Auto Detailing Guide

Interior Cleaning and Detailing Tips

So you are done washing the outside and need to move to the interior. Tired yet? You will be. The reward comes later with that great feeling of accomplishment once you are done completely detailing your car and get to drive it around.

The interior is really where you make or break a detailing job. No matter how great the outside looks, many of my customers would look at the inside and then decide whether they liked it based on what the interior looked like. There's nothing wrong with this since that's where you spend most of your time, but the outside does take considerable skill and effort also. People don't understand what it takes to clean the interior of a vehicle until you've done it yourself. There's an amazing amount of nooks and crannies where dirt likes to hide.

If you're doing a full detail(4-6hrs), wash and dry the car(mostly) first then move to the interior. This way the exterior is fully dried when you finish up the interior and are ready to prep, seal and wax.

To start, you'll need to vacuum the car out. Get anything that's not nailed down out of the car, floor mats, etc...

A good wet/dry shop vac is necessary for this. While you're vacuuming have a pointy semi-firm brush at hand to get the junk out of the cracks of the console and dash or whatever. A firm bristled brush is good for stirring up the carpet matt so you can get most of the junk out of the carpet. Don't worry about getting absolutely everything at first, you'll be vacuuming again after the shampoo. If you have access to a compressor, it makes this job very easy since you can blow out the cracks and vents with the compressed air. If not, just use very small brushes and q-tips to clean it out and vacuum it away.

Once you've vacuumed out the vehicle, use an all-purpose cleaner to get the stubborn stains off the vinyl and plastic. Don't forget the steering wheel, this is where lot's of gunk builds up! Use a window cleaner sprayed on a rag to get the headliner clean. Be careful with the headliner though, it's very easy to fray or damage if you rub it too hard. There are several good all-purpose cleaners on the market like Simple Green that can also help with any hard to remove stains. For caked on grease stains get a fabric stain remover from your local auto parts store or Wal-Mart. Kerosene mixed 50/50 with water is good too, but it might bleed the color from fabrics. Use it carefully and not on leather! Don't forget the trunk/hatchback areas as well!

Once the car has been vacuumed, you're ready to shampoo. The 2EZ Interior Cleaner is a great product to clean the entire interior of the vehicle. This powerful cleaner is specifically designed to attack the toughest car interior stains. 2EZ will produce superior results, making your car look like it just left the show room floor! 2EZ will clean oil, dirt, grease, gum, dirt, drinks, and food stains out of carpet and upholstery while eliminating odors as it cleans! All of the 2EZ cleaners are environmentally safe, non-toxic, non allergenic and ODORLESS! Also, a stiff tire brush is needed here as well. Spray the cleaner everywhere and scrub it in. Using the foam, start with the carpets on the drivers side, then the seats. This keeps the water to a minimum. Move around the whole car until you're done. If the carpet isn't too dirty you don't have to scrub every square inch, just get the dirty areas. As for the floor mats, wet them down real good(this an excellent opportunity for the power washer) and spray the all purpose cleaner on them. Scrub them real good, then rinse very well. Hang them vertically and they'll dry off pretty quick. If you took my advice on prior pages about purchasing a Porter Cable 7424 High Speed Orbital Polisher/Buffer, you can switch out the polishing pad for a hard nylon bristle carpet scrubbing pad. These work incredibly well with getting stains and hard to remove ground in dirt out of carpets.

With the shampooing complete, you have two options. One, you can vacuum up the shampoo residue which will pull up the dirt, or you can use a carpet steam cleaner (you can rent these or even buy one, see our auto detailing supplies page for more information on good steam cleaners). Steam cleaners really pull up the gunk that's been imbedded in the fabric matt, but they'll leave the carpet slightly damp for a short while. Most of the time I only use them on carpets that are sooo dirty. I could do it three or four times and still be sucking up dirt (the water turns really black!).

With the carpeting cleaned, it's time for the leather and vinyl. This is another one of those areas that I have a lot of expertise with and I only recommend one product that is easily accessible to both purchase and use. Lexol Leather Cleaning and Conditioning Kit's are perfect for cleaning and conditioning leather. You never want to clean leather with harsh chemicals, you will dry it out and damage it. Using products like the Lexol Kit, you can clean and maintain your leather for years of use.

Once you have the leather cleaned and conditioned, you can shine everything else up before you clean the windows. Meguiar's makes a great product called Quick Interior Detail that works great for shining interiors. The problem with most of these products is that greasy feel that is left when you spray a silicone based product on your vinyl surfaces. This is something that Meguiar's fixed very well with this product.

Next, the windows. This is straight forward. Don't spray directly on the window, but onto a rag. All the little droplets will mess up the nice n' shiny dash! Have a dry cloth ready to wipe it dry. Coat the windows thoroughly with the Sprayway Glass Cleaner we discussed before. You can even use newspaper to wipe it dry, the abrasiveness acts like a polish and it won't leave any streaks. If you took my earlier advice and bought microfiber towels, then you can use those on the windows with great results. Remember to mark special towels that you only use on the windows and wash separately from everything else.

With all this said and done it's time to add the fragrance. I use commercial products that leave a fresh, clean smell. I spray the carpets, seats, and directly into the vents. This way when you turn on the air - mmm a nice and clean smell comes out again! The air conditioner is a trap for bacteria. Many people get sick and they can't figure out why, it may be these vents. If this is happening consider an AC System cleaning with Eagle One's AC Conditioning Cleaner. You have to contact Eagle One to purchase it, but it's a fantastic product and it only needs sprayed into the air intake vents of your air conditioner. The other thing you can do is find out if one of your local detailers has an ozone machine. They can place the ozone machine in your vehicle with the air conditioner running and then with the heat running and it sucks the ozone throughout the car. We have a special page on Ozone that will explain this in more detail. Many of your larger detail shops have ozone machines. Expect to pay anywhere from $35 to $100 for an ozone treatment. One time should be more than enough to kill any odors or bacteria problems you are having with your car.

All done with the interior. Now you are ready to move on to the next step, the exterior buffing and waxing.

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