Today at work as I was working on a pretty badly cracked up Jeep Grand Cherokee leather seat, and my wife and youngest showed up to say hi. It was quite a nice break from a mind bending repair. She does that every once in a while, it’s great being my own boss and being able to take a break when I want to. As I was saying bye and corralling my 5 year old back into our 2001 Chevy Tahoe, I couldn’t help to notice the carpet. GROSS, and that was an understatement. So ya all know what I did when I got home from work, cleaned carpet. Something my wife has been trying to get me to do now forever. But working on vehicles all day thats usually the last thing I want to do when I get home from work is work on another car but sometimes we have to do what our boss says.

I can’t help to notice the vehicles that get traded in at the car dealerships I do jobs for on a daily basis. There are the clean ones that the dealers basically take to a mechanic, get them checked out, then do a fluff clean and resale within a short period of time. Then there’s the the ones that they have to, well in short, have to totally take apart, clean, then put them back together and hope they turn out okay. You know what that means, lots of money being spent to restore a vehicle back to a resale-able state, and guess who pays for that….YOU!

When you go to trade in your car, one thing that happens is your salesman or the sales manager will go out look at your car and then drive it. If the car is not clean, the guy takes that into consideration when he comes back to give you an offer, and believe me you will get an offer thats considerable lower then it should be. It lowers the resale value considerably when you pull up in a car that smells like Fido’s butt and looks like more food went on the carpets and other parts in the car then went into your mouth, or the dash looks like it has a carpeted cover on it, no wait, that’s just dust.

I can’t believe how many cars that come through the car lots that are just down right nasty. Just think of how much more money they probably would have made off of their trade, if they would have just cleaned the vehicle.

It’s not that hard to keep your car clean. I know in our busy lives its really hard to find time to clean out our cars, but just think how much money you can save in the end if you do. Your car is an investment of your hard earned cash.

Vacuum your car out at least every two to three weeks, more often if you can, this helps to keep the sand and dirt from getting ground down though the carpet and into the pad. Which keeps your carpet looking better longer and helps to cut down on wear on the carpet.

If you spill something on the carpet try to wipe it up as soon as possible, now I know thats not going to happen on every spill, I have 4 kids and spills don’t always get announced. Today was a perfect example.

I took a bucket of warm water, mixed with a generous amount of Mr. Clean, and a scrub brush and went to town. Now I didn’t soak the carpet, but I gave it a good scrubbing, then wiped it with a towel and then took my shop vac and sucked up the dirty water solution. Not only did it clean it good, but it also killed all the germs because as you know Mr. Clean kills germs. One thing to keep in mind is the amount of germs and allergen’s that live on the inside of a vehicle, keeping it clean keeps those nasty little critters out. Now my carpet is germ free and it smells nice too, not like a Tahoe full of kids. Now I’m not saying that Mr. Clean is the way to clean your carpet because there are a lot better products for carpet that work really well and probably better, but it worked well for me at the time and did some kid germ proofing too.

Wipe the rest of your vehicle down with a wet micro fiber towel, these little towels are wonders. They clean better then any other towel I’ve ever come across. I first came across the micro fiber towel back when I was doing exterior touch up, about 10 years ago. We used them for removing excess wax and rubbing compound, and wow what a time saver. They worked so much better then the terry cloth towel, they took the excess off so much quicker and left a better shine and also didn’t leave those fine scratches you get from a terry towel. At the time they were pretty expensive, but now you can get them pretty cheap. In the interior they work just as good. They advertise that they clean with just water without cleaners, and really they do a pretty good job without cleaners. All you have to do is wet it down with warm water and get to wiping. If you run across a spot that it won’t get off, try a little dish washing soap mixed in a bucket of warm water and scrub the area with the wet micro fiber towel or even a scrub brush, being careful not to let water run down into electrical parts. For those stubborn black marks on the plastic, try a Scotch Brite pad wet with your bucket of Mr. Clean and warm water and scrub the mark gone, now be careful not to scrub to hard, you don’t want to leave a scuff mark or remove dye.
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Now I’m not one for all that slicky pucky (that’s my word for interior dressing or the shiny stuff), there’s no substitute for clean, spraying all that shiny stuff in the interior seems to cause more problems then what its worth. Not only does it make dust stick to your pieces and parts in the interior, but in some cases it can damage some of the trim pieces that are dyed with a water based dye, it has a tendency to cause the dyes to peel.

Lastly a little tip on the smell good gels in a can, or the oils that clip on your vents, or the sprays you spray around to make your vehicles smell better. This is really more of warning then a tip, they cause damage, yep, damage. I’ve run across a few vehicles that this stuff has ate the finish right off. Not really sure whats in this stuff but it causing a lot of damage to dashes, console areas, and vents. So if you use these thing be careful where you put them or spray them. Try to find a spot in the vehicle thats not going to cause and accident, one suggestion is under the seat. When spraying don’t ever spray the dash or instrument panels. I like some of these smell good stuffs as much as the other person but when I spray a vehicle down I’ll spray the carpet and cloth seats only, or even the A/C intake, but never right into the vents directly. I also use oder foggers, but I always am cautious of where I point the thing or when I set one off in a car I’ll lay towels down to avoid any drippings getting on the trim pieces.

I’ve keep my wife’s Chevy Tahoe as clean as possible knowing I’m not going to drive it forever and that someday I will trade it in. We love our Tahoe and plan to get a few more miles out of it. But when the day comes to trade it in on a new one I plan on getting top dollar.

By keeping your car clean on a regular basis will not only be a healthier investment of your time, but an investment of your money when it comes to resale value. A clean car brings more money then dirty one, period.

Tags: car dealerships, clean car, cleaning your investment, how to clean a car, lots of money, resale value, save money

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