Everyone's after the panacea in the bottle. Y'know, you spray it, or pour it, or wipe it, and - voila! - the problem goes away. Doesn't matter what the problem actually was - now it's gone.
Sounds good doesn't it? Trouble is, lots of times you've spent the money, done the spraying or wiping or pouring, and the problem's still there.
Well, it won't be after you've used these products!
Yep this small but eclectic collection of stuff in bottles will guarantee your virility (girlity for the female gender?), make your car seconds faster, reduce pollution, improve world relations - and generally put a smile on your face.
Well, kind of.
BMW Lederpflegemittel
Yes, now you can have a genuine BMW spare part in your car - doesn't matter whether it's an Alfa or a Subaru! But it'll help if your car has leather everywhere, cos that's what this stuff is - leather treatment. It's also about the best you'll find - especially at the killer price of $16 a bottle from your local BMW dealer! What's that? You don't know about leather treatment? Well, if your car has dead cow inside, you'd better learn. Fast.
Leather is a natural product - that's where the dead cows bit comes in - and must be carefully treated throughout its life if it is to continue to look good. Leathers lose their natural oils when in normal use - becoming stiff and hard - and this bottle of stuff puts some back in. Consisting of waxes, fatty alcohols and petroleum distillates, the creamy liquid has a nice smell and is dead easy to use.
After the leather has been cleaned (a damp cloth is good for getting off dust and surface grime) the leather treatment can be applied to a soft cloth and massaged in. It should be absorbed almost instantly - if it isn't, it's probably because the leather doesn't need any more treatment at this stage. Be careful that you don't get it in liquid form on the stitching - it'll tend to just sit there, rather than being absorbed. Once you've rubbed it in all over the upholstery, wipe off any surplus, then allow it to dry. When you've done this, the leather will have lost its sheen - it'll look quite dull. But buffing the surface with a new, soft and clean cloth will bring it up shiny, smooth and soft.
A word of advice, though. If the leather in your car is of the hard, vinyl-looking type, this treatment won't turn it into soft, supple leather. It will still improve it, mind, but it won't transform it. Oh yes, and never ever put any silicone-style treatment on leather!
Even used fairly lavishly, a 250ml bottle of lederpflegemittel should last you three or four complete interior treatments - so about a year in normal use.
Preen - the Great Unstainer
Found in the cleaning goods isle of your local supermarket, Preen - The Great Unstainer with UltraLift® is a definite must-have for your garage. Why? Because it contains "Concentrated Cleaning Power For Tough Stain Removal", that's why. Sure, it's normally used as a pre-wash stain remover on your greasy jeans before you throw them in the washing machine - but it also works really well for cleaning brake dust off alloy wheels. And at $3.75 for a 375ml bottle of the lemon-scented stuff, it both smells nicer and is a helluva lot cheaper than most wheel cleaners!
But don't blame me if it attacks the alloy and makes it look horrible. But then most alloy wheel cleaners are either highly acidic or highly alkaline - so they're not real kind to paint and polish anyway. On that basis, Preen - with 81.5 per cent liquid hydrocarbons - is probably pretty gentle! But anyway, on my car it works like a charm in loosening that baked-in brake dust and dirt.
Simply spray it onto the dry and dirty rim, then immediately apply a wet cleaning cloth or scrubbing brush. Using plenty of water, work the Preen into the dirty spots and then wash off the mess. Wear gloves, make sure that you don't get the spray into your eyes or lungs, and be absolutely sure that you've used plenty of water to get any residue off the wheels.
Oh yes, and the reason that it works so well is that it has "95 per cent active cleaning power". So there.
STP Fuel Injector Cleaner
A month or so ago my car was running like sh-, well, not very well. It had a high load misfire, an idle lumpiness, and fuel consumption was up. Could've been the plugs - but I didn't wanna look cos that would have meant taking off the cover and then getting off the coils and - well, too much effort, basically. Or it could have been the injectors - but that meant even more work to find out if one or two or three or four or five of them were blocked or otherwise flowing poorly. So I did nothing. And the car ran worse and worse. Then I started thinking that maybe it was the intake air temp sensor or the detonation sensor pulling back timing at inopportune times - but finding out about all of that was even more work. So again I did nothin'.
And then I went back to the dirty injector theory. Hmmm, what about just pouring a bottle of something into the tank? Yeah right, tried those additives before - and have never been able to detect any differences in the way the car went. But, it was all so easy that the next time I filled up, in went some cleaner stuff off the shop shelf. Did it work? Well, maybe. I thought that the car was a bit smoother - but it was hard to tell any degrees of smoothness when it was still as lumpy as hell anyway...
Still too lazy to do anything else - oh yes, I did get a price on new plugs, that's right - I decided to try another additive. The one shown here, in fact. But this was sure different to the last one! Why?
Because it worked!
Yep, smooth peak power, smooth idle - and an apparent improvement in economy. Now maybe the particular deposits that had built-up in the fuel system were more susceptible to the attacking powers of STP Fuel Injector Cleaner than the ones that may've developed in your car's fuel system. Dunno - but it most certainly worked beautifully in my car.... unlike that host of other injector cleaners I have tried in the past!
Conclusion
Just thought of something. Instead of using the products as I've indicated, swap them around - y'know variety is the spice of life. So put the leather treatment in the petrol tank, the Preen on the seats, and the injector cleaner all over the wheels. That should be pretty exciting!
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