We all know keeping up with your regular scheduled car maintenance is the key to ensuring your vehicle continues to run just like the day you brought it home. So you make sure you follow your vehicle’s oil change service schedule, you regularly check your tire pressure, and you make sure you get your tires balanced and aligned, but are you keeping up with your exterior car care?
Colour: Volcano Red
So now you must be wondering why exterior car care is just as important as getting your oil change done regularly. Maybe you’re thinking I park my vehicle in the garage every day, it rains every once in a while so it looks clean, so why is it so important. Well, whenever you drive your vehicle you’re subjecting it to the elements and these elements can corrosive. If your vehicle is left unwashed these corrosive contaminants like dust, insect remains, and chemicals from driving on the road can start to deteriorate the protective clear coat on your exterior paint work.
Once your protective clear coat starts to break down you’ll start noticing the effect of all these corrosive contaminants that have been on your vehicle. You’ll notice discoloration in your paint, chips in your paint from pieces of rock and other debris the gets kicked up from the road, peeling paint, and even rust. While a paint job can easily be fixed and a clear coat reapplied, rust is a lot more expensive to deal with and decreases the value of your vehicle. A small patch of rust on you door for example, may not seem like that big of a deal at first, can lead to a hole in your car door over time, which is going to leave you with a giant headache when you go to get your vehicle inspected. In most states if there is a patch of rust that leaves a hole that goes all the way through, your vehicle will not pass.
While we are on the subject of preventing rust, your exterior paint work is not the only thing you need to keep an eye on. Exterior car care doesn’t stop at the places you can see, it includes the places you can’t see as well. The underside of your car probably takes on the worst onslaught of corrosive contaminants and usually gets forgotten about because we can’t easily see it.
You probably drive your car every day, through rain and snow, which means you are constantly exposing the underside of your vehicle to debris. Chemicals on the road way that rise to the surface during rain storms and road salt are extremely corrosive. While new cars come with an under seal to protect the underside of your vehicle, it will break down over time just like the protective clear coat on your paint job.
So to keep your vehicle in tip top shape there are a couple things you can do. For starters, take your vehicle through the car wash every month or two. The folks at Zeigler Grandville (Grandville, IL) suggest that if you live in an area where they are constantly applying salt to the roads during the winter months, it’s a good idea to go every other week. When you go to the car wash make sure it’s a touch free car wash, since the ones that make contact with your vehicle can leave scratches if you have any rocks, pebbles, or other debris on your vehicle. Now when you go to pick the type of wash you’d like make sure you choose one that includes an underbody wash. This will wash away all the salt and other corrosive material that’s sticking to the underbody of your vehicle.
