Valeting Secrets of the Experts.

A can of upholstery foam cleaner is excellent to keep in the boot of the car as a general purpose clean that can be used for virtually anything. If you have a spillage in the car you can clean it up there and then, or else, you can prevent making your upholstery dirty by using it to wash your hands... although it is not a powerful cleaner, it is enough to clean greasy hands from take-aways or clean up after changing a spare wheel. You can do just about anything with it from cleaning dust from your dashboard to removing birds mess from the outside of your car. It's also good for removing grubby marks from clothing in an emergency. But it's best use is if somebody is sick in your car... it will not spread the contamination and it will mask the smell.

Normally we would advise against using household products on your car - especially those from the kitchen, but with your car's interior there are lots 0f products that do work. The Kind of tricks that Aggie and Kim tell you also work. For example sprinkling bicarbonate of soda on your carpets an hour before you vacuum will help rid your car of stale smells. It's probably best not to put anything on your seats, instead wiping them with a damp leather or microfibre cloth removes much dirt. But if you test your seats to make sure they can be shampooed then you can use products like Vanish.

Most plastic surfaces are best washed with a damp cloth and warm soapy water. But it is very very important that the cloth is just damp and not wet when cleaning your dashboard. Many cars have sensitive elecronics from computers which control air-bags to switches for your windows - none of which respond well to water. A single droplet of water in the wrong place could end up costing you thousands of pounds. For this reason it is important never to spray anything directly onto your dashboard. Furniture polish such as Pledge works as well as most Automotive plastic dressings, just be sure to spray it onto a cloth and don't spray directly.

You can Vacuum in hard to reach places if you get yourself a length of hose pipe. Your hose pipe is probably long enough that you can spare 20", all you need to do is place one end of the hose between thumb and fore-finger and cup your hand over the nozzle of the vacuum cleaner. This narrow extension not only enables you to get into those hard to reach areas down the side of the centre console, but it actually has more suck.

Car Survival Kit - The chances of being trapped in a snow drift for several days are pretty slim in Britain, but a car survival kit can help protect your car from bargains! Are the kind of person that pops out for a loaf of bread and comes home with bedding plants and a gazebo? If you are, the we strongly recommend that you find space in the boot of your car for the following items: a couple of black bin liners, some plastic sheeting, an old towel and a travel blanket. It seems that on the first few hot and sunny days of the year, lots of you rush down to B&Q and buy yourselves house paint or fence paint, and this is when disaster strikes for a great many people! Paint tins are not vacuum sealed, they contain air, and you take the tin from a cool air conditioned building and place it in a hot car. The air and paint expands and there is a good chance that the lid will pop off before you manage to get home. During the spring and early summer, we see as many as 3 cars a week with boots or foot wells full of paint, varnish, lacquer and wood stain!
Most tins now come with three or more metal clips on the lit to hold it down, but they don't seem to help, a far better solution for avoiding a car full of paint is to seal the paint tins in a bin liner. The great irony is that most DIY centres actually sell bin liners and plastic sheeting!
Also remember that you can buy very cheap throws and blankets in Ikea, because Ikea is another place that can spell disaster for your car... so many times we hear the story that you have found some cheap mirrors or picture frames at the super-store, and to avoid breaking them, you put them in the main passenger area instead of in the boot with all the other shopping! This sounds like a sensible idea at first, but it's far cheaper to replace a £5.99 picture frame, than it is to repair leather upholstery. And for another fiver, you could have bought a blanket to wrap the picture frame in. Travel blankets are very useful, you can use them as padding to stop stuff moving about, as packaging to protect luggage and your car, and if you do ever get stuck in a snow drift, they could save your life! You can get lined blankets which have a waterproof plastic coating on one side but these are expensive, instead we suggest that you get some plastic sheeting, so if you do fancy a picnic at the county show, you can put the sheeting on the damp ground, and the blanket on top. A few meters of plastic sheeting costs next to nothing and can save your boot area on those trips to the dump, or on the way back from the garden centre... and if you really can't stay away from garden centres, and cant resist bedding plants, maybe you should consider buying a purpose made boot liner.
And if you can find one, it's also a good idea to keep an old towel in your car, it's good for wet dogs and muddy boots. And if anything does get spilt in your car, putting a towel over it will help soak it up, a damp towel over wet paint will prevent it drying, making it easier for us to clean up for you. None of these items takes up much space and they can help you avoid costly repairs and clean-ups. Remember you have them next time you are at B&Q, Ikea, or the local Indian take-away.

Avoid wear on upholstery and carpets, by keeping them clean. Special attention needs to be paid to the areas of the drivers seat nearest the door. It is the leading edge of the seat and the bolster which wear quickest because you slide over them as you enter and exit your car. Try to remember to lift yourself over these areas especially if you have leather upholstery.
The area that gets the most wear is the carpet under the accelerator pedal, the dirt from your shoes drops down and your heel grinds it in. Valet this area regularly and protect the foot well by buying after-market floor mats, get fabric ones for summer and rubber ones for winter.

Use a stiff brush when vacuuming your carpets. If you brush your carpets before you vacuum it will loosen grass and grit which has been ground in, often your carpet will have dried grass and other vegetation which gets caught up in the fibres, this is a particular problem when you take the Christmas tree to the dump, pine needles are very difficult to remove. A very stiff brush can help. Fishing tackle shops are a good place to get brushes as they are used to descale fish. For dog hair, a rubber brush is best, to remove cat hair you can use the same kind of brushes you can buy for clothes and furniture.

Check your paintwork with a sandwich bag. Once you have washed your car, put some soapy water onto the upper surfaces for your car, then place a thin sandwich bag over your hand before feeling the paintwork. This will help you to detect fallout and other contaminants. This method will help you to detect what you can't see with the naked eye, especially on metallic coloured cars.

White vinegar will remove calcium deposits which cause unsightly water stains on your cars windows and mirrors.

Wax and Polish can work on glass. Polish is mildly abrasive and can help to remove stains and water spots. Waxing your windows will help water to bead up and roll off, but don't wax the windscreen and this can cause smearing.

Prevent Rust under your bonnet. Modern cars often come supplied with bare metal part which can rust, such as screw heads, clips and bolts. Once these begin to oxidize, the rust will spread to the bodywork where they are attached. When you buy a new car, check under the bonnet for these areas and cover them with white grease (available from motor accessory shops), an item you should pay particular attention to is the earth lead which connects the battery terminal to the bodywork.

We all know to avoid getting wax an polish on plastic as it will usually cause chalky white marks. Often a pencil eraser will remove these marks, ore else a mild solvent will work. The most easily available solvent is Surgical Spirit or Rubbing Alcohol. But while plastic must be avoided, window rubbers and rubber inserts can be cleaned with normal car polish (not wax), but you need to be very careful not to get polish into creases where they can be very hard to remove.

A soft paint brush, note the ferrel wrapped with insulation tape.

A paintbrush can be a useful tool. A large soft paintbrush is excellent for dusting interior trim, cleaning air vents, buttons switches and around the steering column. It can also be useful for removing wax and polish residue from creases and crevices on the exterior of your car. A paintbrush is one of the most commonly used valeting tools at Clean Image.
Wrap electrical insulation tape or masking tape around the metal ferral, totally covering it and overlapping by about 2 mm, this will prevent it scratching your plastic trim.

Think about the order in which you do things. If you decide to apply an exterior plastic dressing, apply it before you wax/polish -- this way if you get wax or polish on the plastics because the dressing will top it sticking. Likewise, apply tyre sheen and ally wheel coating after you have applied wax, but before you take it off. If the wind catches your tyre dressing and blows it down the side of your car,the wax will act like a mask. Thinking about the order in which you do things makes life easier and saves lots of time

Check back for more valeting tips. We update this page every Sunday/Monday.