior detailing. If you want some suggestions on detailing cars come over to our website now at Detailing Car Interiors.

Traditionally, middle class suburbanites would wash the car on Sunday morning before leaving for a drive with the family in the afternoon. Some people took this chore earnestly, but for most it was twenty or thirty minutes washing and polishing the outside and five minutes with the vacuum cleaner inside. Nowadays a lot more drivers expect a good cleaning that in those days was reserved for the well-off.

However, having your car detailed or valeted is still not inexpensive, typically costing $75 for an average job on an average sized car in average condition. When you begin talking about a grimy SUV that has just been used to transport the school football team, detailing in the right manner at a decent firm can cost $300-$400.

Not a lot of people can afford to pay that out often, especially with the price of petrol being what it is, so here are a couple of car detailing tips to help you do it yourself (or get the kids to do it for you).

i] Take out everything that can be removed and vacuum the carpets. Then wash the windows on the inside and clean the seats, upholstery and dash with an appropriate cleaner, especially if the seats are covered in leather upholstery. Wash the things you removed, dry them and replace. Put a stick of slow-release air freshener in the glove compartment and close all the doors.

2] Hose your car down, particularly in the wheel arches and under the bonnet to remove the worst of the dirt and soften up anything that has gone rock-solid. Do not use a very strong power washer, ie one that is attached to a powerful pump. These power washers can blast grit away so hard that it scratches the paintwork. A regular hose attached directly to the mains is fine

3] Check the mud under the wheel arch and blast it off with a slightly more powerful jet if yu have to. Do the wheels too, if they are bad. Once you can no longer see any build up of sludge, you can move on to the next stage.

4] Either mix a bucket of warm soapy water or fix a soap dispenser to your hose pipe. It is worth investing in proper car cleaner, because kitchen detergent could be a little harsh for your car’s paintwork.

Do not scrimp on the amount of detergent you use, follow the manufacturer’s directions and apply it with a sponge or mitten. If you are using a bucket, be ready to change the water several times – you do not want to start rubbing grit into your paintwork.

Wash the car in sections starting with the roof and then rinse it off immediately. So, wash the roof, rinse it; wash a door panel, rinse it; move on and around your car until you get to the bottom – the bumpers and wheels.. You have to rinse instantly to stop a film of soap drying onto the paintwork, especially on a hot day.

Re-rinse the entire car in case you missed something. If you purchased a car wash with wax included, you are done, but if you would like the best finish, now is the time to wax on and then wax off.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on many subjects, but is at present involved with auto interior detailing. If you want some tips on detailing cars come over to our website now at Detailing Car Interiors.

There are different levels of auto detailing. The cheapest level may be merely washing the outside, like a car wash; the next degree may incorporate doing the interior and the boot as well and the top level may include the inside, outside and the engine.

Then there are degrees of cleanliness within these categories as well. for instance, the lowest level might be to merely vacuum the carpets, but the highest degree may include taking them out and actually washing them.

Needless to say the amount of auto detailing you get will (or should) be reflected in the price. The lowest level might cost $75 and the highest degree $300 for an averagely dirty average car.

Larger and dirtier cars cost more. However, the car will be restored to its condition if that is at all feasible, so a good detailing before selling your car might reap dividends.

It is not too hard to learn how to clean the exterior of a car well, but it is more of a problem to do the inside because you will require specialist tools and small vacuum cleaner heads to get into all the nooks and crannies.

You may also want to wash the carpets without removing them which can be a royal pain, if you do not have that special apparatus.

You can definitely purchase the waxes, polishes, vinyl and leather cleaners and you can even purchase the equipment, it is merely that you may find it expensive to buy and time-consuming to use.

Cleaning the engine is more or less just a matter of blasting the grease off the engine with a quite weak pressure gun using degreaser in the (warm) water, so this means more specialist equipment.

The brushes and sponges are all fairly normal as are the liquids and detergents, polishes and waxes.

Some auto detailing companies will also take care of small repairs like a stitch that has come loose in the upholstery or a slight scratch on the coachwork.

However, I think that all firms ought to at least bring these defects to the owner’s notice even if repair is not in the price. Repairing a minor scratch on a wing can save that wing from having to be replaced in the future. Likewise with tyres, if an employee spots difficulties and reports it, it could save a blowout.

Waxing is an important subject. I think that there ought to be a wax incorporated in the shampoo, because it will run into all the crevices and form a seal against rainwater. I am all for applying a second coat of wax by hand to the larger surfaces as well both for protection and appearance.

Do not bother applying a cheap wax by hand, because it will come off after a couple of rain showers. If you are going to do the job, do it properly using a high quality wax that will protect your paintwork from the sun’s bleaching rays, from the abrasion of wind-blown dust and from the oxidizing rain.

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on many topics, but is at present involved with auto interior detailing. If you want some suggestions on detailing cars come over to our website now at Detailing Car Interiors.

Do you drive around in style or in a sty? Do you take care of your automobile or are you going to wait for it to fall apart and then buy a new one? Obviously it is your car, you do what you like but a clean car is safer than a filthy one.

If you have cold drink cans and empty crisp packets rolling around the floor, they could interfere with your feet. If you do not keep the exterior clean, rust will set in and your car will be less structurally safe – less able to withstand a collision.

So here are seven suggestions to help you valet your car. They might not all be life-savers, but they ought to all relieve some frustration and make your driving experience a bit more enjoyable.

1] Keep your windows clean and clear. You need as much forward, rear and peripheral vision as you can. Remove anything dangling from the rear view mirror and swap big speakers on the rear shelf for low, flat ones.

Remove all stickers from the windows particularly the dopey one that says: ‘Drive Safely – Baby On Board’. No one is going to drive more safely because you have a child with you, that is your job!

2] If your aerial sticks, it is better to rub it with graphite powder than to squirt WD40 into it. The oil will just leak out and what remains will soon have dust sticking to it, which will cause it to jam more.

3] You get better results whilst cleaning, waxing or polishing, if you spray the liquid onto your cloth rather than onto the car. Spraying directly onto the car creates puddles in some patches which normally result in streaks and lots of extra rubbing, meanwhile abrasive dust can be getting stuck on this surplus and the motion of your cleaning may cause scratches. You also lose less spray to the wind.

4] When cleaning the glass, clean up and down on one side of the glass and side-to-side on the other so that you can see where the streaks are. It could save you half the work.

5] Clean bird droppings from your car as soon as you can. This is because they are very acidic and will damage your paintwork every time they become wet. Never park under a tree because of this and because the rain dripping through the tree, particularly in warm weather, will bring sap or oil from the tree and it is quite difficult to get rid of when it is dry.

6] While washing the exterior with a bucket of soapy water, begin on the roof, the bonnet and the boot; change the water and do one side of the car, change the water and wash the other. Never throw the residue dirty water in the bucket over the car or its wheels. This water is filthy, but you often see individuals do it.

7] Clean the engine from time to time. You will be glad you did if ever you have to get under the bonnet. The same goes for the spare wheel and keep an old pair of gloves in the wheel well for when you have to change a wheel.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on lots of topics, but is at present involved with auto interior detailing. If you want some suggestions on detailing cars come over to our website now at Detailing Car Interiors.