Car detailing can be an expensive service, and likely one that isn’t on your list of priorities. With a few simple tools you can do a professional detail and save yourself a couple hundred dollars. The things you’ll need will be a shop vac, some multi-purpose cleaner, rags, window cleaner, a 2″ paint brush (brand new), scrub brush and possibly some armorall. This is really all you need, unless of course you wish to buff out the exterior, that would require some additional tools and compounds.
First thing you’ll do is pull everything out of the car, including the mats and everything from the console or doors where you may have been stashing things. Once all of that is removed you’ll want to get the shop vac ready and start off with a light vacuum of the carpet and seats. It doesn’t have to be perfect, you just want to get the majority of things so you can begin scrubbing the carpet. Your multi-purpose cleaner should be in a spray bottle so you can spray all of the carpet, but not the seats. After you’ve given the carpet its first spray, next thing to do is scrub using the brush. You’ll see more dirt coming out, and once you’ve scrubbed the entire carpet area then you can move to the next step.
Get the shop-vac and your paint brush and begin dusting all the corners and anywhere you can get to with the paint brush while holding the vacuum nozzle with the other. Keep the vacuum nozzle somewhat close to where you are using the paint brush so it draws in the dust. Get into the vents, the radio, climate controls, and anywhere that could potential have dust settling. You’ll notice a great improvement once you start using this method to get all the dirt out. Then once you’ve finished, you can look to see if there are areas that aren’t getting cleaned up with the paintbrush and possibly use some cleaning products to clean it up.
After all the dusting is done, you can move to doing the windows. The trick with windows is to lower them about 1-2 inches so you can clean the very top that usually gets sealed into some weatherstripping and needs to be cleaned off. Then once you’ve done the top half, roll the window back up completlely and get that bottom 1-2 inches that you couldn’t get with the window partially lowered.
Finally take the vacuum and do a final pass to collect any of the dirt or debris that had loosened up when you used the cleaner and scrub brush. Its up to you whether you like the Armor All look or not. If you’ve done a very meticulous job cleaning the dash with the paint brush you’d be surprised at how good it looks even without using a product to potentially make it look too greasy.
These are the basics you’ll need to know in order to do your own car detailing. There are quite a few other tips but this will make a big difference as I’m sure you’ll find out.
