Detailing.
Experience, as well as everything I read says basically this: you get what you paid for.
But since I try to be frugal, it's a catch 22. I'm not willing to pay for serious quality. I don't want to waste my money on a half-done job.
At the end of the day, I bought my own detailing kit... clay bars, wax, shop vac, blah blah.
Any advice on doing it? My warehouse has a shopvac that I can use, and I don't mind washing it myself to get it done decently and because I'm cheap (detailing runs around $40 here from what I've seen).
I like the subreddit
https://www.reddit.com/r/autodetailingGenerally, I'd say that detailing for $40 is exactly what I mean by just not worth it. You'll get your car back with swirl marks in the paint, maybe a couple new scratches, and an almost clean interior, with a whole host of small things that bug you. And none of the real benefits of a proper detail. It's basically like wasting $40. IMO, you're better off just paying like $6 and rolling the car through an automatic car wash at that point. You'll get the same new minor scratches, but you'll pay a lot less, and you won't get your hopes up.
It seems to me that what you gotta do is basically this, for a full clean and basic maint (both at once is easy, because you're already cleaning under the hood, and so on):
- Vacuum interior, then do it again
- Shampoo interior - I am way too lazy for this, come on
- All leather in the interior gets treated with leather... treatment... stuff.
- All plastic in the interior gets treated with plastic... treatment... stuff. Which may be the same as the leather stuff. I dunno.
- All surfaces get wiped clean. No more dust.
- All windows get cleaned from the inside with something like invisible glass.
- Locks get lubed
- Door hinges get lubed
- Hood and trunk latches get lubed
- Glovebox latch, console latch, other flippy bits in the interior get lubed
- Hood and trunk struts get lubed and/or checked (if they are leaking/sweating, it's like $12 to replace these)
- While your hood is up, throw in a new cabin air filter, super easy
- And also vacuum out your engine bay, vacuum the crap where your hood closes, vacuum the crap where your trunk closes
- Remember that leather / plastic / rubber treatment stuff? Go over the weather sealing on the doors, trunk, and bottom of windshield, and sunroof/etc if you got one
- Windshield wipers get checked, replaced if necessary, cleaned if they're fine
- Polish headlights if they're a bit grungy... eventually the inside yellows though, and that's a lot harder to take care of
- Inspect all light bulbs, replace any that need it
- Check coolant, oil, and trans if you got a trans filler tube (some new cars don't) (need engine running, car parked in a flat space)
- Check power steering and brake reservoirs (master cylinders, whatever)
- Top up washer fluid; bug cleaner in the summer, cold resistant stuff in the winter
- Clean the car with your hose, or two bucket system, or whatever
- Now we get to the fun part: claying; clay bar the entire car; this removes crap embedded in the clearcoat / paint
- Touch up the clearcoat if it makes sense to do so... generally this is not something you want to be doing
- Immediately wax the car after claying; a proper hand wax that stays on for a long time
- All windows get cleaned from the outside with invisible glass, then get rain-X'ed or a similar water repellent treatment. Especially the windshield.
A proper detailing place will do all of this, except they probably won't be getting you a new air filter or checking/topping off fluids. Or lubing your moving components. Just the full clean, treatments, wash, clay, wax, etc.
Would anyone do all of the cleaning stuff for $40? No. Suddenly the $200 detailing packages make sense. They've gotta pay for several hours of labor, material cost, rent, bills, ads, and so on. Can't do this shit in 20 minutes.
If you really want to get sexy with it:
- Jack car up
- Get an oil change going
- Take your wheels off
- Inspect your brake rotors and pads (and drums, if you have them - sorry) for thickness, surface wear, pitting / grooving
- If you're going to be fancy with it, take off your calipers / caliper brackets, and use brake clean to clean your brake rotors, and clean up your calipers / caliper brackets, you can even apply new anti-squeal / brake quiet to the rear of the brake pads
- If you removed your brakes, you might want to have spare brake parts lying around, so you can put on new brakes if you decide it's time
- Clean all the brake dust off your wheels, get them looking brand new again
- Clean your tires, especially the sides; maybe shine the sides if you want (I do not recommend it)
- Hey, now you can rotate your wheels! If they're not staggered / or have directional tires, that is.
- Inspect car from underneath, see if anything moves that shouldn't, or doesn't that should
- Maybe flush the coolant, maybe flush the brake fluid, maybe do trans fluid
- Finish up the oil change, reinstall the wheels, lower the car, torque the wheels properly
Now your car is super clean, has new fluids as necessary, and has been inspected by you.