#SpareMeTheDetails

When the snow melts here in Ohio it can only mean two things: there are more potholes in the roads, and it’s time for me to start detailing cars again! Let me tell you, one of my favorite things to do is get a winter’s worth of salt off a car. Since my hose is still frozen under a few inches of snow, let’s start by looking at cleaning the inside of the car, specifically, the carpet.

Is your car ready for winter? Have you put on one last coat of wax, installed the rubber floor mats, and maybe a nice layer of Rain-X? Well, even if your hose is already hibernating there is one more thing you need to do before winter and that is to get all the bugs off the paint. Some of these buggers contain acidic substances that can actually eat away at the clear coat and eventually even the paint. That’s right, leaving dead bugs on your car will destroy your paint. In my mind it’s just their revenge for killing them. What happens is that as an insect decomposes, they produce enzymes intended to break down the carcass. These enzymes also break down automotive paint, resulting in etching. It is always best to get bugs off the paint as soon as possible. It is especially important to get them off before winter when most of us don’t hand wash our cars as much. In fact, in many cases people have had to repaint bumpers because they didn’t take the time to get bugs off in a timely manner. Don’t believe me? According to a statistic I just made up, Americans spend more than $30 million every year on repainted bumpers and poorly fit car bras to cover bug damaged paint.

Like any red-blooded American, I have some pet peeves… like people that wait to merge until the last second, discovering a lack of toilet paper, and brake dust. Why God allows brake dust to exist will be one of the first questions I ask Him when I arrive at the gates of St. Peter. A molecular engineering textbook written in Wingdings would make more sense to me than why we can’t invent brakes without brake dust, or at least something that stops brake dust from getting on our wheels. I will get into how to clean wheels in a future post, but for now I’m trying to stop the monster from ruining yet another set of wheels. It’s not just an appearance issue either; brake dust is corrosive and over time will damage your rims. As always, I will only use products that the average car owner has access to and could easily use. I’m sure there are differences in brake pads that effect the amount of dust produced, but they will have to pay someone else $0 to do that test.

Welcome to the long awaited 2nd installment of ‘Spare Me the Details’. (For those that don’t have it bookmarked, the first can be found here) Being your local part-time auto-detailing guy, there are only a few things I am better at in life than the average person: having an immaculate stubble beard, Mario Kart 64, and cleaning car windows. And there are two things I know for sure about automobile window cleaning:

1. People love to have clean windows.
2. Most people leave streaks when they attempt to do it.