The Essential Guide To - Starter Kit

Like most things in life, getting the basics right is the most important thing. Once you’ve got the basics nailed and you become confident in being able to repeat a process or outcome, you will find it easier to build on the foundation.

Car detailing is no different. Whatever your level of competency is, a good set of basic kit and products is a must.

But with such a vast amount of kit and products available, what should you get and why does it matter?

Gone are the days when a simple bucket of water with some fairy liquid, an old rag and a leather chamois and think that’s good enough. The products in the market today offer a huge range of benefits to your car. So where to start? Over the next few blogs, we will look at the essentials that you need go give you that solid foundation.

Where to start? Well there is no better place to start than the core Kit you need to clean your car.

Remember that we are talking about a starter kit. This means its enough to cover most bases of a cleaning programme. Once you have mastered these items, then we can look at more advanced kit that will supplement this basic kit.
What do we mean by “Kit”? We mean things like cloths, buckets, sponges and brushes, things that can cost money but the spend is worth it without doubt. Having the right kit will make the products (car wash, wheel cleaner, interior cleaners) work so much better and will give a better result.

So, let’s look at the basics.

Buckets

A bucket is a bucket, right? Wrong, there are buckets and then there are buckets. A normal bucket is disaster waiting to happen. Why? Well let’s think about cleaning a car for a moment.

When we clean our car, we do so normally because its dirty. That obvious right, however, what is that dirt made up of? It’s made up of grit and small particles of dirt. There could even be elements of tar, bugs, and oily residues from the road surface.

So, when washing your car, you are removing those dirty elements and rinsing them into your bucket of water. As you rinse your wash mitt you need to remove any dirt from it to prevent these particles scratching and making swirls in your paint. A normal bucket has no way of keeping those elements away from your mitt as you wash. This increases the risk of scratching or causing swirls in the paint of your car.

What you need is a bucket with a grit guard. This allows you rinse your mitt in the bucket, and the guard will prevent the mitt picking the dirty elements back up and being transferred onto your paintwork.

How many buckets do you need? Well, we would recommend 2 buckets, why? Quite simply, to further reduce the risk of introducing swirls and scratches to your paintwork. One bucket will contain your water / car wash solution mix, the other just water to rinse your mitt in.

Wash Mitt & Sponge

A wash mitt or sponge is one of the items that has the most contact with the surface of your car. So treat yourself to something good that will minimise the risk of creating scratches on your car.  

A good wash mitt will to a degree help prevent or minimise this happening. The long fibres of a wash mitt should help to pick up the dirt from the car and then go deep into the fibres of the wash mitt and away from your paintwork. When you rinse your mitt in the bucket, then the dirt should come out easily.

What about sponges, I hear you ask?

Well sponges are one of those subjects that divides opinion. There are articles out there that will tell you that a sponge should never touch your car, or it will turn into an awful mess of swirls and scratches. Others will say that some of the sponges now on the market are fine and work in a similar way to a wash mitt.

All we will say is that we prefer a wash mitt and feel that they give better results. But at the end of the day, it is your personal choice. Here at Mucky Stuff we sell both wash mitts and sponges. They can be found on the accessories page.

Mucky Stuff Recommends – Invest in a good wash mitt and avoid a sponge if you can. We have this wash mitt in stock or if you want a sponge then we have this in stock from Valet Pro.

Jet Wash

The next essential is a jet wash machine. Again, some will say that using a jet wash machine can damage your paintwork, however, unless you are a perfectionist, then a jet spray will be an essential piece of kit.

In the UK a starter jet wash from a company like Karcher will set you back approx £100. This will be good enough for using on a car at home. We would also recommend getting a snow foam cannon, this would set you back anything from £25.

Cloths

Step away from the chamois!!

That’s right the days of using a leather chamois are long gone. Now there are a myriad of cloths that can be used on your car. From Drying Towels, Buffing Towels, General Cleaning and anything else you can think of, there is a towel (cloth) for you.

Here at Mucky Stuff, we stock a wide range of towels for you. Let’s look at a couple.

DRYING TOWELS

Drying towels such as this one from Valet Pro or one of these from Autoglym (Instadry and Hi-Tech) are generally large, plush cloths that can absorb huge amounts of water from your car to dry it and minimise water spotting. 

BUFFING CLOTHS

Buffing cloths such as this one from Dodo Juice or this one from Valet Pro are used to buff polish, quick detailing sprays or quick glass cleaner from clean surfaces. These are generally very plush cloths that minimise scratching of paintwork.

There are a number of other types of cloths that we stock and are worth looking at as part of your essential kit.

These are Microfibre cloths which are a multipurpose these are great all rounders for most work. The other type of cloths are interior cloths, these are specialists in picking dirt and dust from your interior.

Mucky Stuff Recommends – We recommend that you start with a good mix of cloths. We would recommend starting with a drying cloth, then add in some microfibre cloths and something for interior cleans. All of our cloths can be found in the accessories section of our site.

Brushes

The next bit of essential kit are brushes. Again, like everything else, there are a myriad of options.

However, you will need a brush for your wheels and something for the interior to get in the vents and other difficult to reach areas.

Let’s start with the wheels, when you apply a wheel cleaner, something like this from the Exterior Section of our site, you will need to agitate it and work it into all of the difficult areas of the wheel. So, this is where a wheel brush comes in, we would never suggest using a wash mitt and certainly not the same one that you use for your body work.

The same principles apply on the interior of your car, there are many hidden corners and difficult to reach areas to clean, a brush will help to agitate and remove tough patches of dirt that a cloth wont.

Both of these types of brushes can be inexpensive to begin with but can form an essential part of your car cleaning tool box.

Mucky Stuff Recommends – See our Accessory section for our range of brushes to suit all budgets.

Hoovers

The final bit of kit that we will look at is a hoover.

These come in various shapes, sizes and power ratings. Most of us will have some form of hoover in our home, whether that's a mains powered one or a rechargeable one.

You need to look for one that has a strong suction and allows you to use a multitude of tools to get into all the nooks and crannies that are in a car interior. If you are buying one specifically for cleaning your car, try and get one that does wet and dry cleaning.

Conclusion

In conclusion then, the essential kit shouldn't cost you the earth. You may already have a hoover or a jet wash already. If so you can get a couple of buckets, a wash mitt and cloths for under £100.

Here at Mucky Stuff, we always would suggest that you are better off spending that bit more up front on these items as generally speaking they will last longer, perform better and therefore need replacing less.

If you want any advice then please contact us on the details below -

E: contact@muckystuff.co.uk

T: 07742 469415