Caring for your car's interior can make the interior components last for many years. Knowing how to properly clean and take care of the surfaces of the interior will allow you to perform regular maintenance and make your car look great.
LEATHER SEATS: If your car has leather seats, be sure to clean and dress the leather with a good quality product made just for leather. Using other products which are not intended for leather an result in the leather cracking prematurely and causing your interior to look ragged much before its time. Leather upholstery is expensive to repair or replace, so care for it properly in the first place to avoid expensive damage.
PLASTIC INTERIOR SURFACES: The plastic surfaces inside your car can be cleaned with most any good, mild household cleaner or with plain soap and water. They can then be made shiny with any one of the many car interior shine products available on the market. See the warning below.
FABRIC SEATING: If your fabric seat becomes soiled, remove any excess dirt or food by scraping. Then clean with a good quality upholstery cleaner. Before tackling a stain in an area which will show, test the product on an inconspicuous area to be sure the fabric is color fast and does not fade the area or leave it with a bleached look.
WINDOWS: Use products specifically made for cleaning windows to remove the grease and soil build up on your glass surfaces. You can use simple home glass cleaning products and save yourself a lot of money versus the overpriced auto-glass cleaners. To prevent streaking, polish with newspaper. If you wish, apply a no-fog product to the windows by following product instructions.
One word of warning. When cleaning any interior area of your car be very careful in what you use. Items like Armor All are great for areas made of soft plastic, but are harder areas or hard plastic areas it can dry out the surface over time and make it crack.
While there are many other areas in your car's interior these are the major ones to keep clean. By doing so you're car will look great for years to come.
If you're interested in getting your car's interior a deep, deep clean contact a local detailing shop or search the Internet on how to detail your car's interior.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
How to Save a Ton of Money on Auto Painting
Auto painting can be quite expensive if you want to have a really great paint job. Of course, you can find shops that offer really cheap paint jobs but auto painting is one of the situations where you truly get what you pay for.
A cheap paint job will look cheap. The shop will spend little time properly masking the areas that shouldn't have paint applied. You've probably seen a car where the trunk lock was painted; the formerly shiny chrome door handles were painted over; that is what you get when you elect to get really cheap auto painting.
However, you can get a great paint job and save money by doing some of the work yourself. About 90% of the cost of auto painting is the preparation before paint is applied to the car. This offers you an opportunity to save money on your paint job if you don't mind doing some hard work.
When you visit the auto paint shop, ask what you can do to prepare the car and reduce the price of the painting. Many shops will reduce the price if you remove chrome parts in advance. They may reduce the price if you clean the surface and remove old silicone-based wax and grease. To do this, you purchase a good quality wax and grease remover and find a well-ventilated place to work. Don't perform this task in a closed garage because the fumes can be hazardous.
You can also remove old wax and grease using scrubbing pads or an abrasive household cleaner like Comet. Use a bit of caution with these procedures because it is really easy to scratch chrome or even glass.
Another step you may be able to perform yourself is the feathering of scratches and paint chips. These areas must be smoothed and evened out using sand paper. The initial sanding can be performed with 80 or 100 grit and change to finer and finer sand paper until the final sanding touches are done with 220 grit.
Ask the body shop if you can do some of the larger masking yourself. Masking is simply the process of placing painter's tape over areas that should not be painted. Some body shops will not guarantee the quality of paint if you mask the car or any part of it yourself, so be sure this will actually save you money without infringing on the paint guarantee.
A cheap paint job will look cheap. The shop will spend little time properly masking the areas that shouldn't have paint applied. You've probably seen a car where the trunk lock was painted; the formerly shiny chrome door handles were painted over; that is what you get when you elect to get really cheap auto painting.
However, you can get a great paint job and save money by doing some of the work yourself. About 90% of the cost of auto painting is the preparation before paint is applied to the car. This offers you an opportunity to save money on your paint job if you don't mind doing some hard work.
When you visit the auto paint shop, ask what you can do to prepare the car and reduce the price of the painting. Many shops will reduce the price if you remove chrome parts in advance. They may reduce the price if you clean the surface and remove old silicone-based wax and grease. To do this, you purchase a good quality wax and grease remover and find a well-ventilated place to work. Don't perform this task in a closed garage because the fumes can be hazardous.
You can also remove old wax and grease using scrubbing pads or an abrasive household cleaner like Comet. Use a bit of caution with these procedures because it is really easy to scratch chrome or even glass.
Another step you may be able to perform yourself is the feathering of scratches and paint chips. These areas must be smoothed and evened out using sand paper. The initial sanding can be performed with 80 or 100 grit and change to finer and finer sand paper until the final sanding touches are done with 220 grit.
Ask the body shop if you can do some of the larger masking yourself. Masking is simply the process of placing painter's tape over areas that should not be painted. Some body shops will not guarantee the quality of paint if you mask the car or any part of it yourself, so be sure this will actually save you money without infringing on the paint guarantee.
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