Following a collision accident or damage to your car or truck, you require the highest quality auto body services to restore your vehicle to pre-accident condition. At Kirmac Collision & Autoglass, we pride ourselves on restoring your vehicle following manufacturer and collision industry standards. We have invested in the tools and training to complete the complex repairs on today’s vehicles.
The pride in our work doesn’t stop when you drive your vehicle away from our facilities and want to see our customer’s cars looking good for the long run! This small guide will help you with making sure your vehicle looks as good as new for years to come.
Maintaining Your Interior
This might be the unsung hero in regards to keeping your car feeling and looking new. While we all love to look at a shiny new polished car or truck, in reality, you spend the majority of your time inside your vehicle. For this reason, consider maintaining the interior as meticulously as you keep the exterior.
Preventing Your Interior from Getting Dirty
Here are a few tips for drivers looking to keep their interiors as clean as possible:
- No Eating: This one can be particularly tough for busy people on the go, but an easy way to keep your interior clean is to avoid eating while driving. It’s not only dangerous to do but is the easiest way to add unwanted stains and crumbs to your seats and carpet.
- Bring Out What You Bring In: This tip goes hand in hand with not eating in your car, but always be sure to take out what you put in your car, especially things like water bottles, receipts, clothes from the gym, or anything else you don’t need in there. This will not only prevent you from cluttering the interior of your car but will also help yourself to not feel overwhelmed with things when you hop in!
- All Weather Floor Mats: We highly recommend using all weather floor mats to keep your carpet clean year round and prevent unwanted odors from embedding themselves into your carpet. All weather floor mats come in all shapes and sizes and some are even laser measured for your specific vehicle!
Cleaning Your Interior
No matter how diligent you are with keeping your interior clean, it will eventually get dirty. When that time comes, here are a few tools to help you clean up.
- Brushes: A good quality interior detailing brush set can do wonders for your upholstery. They’ll allow you to sweep up crumbs and other debris from your seats and carpet. Brushes with stiff bristles are also great for agitating cleaning sprays for deep seated stains.
- Wood Skewers & Cotton Swabs: No matter how meticulous you are with keeping your car clean, you will eventually discover dirt and grime in the hardest to reach spots of your upholstery. This is when your fine detail tools come into play. Anything from a wooden skewer to a cotton swab or Q-tip are perfect in this situation.
- Vacuum Cleaner: This might be the most obvious, but regularly vacuuming your interior carpets and upholstery is one of the best ways to keep them clean. If you have a wet/dry vacuum or shop vacuum you can also use interior car cleaners and really deep clean your interior.
- Car Specific Cleaners: There are many different brands of upholstery and interior cleaners for cars, but it is important to get one that is car specific. Some of the plastics used in car interiors or the tint on your windows can be harmed by some chemicals and car specific cleaners should also have protectant agents to help keep your interior from fading from the sun.
Cleaning Your Exterior
There are many different theories and techniques on the best way to clean your car’s exterior and protect your paint from the environment, so we will be going over just the basics here, but be sure to keep an eye on our blog for updates and new techniques to keep your paint looking brand new after visiting the autobody shop.
- Clay Bar: Clay baring paint will remove deep embedded dirt and grime from your paint, but is only needed if it’s been over a year since the paint was worked on. So if you just got a respray at our auto body shop or had body work done, you might not want to do this step. Clay bars work as a very mild abrasive so it’s best to only do this when needed.
- Wax / Sealant: Similar to our skin, paint has pores where dirt and grime can get into. waxes and sealants will fill in these pores and also act as a protective coating keeping paint from fading from UV rays. One of the newest sealants on the market are ceramic coatings that can not only keep UV rays from harming your new paint, but also repel water, making cleaning and drying easier. Depending on the product you’re using you should add a wax or sealant every 6 months to once ever! Always make sure to completely read the label to know when to next reapply, if ever.
- Clear Vinyl Wraps: This is quite possibly the ultimate way to keep your car’s paint pristine. Think of a clear vinyl wrap like a shield for your paint. They are applied either to just a few select areas of your car or can be added to the entire body. When installed properly, the wrap is nearly invisible and self healing so if at any time your car is scratched, or a rock hits your body work it will be protected by the vinyl. The best part of all though is if at any time the wrap becomes damaged, you can simply peel it off and your original coat of paint will look just as good as when the wrap was first installed.
This scratches the surface on ways to keep your paint in mint condition, and the sky really is the limit on how detailed you’d like to go in your car’s detailing.
Looking for Auto Body Work?
If you’re looking for auto body work on your vehicle after an accident or your car simply could use paint touch-ups and cosmetic repairs, call or stop by one of our locations. Our team of technicians will take the utmost care of your vehicle and have it looking like new, schedule your appointment today!
