Gadgetory

your car is all tired and dirty looking kind of like this one but instead of spending the next five years paying for a new one how about you spend one afternoon making this look like a new one you get a sense of satisfaction and a new looking car now wheels with their complicated patterns and dirt in every little nook and cranny are breaths the best reason to have someone else wash your car I hate doing these that's why I found this stuff the motorcycle guys turned me on to it's called s 100 wheel cleaner if it avoids you having to go through every nook and cranny with one of these dumb brushes I'm in next it's time to wash the car and the first thing you do is just get it real wet okay bucket number one bucket number two this one's where you're gonna make your soapy water fewer folks do number two that's gonna be plain water to rinse the grit out of our wash mitt periodically so we're not just spreading it around the car now what's unique your suds Adam is an automotive car wash don't go grab the strongest stuff you got under your kitchen sink and you don't use a lot of it Nick it is a sponge but I like these little kind of weird little finger II wash mitts saves you a lot to get in there with your fingers that goes on into the suds start at the top of the car inside the wheel lift around this rocker oh here's an old trick the old guys use they take off the nozzle and do a simple rinse with just the hose they reason it all comes off as one piece and takes the dirt off better it's either a bunch of BS or really brilliant physics but it costs nothing to try okay Chuck the chamois and look into one of these deionizing filters for the final rinse you can also find big ones on wheels I hate drying cars okay all the major stuffs been removed but how about the invisible stuff here's how you know it's there take your hand the one without a ring on it and run it over your paint can you hear that you should never be able to hear your paint but you can cuz all those contaminants are stuck in it's like upside down sandpaper we're gonna get those off with a clay bar looks like a couple of pieces of yellow silly putty and little envelopes there you've got this spray that you use to lubricate the clay as it glides over your paint and another rag you're gonna have a lot of those when you get done just kind of mold this thing out till it's you know about the size of the palm of your hand select a small area of the hood or whatever panel you're working on get a little bit of this stuff going there that a foot square is what I like to do and take this clay get it on there and just go back and forth you'll know you're done when it no longer sticks and if you can see that but see all those brown and black speckles in there that's embedded grime that was stuck to the paint I wish you were here on our shoot location the difference between this and this is audible and totally tangible now if you drop this gun on the ground throw it away you don't even want a chance taking some net grit from your driveway and working into your finish now if you've discovered some new chips in your paint this is the time to touch them up before the wax goes on okay finishing now with our surface correction to get in one of the biggest misunderstood areas about cleaning up a car and that is polish versus wax they're often mixed up in people's minds polish is a micro abrasive that will take off a fine layer of your finish and delete scratches in it wax is something you use to seal the finish after you've washed clay barred and or polished it whatever combination most people have put so much on that they get polish and/or wax down in all their crevices you don't even need to go within a half an inch of crevices that way you never have that problem let it dry to a haze takes about a minute or two okay then a separate nice dry buffing rag that's not moist at all to get this haze off and that takes almost no effort at all now wax is something you put on to protect all the work you've just done put this stuff on pretty liberally and again almost no effort here think of it it's like a moisturizer or an aftershave you just did a real deep clean now you want to put something back in there and make it feel good now tiresome folks think putting tire dressing on looks tacky others think detailing is not done until you have put it on it's up to you I use armor-all but I get the low Sheen natural finish stuff I just spray it on leave it on I don't rub it in or anything like that all I do is take off the excess after I'm done I'm not taking a break the old-school trick is to take newspaper want it up get some window cleaner on it and use that to polish your glass today we have a more high-tech solution and that stuff like rain-x which turns your glass into a more sealed more hydrophobic environment it balls this stuff in kind of like a Polish or a wax and once it dries to a haze you buff it off you'd be amazed how the water runs off look here as I spray with a water bottle on the side of the windshield that I did seal the side that I didn't you can see that water just runs away on the rain-x side it's good stuff Chrome cleans up great with glass cleaner you can also use real fine steel wool if it needs it but only if it's real metal there are lots of products to restore those faded black parts these to work pretty well for me though none of them do it permanently next thing is Lexel is great for leather you're probably seen this stuff it's not cheap but it really works and if you've got extremely stiff dried-out leather take a bit a little sloppy handful massage that stuff in till it's a wet mess then leave it that way in fact I might even put a little plastic over it keep it moist Park it for a day or two out of the Sun come back and wipe off the excess that leather will have come back to life for general use around the car like this once again low Sheen armor all same stuff we use on the tires and when you're doing your glass I use a non ammonia glass cleaner spray away is a great one this stuff is great for the glass as well as we mentioned earlier great for the chrome getting these little crevices where chrome and bezels meet that's where this little eraser pencil comes in handy just come along in there and just dial around that area and then give it a quick brush you may think this stuff is tiny but in sum this is what says new and fresh to your eyes not the broad stuff like just smearing some armor all around okay you're just about seeing the light at the end of the tunnel of your detail what do you do to keep the car nice day to day first of all keep one of these big old car duster brushes in the trunk don't use it on a filthy car but if it's dusty these are great they sharpen the car right up glass cleaner is great for glass as well as for chrome bright work around the car again real quick spray it on microfiber rag take it off and then you've got these instant Detailers a lot of brands of these give it a quick spritz with this wipe it dry it's kind of a cleaning waxing all-in-one nice half a day is about what it's gonna take you to do your car right when you're done you got a car that looks phenomenal it's actually more fun to drive because you just feel good about it I'm sure you got some great detailing tips that I don't know said them to me on cars at cnet.com and I believed your car cleaned up