6. Car Cleaning – Inside and Out
Keeping all parts of your car clean is a very important part of its maintenance and health.
Keep It Clean
Although this lesson is last, car cleaning is the first place to start maintaining your car. Cleaning the engine compartment is a great way to learn about the basic parts under the hood and to keep them looking good. But car cleaning is not just about learning or vanity; it's about preventative maintenance, too. If you regularly clean your engine compartment, you'll become familiar enough with it to notice leaks or anything out of the ordinary.
Depending on where in the country you drive, varying amounts of salt, dust, and even acid rain can accumulate on the skin of your car and invite rust to attack the metal underneath. Regularly removing this grime will preserve your paint, plastic, and chrome. Waxing frequently adds a barrier to protect your car's exterior.
An engine compartment is a neglected area for cleaning. Just as cleaning preserves the exterior paint, the same is even truer for your engine's delicate parts: the hoses, gaskets, and belts. These parts will last longer if they are kept free of grime. With a clean engine, you can see and smell your engine more easily.
Wash and Wax a Car
There are five steps to caring for the surface of your car: wetting it down, gently scrubbing with soapy water, rinsing, drying, and waxing. Beginners think the job is done after the first step, but the others are just as important.
Wet the Car Down
Chose a cool shady place to wash your car. Never wash a car in the sun because the water will dry too fast and leave water spots on the surface. Also, putting cold water on a hot surface puts the paint through a rapid temperature and size change, which can distress your paint job.
Coin-operated car washes offer a convenient location for car washing if you're short on space.
Begin by just hosing down the surface; don't scrub.
Let the water soak in and naturally loosen the dirt. Wash away as much dirt as possible with the spray from the hose nozzle. If you have to park on a hill or a steep driveway, point the car uphill. This is the way cars are designed to shed water while driving: from front to back, so more water will naturally flow off the vehicle with gravity.
Scrub
Several sponges and a bucket of warm soapy water work great for dabbing on large amounts of soapy water. Use only a mild detergent such as baby shampoo. Make certain that the sponges are clean before you start; otherwise, you might unknowingly scratch the paint while scrubbing. Use long gentle strokes moving from front to back rather than a circular motion.
Start on the top of the car and work down using the hose and the sponge together.
Never let the water in the bucket or the sponges get dirty.
Don't scrub hard; let the detergent do the work. When you finish scrubbing, rinse the whole car with water – starting at the top and working down.
Dry
After rinsing down your car, it's time to dry off the surfaces. The pros use a chamois (pronounced "sham-ee"), which is a piece of soft calf hide that's amazingly absorbent and good for swiping large puddles of water away quickly.
You can purchase a chamois in any auto parts store.
A chamois must be soaked in water until it darkens in color before it can be used. Clean a chamois three or four times for each dry job. Empty the soapy water and refill the bucket with fresh water. Rinse a chamois, and then twist it hard until it's like a rope, wringing it as hard as you can three or four times. It's not enough to just squeeze it like a sponge. When it's properly wrung-out, you can see the color lighten in the chamois.
When a chamois is working, you can feel it drag the moisture off the surface. Use a chamois on the windows, chrome, and plastic. Use the chamois as a moist dust rag to clean the plastic interior parts and mirrors, too. Open the doors, hood, and trunk to find unwanted puddles.
Driving quickly for a couple of miles also works to dry off a car.
Wax
After the car is dry, apply a coat of wax.
Never wax a dirty car.
A carnauba wax, made from plants, is preferred. Carnauba wax has the great virtue of not leaving a white chalky residue when it dries. After a good wax job, water will bead on the paint and easily run off. If water does not bead on your paint, it's time for a wax job.
Spread a thin layer of wax with a small soft cloth over a newspaper-sized area. Let it dry for a few minutes and then buff it lightly with a new, clean terry cloth rag. There are large buffing gloves with yellow fur available for this purpose. The buffing rag should slide across the newly waxed surface like an ice skater, until it hits the unwaxed area; then it will stop.
In the process of waxing, you can automatically inspect the entire painted surface as you go. Don't neglect any paint chips or dings where the metal or gray primer is exposed. Remember them and paint over these nicks with matching paint sold in small bottles at many parts stores.
Other Cleaning Musts
Besides the outside of the car, you need to keep the following areas spiffy, too.
Clean the Engine
Keeping an engine clean is part of enlightened auto maintenance. The first level of care involves simply wiping dust and oil off the engine surface and the sides of the engine compartment.
This is the time for basic engine inspection, checking fluid levels, and a wipedown.
A second level of cleaning might involve using solvents, hose, and a scrapper blade to dislodge thick, caked-on grease in hard to get locations. This higher level of cleaning is best left to an engine detail shop.
If you want to do it yourself, use a solvent called Gunk, which dissolves grease into a soap-like substance when you wash it off with a hose.
Gunk is a great driveway cleaner, too, before and after a car job.
You can also use old toothbrushes, which are perfect for getting into tiny spaces. Be careful to not get Gunk or water on any engine computers or other electrical parts.
Under the Car
One part of your exterior that is hard to reach is the underside of your car.
Here's a situation in which you might want to use the coin-operated soap and water blasters, if only because you can easily reach the long spray nozzles underneath. Spray behind the wheels and the bottom of the engine, transmission, and differential (if you have one). Don't spray inside the engine compartment.
Glass
Cleaning the windows inside and out is good for visibility, especially in glare conditions. Use a household glass cleaner to spray on the glass.
I suggest using regular newspaper for wiping. The ink in the newsprint acts as a mild abrasive polish, which helps to clean the glass.
Be on the lookout for small cracks in the windshield from small rocks. A drop of SuperGlue in the pit of the crack may stop the crack from spreading.
Tires
Tire cleaning is the time to dress your tires and inspect their tread. Many motorists like to have shiny, wet-looking rubber. A good product to accomplish this is Armor All. Squirt it on and rub it around on your tires or other vinyl or plastic parts to make them look like new.
Upholstery and Carpets
Keeping your car's upholstery and carpets clean is important, both cosmetically and for long-term maintenance.
Good leather cleaners include Lexol, Saddle Soap, and Neets Oil. Spray-on carpet cleaners to remove coffee spots are available in all auto parts stores. A small vacuum cleaner is handy for cleaning the small rocks and dirt that accumulate under the gas pedal.
Trunk
Keeping a neat and clean trunk is important because this is where you keep your safety equipment and tool kit. Cleaning the trunk means checking on the spare tire. Is it flat? Is the flashlight working?
Make a Clean Space for Car Work
If you're planning to perform a repair or maintenance job, it's a good idea to clean the work area before you start. Preparing a clean workspace for car work is like preparing for surgery. You want your surgeon to have all the tools cleaned and laid out in a systematic way; you don't want to hear your surgeon say, "Hmm, now where did I put that sponge?" as the anesthesia is taking effect. This applies to both you and your mechanic.
Even if you're doing a small job, you should prepare your workspace beforehand. For me, this preparation involves sweeping a garage floor free of the random nuts and bolts that will confuse me when I accidentally drop the ones I'm working with.
I roll a clean sheet of butcher paper over my whole workbench before a job. Then I put each nut, bolt, and part on that paper. You can write notes on the clean paper. This is an easy way to organize a mechanical job, and it is easy to clean up.
Types of Car Washes
You typically find two types of car washes: coin-operated and full service.
Coin-Operated Car Wash
Coin-operated car washes come in many sizes. The smaller ones offer only a washing stall with a pressurized nozzle. These nozzles can be switched from clear water to soap. Many service stations have a car wash on the side that will give you a basic cleaning for about $6, with a fill-up. Many of these facilities are guilty of scratching your paint job with the swirling brushes they use, sometimes fouled from the car before you.
I recommend avoiding these types of cars washes in favor of the modern brushless car washes.
Full-Service Car Wash
The full-service car wash offers complete car cleaning, including engine detailing. The following are the services offered and prices for a full service local car wash that I recently visited.
Exterior wash only: $6
Full service: $12.99
- Windows inside and out
- Door jambs
- Vacuum interior
- Dash and console
Wheel Express: $16.99
- Rims
- White walls
- Tire dressing
- Clear-coat sealant
The Ultimate: $21.99
- Triple coat polish
- Clear coat sealant
- Underbody flush
- Rust inhibitor
- Rim cleaning
- Tire dressing
- Interior fragrance
High Tech Express: $29.99
- Manually applied wax
- Rain-X windshield
- Black Magic tire dressing
- Triple coat polish
- Clear coat sealant
- Underbody flush
- Rust inhibitor
- Rims
- White walls
- Interior fragrance
Other services offered include:
- Carpet express: $29.99
- Upholstery express: $29.99
- Interior clean and condition: $29.99
When you add it up, they charge over a $100 for the car cleaning you can do yourself for just a few dollars invested in car care products. If you live in an apartment or condo where space is limited, you might use your trunk to store a car care kit, along with your safety kit and toolkit:
- Clean rags
- Sponges
- Chamois
- Car wax
- Carpet cleaner
- Window cleaner
- Spray on tire dressing
- Lexol
- Armor All
- Rags
The price of the above car care products is about $75, but many of these products will last you for years.
Moving On
Well, you're done. Congratulations! I hope you've learned a lot from these lessons.