Spring Clean Series: Vehicle Exterior.

Making sure your Mercedes-Benz 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, maintaining performance. 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. As we're in the season of the Spring Clean, we wanted to provide our tips and tricks on how you can best look after your Mercedes-Benz. We have already shown you how to keep your interior looking as good as new. Now, we look at how to achieve that distinctive showroom shine and how to best look after the exterior of your Mercedes-Benz.

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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