DIY car detailing

[Trudie]

After using my geriatric Honda Fit as a garden truck this summer, I want to really clean it up this fall, particularly the interior.  Tips?  It’s just really dusty and all of the crevices need work.  What is a good interior polish for dash and surfaces?  Other tools that work well?

[BDWW]

Lots of videos on youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOMDmbok0P4

[Just Joe]

A damp rag that was dipped in soapy dish water and wrung out does alot of good. Follow that up with a different damp wash rag that was dipped in plain water to remove any soap.

You can use that on everything. Follow up with glass cleaner, plastic protectant like Armor-All (I prefer 303 and Meguiar brand products by far), actual leather cleaner and protectants if you have leather.

Vacuum everything too of course. If you need to shampoo carpets consider a brush on a cordless drill and a Bissell carpet cleaner although I've had good success with a shop vac sucking dirty scrub water out of carpet. Just remove the paper filter inside the shop vac first.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=dirtiest+car+detail

That'll give you hope and a peek at their tools. Your tools need not be elaborate.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=anmmo+nyc&t=vivaldi&atb=v204-1&iax=videos&ia=videos

[BikingEngineer]

For the interior carpet, use a stiff handheld dust broom in one hand and your vacuum in the other. Use the brush to loosen any ground in dirt, and the vacuum to suck the dirt up. You can follow that up with shampooing if needed, but you'll get a much better result by starting with just a vacuum and substantial manual agitation of the carpet fibers.

When you shampoo, make sure that you completely rinse the shampoo out of your carpets before drying, otherwise your carpets become a rag with cleaner for your shoes and will get dirty more quickly than before.

For crevices they sell brushes in the auto detailing aisle at the store with long and soft bristles, grab one of those and go over all seams with that while following along with your shop vac. Follow that up with a wipedown with a moistened microfiber towel, then another pass with the crevice brush, then wipe down with protectant. I like 303 Aerospace protectant and a whole host of specialist products that I have from when I did this as a side gig, but the standard Armor-All is just fine as long as you make sure to buff it to a dull sheen after application. If you leave it oily shiny it will attract dust like nobody's business.

99% of the result is in the cleaning, so focus on that before worrying too much about dressings/polishes/etc.

[Car Jack]

Watch any of the videos by detail geek.  You don't have to use the fancy tools he does, but you can get an idea how to clean stuff.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAQHQEO4QpI5dXtr3vLoFCg

[Sunder]

Used to be a car enthusiast,  so I learned a few tricks to detailing my own car. Too long to get into all of them here, but two that might be relevant to your dust in crevices issue.

1) if your vacuum hose doesn't fit into a crevice, get the lid to a MacDonald's (or any fast food ) soda cup with the straw still stuck in. The lid will seal off most of your vacuum cleaner's pipe, and you will get very strong suction through the straw, which can fit into much smaller areas.

A more expensive variant to this that pro detailers use is cans of compressed air down a very narrow straw. Probably slightly more effective, but expensive.

2) for areas which have no electronics, you can spray water or surface cleaner until there is a very thin layer of liquid over the surface. Lightly fold some toilet paper and insert it in the crevice. As the toilet paper sucks up the cleaning fluid, the dirt is lifted with it. You need to make sure the toilet paper is not folded or rolled too tight, or only the liquid comes up, not the dirt.

Hope that helps.

[the_fella]

For interior cleaning, I like to use Meguiar's Quick Interior Detailer Cleaner. It's decent stuff. I like to use brushes. You can get the cheapo paint brushes from Walmart, just make sure they have bristles instead of the foam ones. You can use one brush dry to agitate the dirt and debris in the crevices and then another to clean it out. You spray the detailer spray directly onto the cleaner brush and get it wet, then agitate the stuff. When you're done, use a microfiber rag to clean the surface. You shouldn't let this cleaner dry on the surface. If you need microfiber rags, Walmart sells them fairly reasonable. But if there's a Harbor Freight near you, you can use one of their coupons to get a 4 pack of them for $0.69.

Vacuuming alone can make a big difference. You can use a stiff bristled brush (not a paint brush) to agitate the surface to make sure you get all the dirt out. Then make sure the grain of the carpet is all going the same way. That makes it look a lot better.

Check out the YouTube channel ChrisFix. He recently did a couple of interior detailing videos that are really good. I highly recommend them.