Car Cleaning Products, which are the best for me?

Ok I’m going to admit this right from the start, I hate washing and cleaning my car. Car cleaning products are great but the use of them involves washing a car. in fact if I could I would quite happily pull my own teeth out before I'd wash the car.

I have always been told that if I look after my car it will look after me. As a child I often watched my dad get up early on a Sunday morning and clean his car inside out, and I mean the man was a perfectionist, it took him most of the day. He had little bottles for this, a little tub for that and not forgetting a spray for the other.

Around twice a year, he’d really work hard on his car getting all clean and sparkling, once in the spring and again in the fall. He said that even though it was one of my chores to wash the car, he needed to get it ready for the summer and then again in the winter months.

I never understood it, to me a car is a car, if it gets me from where I am to where I want to go then that’s fine by me. That is until around 15 years later and I find myself living with a woman who’s family have the same ethos about their cars as my dad!

So I figured over the last few years I’d have a go at car washing, at keeping my own car clean, as I’m much to thrifty to pay anyone else to do it. It still takes effort to do it on my part as I don’t enjoy it plus I no longer do it for pocket money - I just do to keep my wife from raising Cain.

I have tried different products over the years as have my family and what I have been really interested in is getting maximum results for minimal effort. So after taking advice from my brother in law who is a professional car valet for a major dealer he gave me the list below of the things I’d need to, in his words “do a good job”.

Below is the list of car cleaning products, as detailed my my brother-in-law:

1) A sponge. (Even I knew that)

2) Car Shampoo (again I knew that, and thought that is where the list would end)

3) Wheel cleaner

4) Chamois leather

5) Brisk- an interior cleaner for upholstery.

6) Protective sealer polish- protects paintwork longer against the elements

7) Luxury wax polish.

8) polishing cloth

9) A touch up stick, for use on vinyl, rubber and plastic trim

10) Glass Cleaner- to get rid of grime and bugs from the windshield.

The first time I decide it's time to get into washing cars, I decided that I’m was going to use the products that I have heard of. I went down to my local automotive centre and bought the above list from the Turtle Wax brand but wait - there are so many different types of everything. Happily, with the help of a rather confused shop assistant, I ended up with the kit to the left, all set and ready to start.

Whilst I can't give it a wholly negative review, there was some fairly hard work involved in the using of it. It's specifically designed for black cars, which is what I have, and presumably it makes them shinier, prettier even. For what it is, I recommend it for that reason, and it definitely adds the finishing touch. It's also a good price in comparison to what it contains, so if you're a guy (or gal) with a black car, give it a shot - you might find it's the perfect cleaning kit for your car.

Christmas arrives and my brother-in-law, for some sadistic reason, buys me the Meguiars car cleaning kit. He can see by my reaction that I'm not very impressed and tries to soften the impact by telling me "it's what the professionals use". So there's little old me remembering the aching shoulders, wishing all kinds of voodoo on my brother in law, who up until 5 minutes ago I actually liked!

To the left is a full Meguiars car cleaning kit. Everything you need is contained within and I have to say that I was (and remain) impressed with the quality of the products and the fact that it really is a well organized car care kit. All the products are top notch and using them certainly takes a lot of the 'hard' out of 'hardwork. Oh yeah - and it's great value for money too.

The kit is so easy to use and by the time I had finished the car looked amazing. Ok I still ached a little bit, but had enough energy to enjoy a beer in the garden whilst I admired my awesome work. This care care kit was just what I was looking for, maximum results for minimum effort.