Maintaining your vehicle is one of the toughest task in an ownership experience. We come across a wide range of very ill maintained vehicles everyday. Poor maintained vehicles not only look bad but have less life too.
Well, maintenance not only includes servicing and mechanical health of car but also includes proper washing. There are lots of service stations that can wash your car and even you can do it occasionally or frequently at your home, but do you do it correctly? Here are the proper steps for washing your car.
PROPER TOOLS:
Before starting up the first thing includes the gathering of all the necessary tools for proper washing. You should have a recommended good quality pressure wash jet (if not then a good pressure water connection), recommended washing shampoo for your car, a good quality soft piece of foam, micro fibre cloth, a multi adjustable brush (recommended) and a good axing polish for metal and plastic parts separately for post washing.
RINSING:
The process must always begin with rinsing car properly with a pressure water jet. The pressure jet makes enough water pressure to clean most of the mud and other particles that might be sticking to under body parts wash away. Also, rinsing helps in making the other mud and dust get soft, so easy to clean further.
SHAMPOOING:
Always use a shampoo. Using detergents, soaps and any other ‘non’ car washing liquids would ultimately lead to damaging the paint of your car, thus fading away the paint earlier than you can imagine. Also, such liquids are very hard and might lead to rusting of parts like wiper blade motors and other such open metal pieces of car. A proper shampoo is soft enough to clean the car and not damage any surface.
Use a foam piece to apply the shampoo throughout the car surface. While shampooing, you must pay attention to the under body parts like the running board, under fender areas, suspension area, alloys / steel rims and if you can reach to the brake assembly.
Try to clean the engine bay by opening up the bonnet. Be safe and make it slow as engine is equipped with variously shaped metal parts that might not be water friendly. Clean properly all the oil particles which have been sticking anywhere.
For rubbing tyres, always use a good quality brush (adjustable brush is a welcome) and use the shampoo to create a foam and cleaning further the tyre area.
FINAL RINSE:
After all this, just wash everything where you shampooed the car. Pressure water will lead to the cleansing of every part properly. Leave the car to dry up depending upon the weather. Do not let the car dry up all by itself as it would lead to formation of water stains.
Just before the car is about to dry up, use a micro fiber cloth (recommended) or a soft clean cotton cloth to swab the car properly. For glass areas, clean them with help of newspapers (yes newspapers are a very good source of soft compound to clean the glass area) this would help avoiding scratching of glass area.
Clean the tyre area and interior areas accordingly. Use vacuum (if possible) to clean the interiors.
WAXING STAGE:
For applying wax, ensure, that the car is all dried up and cleansed with proper technique. Now, depending upon the wax you chose apply it all over the body parts and clean further according to the mentioned usage technique written by the wax manufacturer. For plastic body parts and interiors, there are separate polishes available, so, never ever mix two polishes together or apply crossly. It might lead to ruining of surface.
Easy, simple & effective. Follow these steps and watch your car shining for years.
[Image Source : pressurejet.com, multivu.com]