TOP 10 CLOTH AND CAR CLEANING TIPS

Cloth, velour, corduroy and carpet in cars can be tough to keep clean. Here’s the guide on how to use car cleaning products and cloth especially the cleverer car cleaners do it.

1. Coffee/chocolate spills: use cool tap water and a paper towel or clean rag to blot out. A five-minute soak with glass cleaner works on older or more stubborn stains

2. Grease: a paint thinner used with salt applied sparingly and then vacuumed when dried should do it, but test a small area first

3. Ink: hairspray or salt should absorb ink; then brush off

4. Vomit: we don’t care how it got there, dilute with soda water or baking soda

5. Blood: treat immediately with laundry starch and cold water; allow it to dry before brushing or vacuuming away

6. Alcohol: dilute with cold water immediately if possible

7. Feces: a mixture of hot water, dish washing liquid and a cup of white vinegar; work in with a hard bristle brush, let it sit for half an hour and then blot with thick cloth or rags

8. Faded with age and grime: half a cup of ammonia in 600ml of water should brighten old carpet, but test first in an out-of-the-way corner and don’t use on pure wool carpet

9. Frayed carpet: liquid resin helps to keep strands and fibres in place

10. Carpet indentations: place a damp cloth over affected area and then place a low-heat iron on it for only a moment 



WHEN BIRDS ATTACK
 
Bird droppings on your car are about as welcome as your in-laws dropping in. Their extremely acidic discharges (the birds, that is) also contain digestion-aiding gravel that can actually corrode a car’s lustrous paintwork in no time.

Regular washing and care can add hundreds of dollars to your car's value at sale time.

THE EXPERT SAYS

Meguiar’s car care products, strongly recommends the once-a-week cleaning ritual.

“It is very important to keep it up. No matter where you live — in the country, city or by the coast — Australia is a very harsh environment for vehicles. The elements just eat away at them. A weekly wash can protect them from this,” the specialist says.

Of course, there are hundreds of outlets around Australia who will do all this for you.

Claudio Roda, managing director of Magic Hand Car Wash in North Melbourne, will charge you between $25 and $30 for the job, depending on the size and level of service you want performed on your car. It takes around 20 minutes, and you can sip a coffee or enjoy a snack sitting down while overall-clad professionals swarm around your pride-and-joy. They’re obliged to be as thorough as you wish, even getting down-and-dirty between the wheel arches and boot cavities.

In some areas around Oz, mandatory water restrictions have been a real boost for folk like Claudio. “My business has increased by at least 10 per cent since the restrictions came in,” he said.

It seems that hand car wash centers have really taken the pain and confusion out of how to save water while still driving a clean car. 


FOUR TIMES A YEAR — WAX ON, WAX OFF

If you’re a regular daily driver who covers around 20,000km a year, your car can use all the help it can get in our tough climate.

The car-clean professionals, like Chris Robson of Carrera Car Wash Cafe in South Melbourne, charge around $90 to take the pain and the strain out of all the wax-goes-on, wax-goes-off hard work. But getting up-close and personal with your vehicle can really help strengthen the automotive bonds too, so don’t be too put off by a bit of hard yakka and elbow grease.