General Car Care & Repair

The best car wax you can buy! (updated for 2005) Let me give you a little bit of background. I've owned interesting performance cars for many years. I've been area & regional organiser for a number of car clubs & have often displayed cars in concours events. I've used Autoglym products for 24 years & have had experience of many other brands. Seven years ago, I was introduced to Zymol products & then six years ago, I started using the products from a little company in Plymouth called Wax Wizard. These products took the Zymol natural type of products to a higher level, but at a cheaper price. Wax Wizard have since merged their ...  Read the complete review

When you buy a new car (or a used car for that matter), you should get an ‘owner’s handbook’ or something similar which provides you with only the very basic information on the specification of the car, how to check the oil level, fill the windscreen washer bottle, and so on. The overall message given by these handbooks is that any significant maintenance should be left to your dealer. However, in common with a number of other car owners, I want to know more about the maintenance and repair of my car. If you go into any motor accessory shop (including Halfords), you will find a rack filled with Haynes Manuals, one of which, hopefully will deal ...  Read the complete review

Ever got fed up with the paintwork of your car? I'm not talking about the colour, but what happens to older cars, especially in dark colours, or bright red - oxidising. Oxidising makes the paint lighten in shade. Unfortunately it does not do this uniformly, but is more likely to show itself as light-coloured streaks. Sometimes T-Cut, Mer, or a whole host of expensive, "colour" polishes that are sold on the fact that they will restore colour, won't work. When this happens, you've got to play with the big boys. This is when I happened upon Halfords Cutting Compound. It comes in a yellow tube, not unlike a handcream ...  Read the complete review

Car polish is car polish, right? Well yes, but there are different types for different jobs. The trick is choosing the right one for the state your car is in. Soft liquid waxes are very good for cars where the paintwork is pristine with no dead paint. For cars that have some oxidisation (dead paint) an abrasive polish is needed to bring the paint back to showroom shine. Where the paint is very oxidised, or "as flat as a kipper's d***" as they say in the trade a more radical approach is needed and a cutting compound must be applied often with a buffing machine, but this should be left to the professionals as too much paint can be removed if not done ...  Read the complete review

Remember what your shiny new car looked like when you drove it off the dealers forecourt for the first time. The paintwork was spotless, the windows were clean and the tyres were black, not the grey colour that they are now. A few weeks ago I decided to buy a can of Tyreslick to see if it would improve the look of my car. So I washed and dried the car as per normal, and then applied the Tyreslick. You just spray it on the sidewall of the tyre and wait for it to dry. The result is actually quite pleasing, giving the tyres a permanent wet/shiny look. To be honest it probably gives the best results on cars with alloy wheels, just because of the contrast ...  Read the complete review