It's Spring Clean Season!

Spring is nearly here, the brighter mornings and the long evenings are coming! Making sure your Mercedes-Benz or smart is kept clean will not only keep it looking great, but it will lessen the degradation to components caused by mud, dirt and other foreign bodies. This Spring Clean season, we wanted to provide our tips and tricks on how you can best look after your Mercedes-Benz or smart. A regular, thorough cleaning routine is therefore important to maximise your own driving experience and is best practice to help maintain the value of your vehicle. For finance customers, it may help avoid penalty fees at the end of your contract. 

Interior Cleaning Routine

Beyond just for the lifespan of interior features, the comfort and convenience of our cars can be greatly improved by a regular clean. How often you clean the inside of your car completely depends on how much outside dirt is regularly brought inside by you, your passengers or your pets. As a rule of thumb, stains or mud should be removed as soon as possible. Otherwise, a monthly spruce following the steps below should keep any potential problems in check.

1. Remove any rubbish and take out the car mats to clean separately.
2. Do a thorough sweep with a vacuum, making sure to get into all the cracks.
3. Clean the inside of your windows followed by your seats and the surrounding upholstery. Treat your footwells for particularly ground in dirt.
4. Wipe down the dashboard, steering wheel and window trims.

Exterior Cleaning Routine

If, like us, you treasure the opportunity to show your Mercedes-Benz some much earned TLC, you are also likely to have a well-practiced cleaning routine already in place. However, as the team who are responsible for keeping our cars showroom-ready, we spoke to our valeters to learn industry best practice. Taking steps from their own cleaning schedule, they kindly created this 13 point list for owners looking to achieve an expert exterior finish at home:

1. Pre-wash with either traffic film remover or pre wash foam and rinse with clean water. It is important to remove any grit and dirt that may cause damage to your paintwork when cleaning with a cloth later on.
2. Apply wheel cleaner and agitate with a soft brush then rinse with water.
3. Using a “two bucket method” (one bucket with shampoo, one with clean water, or one bucket and a hose), wash the car with car shampoo using a microfiber mitt. Start at the top, working down. Ensuring you rinse the mitt in the clean water periodically as you go.
4. Rinse off the shampoo with clean water, ideally using a hose or pressure washer.
5. Dry the car with microfiber towel or a chamois cloth.
6. To help dry the car properly without leaving smears use quick detail spray which is wax based.
7. Decontaminate the surface of the paintwork using a clay bar.
8. Apply polish to the body panels of the car using a polish applicator, avoiding direct sunlight.
9. After 20-40 minutes remove the polish with a clean microfiber cloth.
10. Undergo a final inspection of the body panels to ensure that all polish residue has been removed.
11. Clean the windows with car window cleaner using two different microfiber cloths, one to clean the windows with the spray and another dry microfiber cloth to remove any smears.
12. Wipe the wheels with a microfiber cloth.
13. Finally apply a tyre dressing to the tyres using a sponge to give the car that showroom look.

While it does highly depend on usage, we recommend following this cleaning routine every few weeks for the best results.

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