I didn't quite know where to post this as the 'Looking after your car section" doesn't have a general category.
Every time I clean Arya inside and out, I think is there a more efficient and easier way to do it where one process doesn't affect another process in an adverse way, and so your left with a 'show room' finish to be proud of.
Today I gave Arya a detailing job that I think I've finally got the order of processes right to minimise time. The entire job took 1 1/2 hours. Here's what I did in order. Inside first in these orders.
I used my Stihl water blaster with a LOW PRESSURE car cleaning dispenser attachment.
Note that I use a car cleaning soap (not dish washing soap) that does not contain wax!! This stuff can leave spotting and makes the job hard. I use Mother California Gold or Meguiars neutral car wash.
1) Open all doors and boot. Detail inner doors, plastic trims, dash, consoles, steering wheel hub etc with Meguiars Quik Interior Detailer. Spray on the microfibre cloth, not the switches! Excess fluid can causes harm to contacts etc.
2) Remove rugs and vacuum them outside. Vacuum floors and seat stitching. Put rugs back.
3) Either use Meguiars interior detailer cleaner on the leather if its a quick wipe down (the leather is fully sealed and coated with a vinyl type seal so it won't harm the leather), or if it makes you feel better, condition the leather. I use Meguiars Gold Class Leather Conditioner a few times a year. Because the leather is sealed, I'm not sure it's even doing anything but I feel good about it
4) With the microfibre used in step 1) clean the door frames including boot, door seals, and bottom of the inner doors with warm soapy water.
5) Threat the tyres with Wet Look or tyre shine. This seals the tyres prior to them getting wet. If the tyres are dirty, unfortunately you'll have to clean them and wait until they're dry before this step.
6) Using a mag cleaning mitten, wash the mags (Alloy wheels for those who don't know what a mag is) with hot soapy water. If you do this first, your not grovelling around on a wet driveway.
7) Wet the car. I use the Stihl waster blaster with LOW PRESSURE dispenser which soaps the car really well. Using the two bucket method (Clean soapy water in one and hot water rinse in the other to shake grit off the microfibre mitten), clean the car from the roof moving down. Leave the skirting, mud flaps and bumper skirts last as they contain the worst grit risk to the paint finish.
8) Hose off the soap residue. Here's a great trick I found to get rid of all water spotting. Using a liquid soap dispenser on hose or LOW PRESSURE water blaster, rinse the car down with a mixture of 1 part Exterior Detailer and 3 parts water (I use Turtle ICE spray detailer).
9) Shammy the liquid off the roof and window pillars then with a window Squeegee, wipe all water off all windows. I use a Karcher window vacuum cleaner but even the shammy will work fine as the detailer mixture leaves a spotless finish. Then shammy the rest of the car. I've used real leather shammy's and a Meguiars synthetic shammy and sadly the synthetic left the real one for dead performance wise.
10) At this point the car will look show room due to the detailer used in the rinse, but you can go one step further. I like to polish the car down with microfibre mitten and Mequiars Ultimate Quik Wax. Even though it's not a real paste wax, it does last long enough between weekly or fortnightly washes. I'd still do a proper paste wax every three to six months.
11) An additional process that can be carried out is internal window cleaning but I find it very difficult and haven't found a product that doesn't streak yet.
Heres some quick photos....sorry about the quality.
