Basic Car Care

I bet you are like me and every other care owner, you love you car to look great, but you never have the time to keep up with it so you go to the dreaded car wash. Uggg, what a waste of money, you are throwing you money at a machine that does a quarter of the job you can. And please don't tell me you use a car wash that actually touches your paint, now you are scartching away the clear coat!

From here on out your car will look better and stay that way longer, tune in for more updates!

Engine Cleaning

Today's Topic deals with cleaning your engine.
Most people don't clean their engine often and its a shame, a properly cleaned engine is a thing of beauty. Even if your engine is bone stock it will still look better with a fresh coat of clean. There are a couple of ways you can clean your engine, one of the easiest is at a DIY power wash.

Disclaimer Attempt at your own risk, I have performed this walk through multiple times, but things can always go wrong.

In my experience you can spray down your engine just fine without any trouble, I would avoid spraying the ECU of Battery but these things get wet when it rains so a little water wont help them. You can use the foaming cleaner and then spray rinse that most DIY spray car washes offer and that's it, you may need to apply a little silicon to your hood latch and actuators to keep them from sticking.

A better way is to gather the following:

• Simple Green
• Hose with spray attachment
• Q-tips
• Turtle Wax Tire Foam and Shine
• Sea foam spray
• Old rags

I have found this works best if the car has not been run recently, a hot engine dries up the cleaner to fast before you can rinse it off.

1. The first step is to spray down the exterior of your car, this will keep the simple green from taking the wax off your paint. Now pop open the hood.
2. Spray down the entire engine with a generous coat of Simple Green, Avoid hitting the serpentine belt, battery and ECU directly. If some splashes on them don't worry.
3. Now take the rags and q-tip and wipe down every inch, be sure to get the grime off the tops of the fluid canisters (for example the oil symbol on top of the oil add location) this will make your car really POP.
4. Use the rages to wipe off the inside of the hood, not forgetting the actuators, the hood latch, and pretty much any part of the engine that is dirty.
5. Now rinse it all off with the spray hose, again avoid hitting avoid hitting the serpentine belt, battery and ECU directly. You may see some spots you missed, clean them again.
6. Let you car dry, the next step will work best on a dry engine, you can get out more rags and pat down the engine to speed this up.
7. Spray the engine with a tire foam spray, avoid hitting the serpentine belt, battery and ECU directly. Take a rag and spray it with the tire foam spray, wipe down the battery and ECU. BE CAREFUL NOT TO LET THE RAG TOUCH THE NEGATIVE AND POSITIVE TERMINALS AT THE SAME TIME!!!!
8. Turn your car on, your serpentine belt is probably squeaking, spray it down with some sea foam spray, now its clean, lubricated, and silent.
9. That's it, sit back and enjoy your engine!

Good reads

If you would like more information on how to keep your car looking its best, check out some of these books:

This little book not only touches on car detailing, but basic car care, how to keep your car running smoothly and how to get the most out of your ride.

The Haynes name is known as the go to reference when it comes to car repair, but they are also very knowledgeable when it comes to car detailing.

Tips to Keep Your Car Clean in Ohio

Leonard1818 from 8thcivic.com suggests the following:


-- First off, Meguiars NXT 2.0 is a good wax but it's not a sealant/wax combo. Anything claiming to be a "combo" product or "two in one" or "time saver" is bogus. You simply can't get the same results with one of these types of products.

I used to use Meguiars NXT 2.0 tech wax. It's a great wax and with proper paint prep it can last up to about 6-8 weeks but it won't last you all winter.

-- Next item to point out is that while the touchless car washes are the best as far as auto car washes go, the downside is that they use chemicals in their water that can strip your wax/paint protection off entirely leaving your paint naked to face the elements. It's sort of a catch 22... do you use them and clean the under carriage every so often and lose your wax protection or do you forego and let the salt/crap sit on the metal parts? 

Anymore I have a different car I drive when it gets brutal here in Ohio. I woudl like to stray away from the discussion of "why" cause it's "just a civic" but that's what I do. However, when I used to drive my coupe in the winter time, I did the following:

* In the fall, start with a good detail. The extent of this is up to you (if you want to polish and do anything else those steps will fit in). Here is the barebones basics of what you absolutely need to do. First, wash. I use 2-bucket method with grit guard in rinse bucket. sometimes I will use a little ONR in my rinse bucket (I'll explain later). Next, clay bar. I've found the over-the counter clay bars to be sufficient. Mothers/Meguiars, whatever. If you've never clayed your car you'll notice a difference immediately. Read the package to learn how to use. At this point, you can go in various directions with what you do next. As mentioned, I'm listing the basics so I'll skip straight to the sealant. I use Zaino. There are several out there and I've never tried any of them except Zaino so I can only speak to that product. If the paint is prepped properly it WILL last you through the winter. I've stopped using waxes entirely and only use the zaino synthetic sealant. Z5 and Z2 if you're interested in specifics. Check out their website. Or, look into Klasse, blackfire wet diamond, etc... those are all sealants that others use with success.

* During the winter months, if you have access to a garage, another good product to use is called Optimum No Rinse or (ONR). I've used this product on my black coupe in the middle of winter and it is AWESOME. It takes some time to get used to (at least for me it did) cause I just couldn't wrap my head around not using soap or some other kind of lubricant but it works.

Other than those couple of items, there's really not much more you can do besides NOT driving your car lol. If you're interested in exactly what I use, I can list it below:

Wash: Meguiars gold class car shampoo. Can buy over the counter and it's GREAT. I also have some Zaino car shmapoo solution that I use every now and then. Honestly, I've found the Gold Class to be just as good.

Buckets: As mentioned, I use a 2-bucket method with a grit guard in one of them. Sometimes I'll drip some ONR in the rinse bucket just to be sure that I'm getting proper lubricity.

Wash Rags/Mitt: During a wash/dry I use several MicroFiber towels. Technique is key here. Start at the top and work your way down. Don't ever go "up" once you've gone to the bottom of the car. Dirt is mostly on the bottom and if you go up you will be spreading dirt and instilling swirls in the paint. I usually use 2-3 different MF towels during 1 wash. If the car is really not too dirty I can get away with 1. That's just on the body. I use a separate one for the wheels, one for the exhaust pipe, one for the wheel wells.

Drying: During drying I spray on some meguiars Last touch detail spray as I dry. Drying is the biggest PITA of the whole process. It takes the longest and uses the most MF towels. Usually 5-6 towels for the whole car. I spray a section with LT detail spray and dry and dry and dry and dry.

Tires: I had been using Meguiars endurance gel but I've found I like the look of 303 aerospace protectant better. I have a little MF tool that goes in between the spokes of the wheels and cleans the wheels pretty well. I scrub the tires during washing with a separate MF towel (do it at the end so you're not dunking the dirty cloth in the same bucket that you're washing in).

MF towels: I go through these pretty regularly so I don't really buy expensive ones. I'm thinking about trying some expensive ones to see if they make a difference but I buy these at sams club in packs of 10 or 20. They last quite a while and stay plush and soft. Every now and then AutoZone or Advanced Auto will have a good deal on them and theirs are OK in quality as well. The important thing to keep in mind is to dedicate specific ones for specific functions. I ONLY use my yellow ones to wash, orange ones to dry, blue ones on wheels/exhaust and cruddy mish-mash ones for wheel wells. 

Detail spray: I really like the meguiars Quick Detailer spray however it's expensive when you detail spray your car as much as I found myself doing. For this reason, I bought a jug of the Meguiars Last touch detail spray which can be cut 50/50 with water. I highly recommend it. This can be used as clay lubricant, to quick detail a clean car (must be clean), and as mentioned, I use it when drying to help lubricate the paint as it dries.

I'm no expert. Heck, most of the products I use are OTC. I'm just sharing with you what I've found to work. Living in NW Ohio (similar climate to you) I can feel your pain with trying to keep the car clean. Hopefully using some of the techniques that others have found to work, you will be able to keep it looking good 95% of the time!

Happy detailing!

Mequire's Hot Shine Tire Spray review and demo

My top choices of tire care products.

For a quick touchup on already clean tires I prefer Meguiar's hot shine tire spray.
It goes on quickly and makes my tires pop.

For a longer shine (I usually apply right after a wash)
I like Meguiar's Endurance Tire Gel . It comes with an applicator and lasts over a week. (It advertises it lasts for weels, but in my experiance by the end of week 2 its pretty much gone.)
















For a foam, which I use on dirty tires I go with a cheap product. I use this only as a touchup during the week. so my choice is Turtlewax T-49R F21, the 21oz can. Its usually under $4 and lasts a long time.