Everyone loves and wants the car to look shiny like a new penny. But as a matter of fact, when your car is getting old, to keep the shine up becomes harder over time.
However, if you truly love your car, you would certainly be searching for ways to keep your car free of damages or scratches. But as there are hundreds of sources that may bring on damages, it’s hard to be 100% safe.
Never mind, we’ve done a fair share of research to gather up the most effective tips that would keep your car as safe as possible from unwanted scratches and damages.
Take a few moments and go through the entire article. Hope this will come handy to you.
10 tips to Protect Your Car from Scratching and Damage
Use Car Seat Covers
Car seats are the most frequently used part of the car. And if we talk about the chances of damages and scratches, it’s one of the highest ones for car seats.
In order to give them a layer of protection, we suggest using seat covers for each of the seats of your car. Seat covers are helpful not only to protect the seats from splits and splashes but also to keep the seats cool and comfortable.
Wash The Car Yourself
You may not manage to take your car to the mechanic’s garage once every week for pressure washing. But that doesn’t mean that your car has to be left dirty meanwhile.
Washing the car yourself is the best thing to do in such cases. In fact, washing the car by hand sometimes gives better results than professional washing.
However, you need to be careful about the cleaning chemicals you’ll be using, and the types of cleaners/scrubbers as well. Here are some tips that might come in help-
- While cleaning your car with your hands, try to stick to mil detergents as a cleaner solution. Try to use detergents with low pH as well.
- If you use a pressure washer to clean up the car, maintain a decent distance from the car. As the water pressure is too high, may damage the paint.
Stay Safe from Bird Droppings
The sky is not all about rain and sunshine only. Specially when you have a car, weird and irritating stuff like bird droppings can drop right on your car and damage the painting.
You know, these droppings are corrosive stuff and leave a permanent mark of damage if you don’t take care of it properly.
Apart from bird’s dropping, honeydew is another kind if harmful dropping. It’s a kind of sticky film that is usually under lime trees in spring. When it drops on your car’s body, it can burn the paint and leave permanent damages.
Here are some tips to stay safe from bird’s dropping and honeydew at spring-
- As long as you notice bird droppings on your car, wash it away with soft detergent using hands.
- Although it can protect your car’s paint from direct sunlight, don’t park under the shadow of trees. Try to find a canopy instead.
However, in case there is a car dropping on your car and you haven’t noticed it for quite a while, you need to take care of it on a priority basis. As a few days of these droppings can sincerely harm your car’s paint.
In these cases, it’s best to take your car to professional cleaners to get out of this trouble with minimal damage.
Try Car Paint Wax as A Layer of Protection
No matter how much concerned you are, you can’t stay 100% safe from scratches and damages on the car. So, to make sure that nothing can do serious damage to your car’s body and body paint, it’s wise to wax it off.
The finest thing about car paint wax is, it protects the surface from minor scratches and even damages caused by dirt, debris, and other tiny pollutants. And cleaning off them from the wax is pretty much simple. You can do that even without any expert hands.
Don’t Park In Uneven Lots
Sometimes, gravity can turn out to be bad, if you park your car in a space that is paved, sloppy. In fact, one such incident can cause damages worth thousands of bucks to you.
To stay at safe zone, don’t park on such places. Instead, find even ground with no slope. If you can’t, at least create support for the rear tires so that they don’t get rolled up.
Don’t Part in Narrow Parking Lots
Another of the advice regarding parking is not to park in a lot which is too narrow to maintain dinging distance.
You know, in an urban area every inch of space counts. So, parking lots are becoming narrower day by day. But that eventually results in cramped parking spaces. And that’s the reason behind many accidental crashes and spot-damages on your car’s body.
So, we recommend you not to go for such congested parking lots as long as you can. Try to look for garages that have extra room to swing your doors wide open.
Always Keep It Covered While Parked
When you have parked the car at your residence or office, don’t keep it open and exposed to the environment. Cover it with a cloth or cover to avoid dust, debris, scratches or bird droppings.
Also, covering up the car in the parking lot will save it from water splashes, heat, and even acid rains. So other kinds of problems caused by environmental exposure won’t be happening to your car.
Use A Car Umbrella
We know that you can’t always cover your car entirely with the cloth every time. Sometimes, you park it for not-so-long time, and still want a protective cover to put it on top of the car.
For such cases, we’ve got an amazing product called the car umbrella.
Car umbrella is half-placed right above the canopy of the car and moves anywhere with you. With the remote control, you can put it on and off the car.
Keep The Tire Pressure Fine
One of the major causes of accidental incidents is improper tire pressure. A tiny imbalance in the tire pressure may lead to quite some damages and losses. Specially when it’s hot pavement and the tires are under-inflated, you need to take it on a serious basis.
Learn what is your vehicle’s manufacturer’s recommended tire pressure and also learn how to check it yourself. Usually, car tires are likely to lose about one pound of tire pressure in a month. You can easily maintain it using air compressor.
Clean Your Dash with Microfiber Cloth
Car dashboard is one of the most likely places to have scratches and splits. If you want your car to look fine for years, you need to clean the dashboard on regular basis.
Whenever there is tiny dust or a piece of dirt on the dash, it may look negligible at first. But over time, that tiny dirt can the reason behind worse damages and scratches.
So, take an attempt to clean it up after every day’s use.
Coming to the question of how do you clean it, we have a number of options to give you. But the best preferable option is to clean it with microfiber. All you have to do is to wipe the dirt a few times until it’s completely gone.
If you want to deep clean it, we recommend using a log gloss product along with the cleaner fiber. Otherwise, you can use a dashboard cover to protect it from scratches.
What Is The Ideal Schedule to Check for Scratch and Damages?
Now that, you’ve gone through each of our points above, it’s time to look for a stable solution.
In order to maintain the good health of your car, it’s almost mandatory to check for damages, dirt, etc. on regular basis. Although ‘Car Maintenance’ contains hundreds of tasks and sub-tasks. But we are talking about only those basic steps where it would alert you about minor scratches and damages.
Go through the list of maintenance advice below and try to adopt them as regularly scheduled works-
- Check for extreme temperature, age and a long period of non-usage of the car battery.
- Other fluids like coolants, brake fluids, transmission fluids etc. are needed to be checked on a monthly basis.
- Check the hose lines that are occupied to carry the fluids.
- Check the ignition system or the spark system.
- Check for any leaks or unusual noises at the bottom of the car.
- Check for tire pressure and stiffness.
- Hand-wash and power-wash the car’s exterior on regular basis.
- Clean up the car dashboard and seats with soft cleaners like microfibers.
- Renew the car’s paint and use the ceramic coating for new looks every couple of years.
Bottom Line
Thanks for reaching to the dead bottom of the article. Hopefully, we’ve been able to give you hand to ensure the better lifespan and health of your beloved automobile.