Household Remedies for Cleaning, Repairing, or Maintaining Motorcars

[lesapandre]

Peanut butter is supposed to be good on grey plastic bumpers and trim; I've yet to try it though!

Lick it off afterwards - clean the bumpers and dinner all in 1.

[Uncle Jimmy]

Lick it off afterwards - clean the bumpers and dinner all in 1.

I may be a window licker but not moved on to bumpers just yet

[Talbot]

The peanut butter is more for the peanut oil than anything else. Sunflower oil works quite well too.

[clayts450]

Have we had toothpaste to brighten up dull headlights yet ? 

 

Personally I think it's a load of old cobblers and I absolutely didn't* spend £30 on some snake oil instead.

[D Spares & Tyres]

And for grit and stray hairs etc you can't hoover out...wrap your hand in gaffertaple sticky side out and use it to pick up debris - repeat when sticky effect is exhausted.

I prefer to use what I can only describe as 'bobbly rubber'.

 

Cut up dashboard mats from Rovers are ideal. As are those little cubby hole liners from some Vauxhalls. Drag them across the fabric and any hair comes off in clumps

[D Spares & Tyres]

Cream cleaner works well as a G3/ T Cut alternative

[Guest Hooli]

Lick it off afterwards - clean the bumpers and dinner all in 1.

 

Get a dog, bumpers clean for life.

[omegod]

Peanut butter works on black trim, smooth only though 

White spirit soaked into a rag will remove tar spots on a whole car in minutes rather than fucking about with a tar remover, just soak it and mop them off 

[captain_70s]

Have we had toothpaste to brighten up dull headlights yet ?

 

Personally I think it's a load of old cobblers and I absolutely didn't* spend £30 on some snake oil instead.

I tried that on the Civic with very limited success. I think the lights looked marginally better afterwards but it didn't last long...

 

I use linseed oil on faded plastic exterior trim, returns it to to a more correct colour and is good for a month or two outside, although it is messy stuff until it dries. Also good for softening up hardened window rubbers.

[paulplom]

Any tips for getting this off? I think it's sun cream. Tried t cut etc but it just keeps coming back. Must have been on for 5 or 6 years now.

 

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

[fordperv]

Vinyl silk emulsion is great on Triumph Dolomite headlinings.

 

Cif is bloody good on most plastic interior bits and vinyl seats.

I thought i got cif in a car years back

[fordperv]

Any tips for getting this off? I think it's sun cream. Tried t cut etc but it just keeps coming back. Must have been on for 5 or 6 years now.

 

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

Try rubbing it off with magic eraser or pencil eraser over the area then wipe over with a cloth and give it a good polish

[Stanky]

Suncream in paint is a barsteward to get off, something in it soaks right into the paint and the marks are pretty much permanent. Certainly they were on our Kia Rio - I tried allsorts to remove them - it looked like just a surface mark but went really deep into the paint. In the end I gave up and left them, they weren't coming off/out without serious work with sandpaper and a respray.

[treehugger]

Any ideas for a smeared windscreen, both inside n out? Finished work at 10pm thurs, car n car park had awful condensation, but it wont come off easy, smeared badly. Drove home barely able to see via a small hole. Yesterday afore setting off from home had a go with half a lemon, some success. Help!

[cobblers]

Glass cleaner? Failing that anything to attack grease really - Kitchen worktop cleaner, vinegar etc. 

[Noel Tidybeard]

Someone once advised me to do this to stop my windscreen wipers screeching.  They screeched 10x worse afterwards.

 

Jury out, for windscreens at least

 

 

glass was fine it was fucked wipers that screech!

[Noel Tidybeard]

In the dim and distant past , I attended the Rolls Royce Chauffeur School for 2 weeks, of which 2 days were about washing fucking cars!

Anyway, the guy teaching us had a mantra " Windows and wheels, lads, windows and wheels" basically as long as those are clean and shiny you can get away with the bodywork.

 

 

eye, when i had a henly blue montego every now and then the (rover 200 bubble) wheeltrims woud ged a damn good scrub in the bath a people did comment on how clean the car looked

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

Peanut butter is supposed to be good on grey plastic bumpers and trim; I've yet to try it though!

 

 

Olive/cooking oil.

 

Linseed oil is gr8 on faded bumpers.

[vulgalour]

Smeared glass is a pain in the bum and if it's a particularly bad case you will need to get drastic.  You can use regular glass spray cleaner though you may need to go through a lot of clean cloths to get it all off.  For a cheat, a small amount of cellulose thinners on a paper towel wiped over the whole screen will shift whatever is on there quicker but you will then need to clean as normal afterwards to keep it clean.  Some cars are particularly bad for soiling their own windscreen through the vents and need cleaning on a very regular basis.  Occupants who smoke or vape will also make the screen dirty very quickly.

 

Ideally you want to be cleaning the screen on the inside once a month as a minimum.  A simple regime of a clean cloth (doesn't have to be microfibre, but that is usually best for glass, an old tee-shirt will do) and a squirt of household window cleaning spray at the end of your working week should be enough to keep it clean all the time.  Do not be tempted to keep a cloth in the car and reuse it for cleaning the screen, that should only be used for demisting if required and chucked in the washing machine at the end of the week, otherwise you're just smearing dirt on and off the glass.

 

The biggest reasons windscreens are smeared is simply that they aren't cleaned often enough and when they are cleaned, it's usually with a cloth that isn't actually clean, which exacerbates things.  You will find if it's stubborn stuff you may have to clean it more regularly at first just to cut back through the grime to the glass, once you get it clean it's much easier to keep it that way.

[scdan4]

Vanish stain sticks are great mate for removing, um, stains from interior fabrics.

[lesapandre]

Nitrile disposable gloves - the food contact compliant blue ones are tougher than the latex you can get which easily hole. I keep them saves having to get lots of oil etc off hands. Pretty cheap a box - mine are from Screwfix. Saves a lot of time. They are so good you can reuse them - I keep a set for the diesel pump at the garage.

[vulgalour]

If you've not got gloves kicking around and you've run out of Swarfega type hand soap, you can just use regular granulated sugar and warm water.  It's not as good as special soaps and stuff, but it is good enough that you can at least do things without leaving big dirty handprints everywhere.

[SierraMikeHotel]

There's some residue from a sticker on the rear screen of the Saab that I've been meaning to deal with for ages. Just attacked it with my wife's nail polish remover and it was gone in seconds

[kinkersaab]

A cut down (to a managable 4 or 5 inches) hacksaw blade is ace for removing dog hairs. 

[Rocket88]

A cut down (to a managable 4 or 5 inches) hacksaw blade is ace for removing dog hairs. 

 

Whilst they're still on the dog ? [!!!!]

[Guest Hooli]

There's some residue from a sticker on the rear screen of the Saab that I've been meaning to deal with for ages. Just attacked it with my wife's nail polish remover and it was gone in seconds

 

It's also the same stuff as superglue remover.

[scdan4]

If you've not got gloves kicking around and you've run out of Swarfega type hand soap, you can just use regular granulated sugar and warm water.  It's not as good as special soaps and stuff, but it is good enough that you can at least do things without leaving big dirty handprints everywhere.

Sugar and washing detergent also shifts most stuff from your hands.

[MikeR]

and the plunger top thing out of a soap dispenser , useful for emptying fluids out of reservoirs instead of pulling off pipes or turning the car upside down

[vulgalour]

If you've a snapped off telescopic radio antenna (car or domestic wireless is fine) and wondered what to do with it, you can epoxy glue a fridge magnet to the end to retrieve 10mm sockets from the depths of the engine bay.  You can also buy this contraption cheaply online, of course, but if you've got the bits lying around, that's how you make one.

 

If someone has snapped off your telescopic radio antenna you can of course replace it with a wire coat hanger, but we all know about that one.

[MrParody]

Use Mr Muscle Oven Cleaner on VAG VNT turbo diesel engines, that have developed 'limp mode'.    If an 'Italian Tune Up' doesn't clean the carbon build up on the exhaust side of the turbo, then Mr Muscle Oven Cleaner is the next option.