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Archive for January 10th, 2010

Tips for a Spotless Exterior

1. Wash your vehicle in a shaded area. Your vehicle’s surface should be cool. If the car’s hot, the soap suds will dry too quickly, staining the surface and requiring another wash.
2. Pre-soak your vehicle to remove heavy contaminants like boulders and squirrel remains.
3. Use mild liquid soap and a car-wash mitt or sponge– and don’t skimp on the water.
4. Wash one section at a time, and then rinse it off. Start with the roof of the car, then proceed to the hood and the rear. Next, clean the upper sections of the sides, and then, finally, clean the lower areas, including the rocker panels, which invariably have the most dirt. Why this sequence? If you clean the lower sections
first, you’ll wash the dirt from the top of the car back down onto the lower parts. But, more importantly, you run the risk of having small pieces of debris adhere to the mitt or sponge, and could scratch the vehicle.
5. Always hose off your mitt or sponge before putting it back in the wash bucket to re-soap. In other words, start with a bucket of clean soap– and end with a bucket of clean soap.
6. Rinse your vehicle thoroughly. When you think you’re done rinsing—that’s when you give it a final rinse!
7. Use a different mitt to clean the tires and rims. Using a separate mitt for the wheels will reduce the chance that you’ll scratch the car’s paint with brake dust and dirt you pick up from the rims.
8. Be very cautious when cleaning wheels, especially if you’re using a spray-on wheel cleaner. This is not just for your car’s health, but for your’s as well.
Wheels can be extremely hot if the car has just been driven. This is especially likely with wheels that use high-performance brakes. When you spray wheelcleaning chemicals on hot metal, the chemicals will vaporize—and you’ll inhale them, which can’t possibly be good for you. (See also: Tommy).
9. Forget the pricey automotive cleaners. Instead, use a mild, liquid soap that’s well diluted. That’ll do everything you need, such as removing dirt, grease, and films without damaging plastics or other materials. Plus, it’s a lot cheaper than the aggressively marketed, fancy products.
10. Dry your vehicle immediately, to prevent water spots. Chamois work well. One commercial product I like is, “The Absorber.”
11. Skip the expensive chemicals. The only products I use are:
Black Magic Wax: This is an exterior wax, which protects the surface of the vehicle. In my experience, it provides great gloss and protection. It was rated “very good” by a leading consumer magazine in 2006. Plus, it’s less expensive than other major brands.
Meguiars Polish: Meguiars Polish is easy to use, and gives the paint a vibrant look. It really brings out the color.
Meguiars Quick Detailer: This product provides the “just waxed” look in between car washes, and it’s very easy to use.

This tech tip is dedicated to automotive suppliers of interior and exterior plated parts. I have been involved in assisting our customers in troubleshooting and optimizing processes of interior and exterior parts for the past 15 years. The primary materials are ABS and PC/ABS. While the processing and plating issues have not changed much over the years, the automotive quality levels have. The plating quality must now be perfect: free of any surface defects.

Our customers have observed samples of rejected plated interior and exterior door handles that have barely detectable defects. The automotive acceptable quality levels have surpassed, in my opinion, what the molding and plating process can achieve. The molder normally quotes between 5% to 8% scrap, including plating, and the actual scrap under the current quality level exceeds 20% to 30%.

The molders I have been involved with pay attention to the details of drying, processing and handling of parts prior to plating. The platers have gone to great expense to optimize their processes. The end result still has the molder eating the 20% to 30% scrap. I think the time has come for the OEM and the part suppliers to get together to resolve the stringent quality expectations of automotive interior and exterior plated parts.
When our customers contact me asking whether or not to quote on plated automotive parts, I explain to them the very high scrap rates associated with most projects. I now suggest that they should be quoting 25% to 30% scrap rates when quoting on automotive interior or exterior parts.