Car Care Advice

A paintbrush is an excellent tool for detailing your car. Even cheap ones that aren’t much good for painting are good.

They work really well for dusting around all the switches and vents on your dashboard, and all those other hard to reach places. Just hold the vacuum cleaner nozzle near the brush and everything you loosen will get sucked up. They are also great for getting polish out from around door handles and car badges.
A 1″ and 2″ brushes are adequate,  but there is nothing like a big thick long haired brush!
So why the tape?
The only problem with a paint brush is that it has a metal ferrule, which can have sharp edges that can scratch paintwork and trim. The answer is to get some electrical insulation tape and wrap it thickly around the ferrule.

Microfibre cloths are nothing short of amazing.

If you don’t know what they are, Marc Brady wrote a good article on them over at the Clean Image website, with diagrams by me!

In short, they are better for drying than a chamois leather, and better for cleaning than any other sort of cloth –by miles! The microfibres really do work, and for what extra money they might cost you over normal cloths, they are well worth it for the results and the fact that they make your life easier.

There are all sorts of microfibre products about now… unfortunately they aren’t all made equal. You can buy a packet of three down at Tescos for a couple of pounds, but they really aren’t very good. It’s far better to have a few good ones. At Clean Image, we have worked out that having two large towels is enough for the whole car (But having a couple of extra small ones wouldn’t hurt).

Basically, once you have washed the car, you dry it with one of your towels, which becomes wet in the process. This then becomes your wet towel - although it’s probably best if we describe it as ‘damp’. As you work around the car, there are some jobs that are best done with a damp towel, such as washing the insides of the windows and dashboard, and some best done with a dry towel, such as the final finishing and any job that involves drying.

Once you get good at detailing your car, you can find you can time things so that your wet towel is only slightly damp by the time it comes to taking off the polish/wax.

The other advantage is that should you drop one of your towels on the floor, you won’t be so tempted to carry on using it if you have another.

I always try to answer questions people are actually asking when I’m doing an FAQ. I have to admit that nobody ever asks about application sponges… in fact, nobody ever thinks about them, and that’s the point! Everybody rushes out and buys lots of bottles of polish, lotions and potions, and then when they come to actually do their car, find they have nothing to put it on with! They then find themselves ripping up bits of muslin cloth which is a waste of the cloth, and not a great way to apply your products.

Furthermore, it’s the application of the products which is the most important bit. For example, putting on your wax with precision can save you huge amounts of work later.

So, to me, application sponges are a star buy! You don’t even have to buy real purpose made ones… cellulose sponges from the supermarket used for general kitchen cleaning. BUT they really need to be cellulose sponges because these are really soft and won’t damage your paintwork.

The good thing about our purpose made application sponges is that they fit nicely in the hand which is amazingly important when you think about it. If they are a good handful with plenty to hold onto, then you are far less likely to drop it on the floor. If you drop it, you really need to put it through a washing machine before you use it again.

In addition to getting one sponge per bottle of product, we also recommend that you get some sandwich bags and elastic bands. Once you have used the sponge to apply a wax, polish or dressing, pop it in the sandwich bag and attach it to the appropriate bottle with the elastic band. This will help ensure that you don’t later use a sponge that you used for applying tyre dressing to apply a wax (ouch!) and will also help keep the sponges clean and dust free.

When using them to apply wax or polish, run the sponge under the tap and then wring it out so that it’s damp, then just apply some polish to the sponge (it’s best never to apply products directly to the car) and work it into the sponge.
The next time you go to use the sponge, you will probably find it has gone dry and hard, just run it under the tap again. After a while, sponges used to apply waxes will become very greasy but they can be washed out with hot soapy water.

A body brush is a very soft brush designed especially for car bodywork. The bristles are usually made of a nylon type plastic which is then ‘distressed’ so that the ends of the bristles have frayed apart. This makes them very soft by the standard of most brushes… in fact, soft enough that you could wash your own body with it.

If you are sensible, and use the brush very gently, it will knock loose dirt and grit without scratching the paintwork. However, if you press hard, the brush will press the grit against the paintwork and cause scratches, but this is the case with any implement you might use.

If you are gentle, (just a tickle!) the bristles should push past the grit rather than pushing down on it. The great thing about using a brush is that it can get into places that you can’t get to with a wash mitt, for example, around badges.

Although a body brush is generally safe to use, we recommend that you limit it’s use to the lower areas of the car and around hard to reach places. In other words, don’t go cleaning the middle of your bonnet with it because it will get gritty while cleaning other areas — it’s best to rinse it out regularly as you go around the car. It’s really at it’s best on the front valance, and around the grill and lights… it also allows you to clean these really dirty areas without using your wash mitt that you will want to keep clean.

I have already touched on this subject in my previous post… when you are working it’s best to get organized before you start cleaning your car, making sure you have a clean dry place to put your kit down when you aren’t using it. This can save you lots of grief.

But what happens when you have finished washing your car?

I would recommend that you put your microfibre towels and any other cloths through the washing machine. You can do the same with a wash mitt if it is microfibre or synthetic (which I always recommend over lamb’s wool), but don’t do it too often as they tend to fall apart… you are unlikely to find one that is stitched together like a pair of combat fatigues, instead they tend to be made rather cheaply in the far east.

If you decide not to put them through the washing machine, then rinse them out in a clean bucket of water, then you should at least put these items on the washing line to dry. If you put them away damp they will almost certainly go mouldy.

Please note, that when washing synthetic chamois leathers, don’t put them in hot water. Many of them will behave like Shrinky-Dinks if you do. And if you wash your microfibre cloths in the washing machine, don’t use a fabric conditioner.

Most people will keep their wash kit in the garage or in the shed. If not stored properly it will collect dust and other stuff that you really don’t want on your car. Simply put your cloths, mitt and leather into a plastic carrier bag to help keep it clean rather than dropping onto a shelf. Whatever method you use for storing your kit, it’s probably best if it’s air tight, otherwise all sorts of critters can view it as a place to build a nest. But it is essential to make sure it’s dry before sealing in an air tight container.

About the best place to store all the gear is in a Grit-Guard Bucket, which now comes with a sealable lid.

When we valet cars professionally, we are pretty well organized. We have a place for everything, and spares of most things. One thing that struck me about washing cars at home (which I don’t normally do) is that it can get very frustrating. trying to keep track of your kit and looking after it while you work.

The biggest problem is keeping it clean. If you drop your kit on the ground, it gets covered in grit, which if then applied to the car will cause really nasty and possibly permanent scratches. So it goes without saying that you should avoid dropping wash mitts, microfibres etc. But you will have a lot of kit, you can’t carry it around for the whole time you are washing your car…
The first couple of times I washed a car around the back of my house, I found myself dropping stuff because I was trying to carry it because I had nowhere to put it down.

The second time I washed a car at home, I tried to fix this by putting down some card and keeping my kit on there… but it was a windy day and all the dirt and grit blew onto the cardboard making it just as dirty as the ground.

There has to be hundreds of solutions to this problem, and I’ll leave you to figure something our based on what you have handy… my solution was to take a child’s plastic garden table from my lawn out to the street where the car was parked. Of course it got a good wash first, but it allowed my to put stuff down somewhere clean and dry. You might want to re-arrange your garden furniture, pull out a paste table or use some old beer crates. Use whatever you have, but it’s worth thinking about before you begin as it will save you so much trouble later.

However, you may still drop your kit on the floor, these things happen. If this happens, then with most of your kit, you can take it and run it under a tap and clean it thoroughly before putting it anywhere near your car. Don’t just give it a rinse in your bucket. Do it properly and examine it carefully — if you get this wrong, it could cost you hundreds of pounds! Great big scratches all over your bonnet will devalue the car by a large percentage and a respray costs a small fortune.

If you drop a claybar… no arguments. Just throw it in the bin.
If you drop a microfibre cloth, don’t use it. A microfibre grips as if it’s made of little hooks, it doesn’t let go of the dirt easily so don’t risk using again until it’s been through the washing machine.
The method of washing that Anna has written up involves using two large microfibre towels, so you have another to use as a spare anyway. We would recommend buying a few of these microfibre cloths — they are useful for just about every area of the car so you will use them, and it’s good to have spares.

Speaking of microfibre cloths. It’s nice to have a place to hang them to dry while cleaning your car. Just don’t hang them on a rough wooden fence or from a rusty nail on a brick wall. If you do they will pick up all sorts of crud that can scratch your car.

Sure they are! We’ve known water-blades since before they were famous and been using them for years and never had a problem, nor have we ever heard of anyone else having a problem.
Although we have heard that there are some cheap ones on the market with plastic/silicone which may be a little harder than the quality ones.

It’s our understanding that they have 15 times less friction on your cars surface than a terry towel.

They are exceptionally useful in the winter months when cars can be difficult to dry, they speed things up.

Water-blades are known by many brand names including Hydra-Blade, Dry-blade, Power-blade, California-Blade, Paint Safe Squeegee, soft touch auto dryer, Hydraglide, and many, many more. And when used properly, they are safe.

However, you do drag them across the surface of your paintwork, so if you get grit on them you can have a disaster on your hands. So make sure you car is properly clean before you use it, don’t put it on the floor, and generally use all the same rules you would for any other tool that is going near your paintwork.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about when I talk of water blades — you know that the guy who cleans your window has that funny tool for wiping all the water off the gass? Well, a water-blade is a tool for doing a similar thing on a car. It usually has a soft plastic or rubber coated handle, and the blade it’s self is made of a soft latex so that it can fit to the contours of your car… because a car isn’t as flat as a pane of glass. It can get a lot of the water off your car without leaving smears and will safe you from having to wring out your chamois quite so often.

In theory, using a wash mitt will reduce the risk of scratches to your paintwork while washing. more »

Not really - it’s a bit like asking if jam sandwiches are bad… jam sandwiches are pretty good in my opinion, yet I wouldn’t want one stuffed in my ear! And lime flavoured jam does nothing for me at all. more »