Welcome to Detail Like a Pro Luxxio Series – Section Two

Types of Microfibre Cloths

You have done a quick vacuum of your vehicle and are ready to get down on the interior with some cleaner and a cloth in your hands.   This is a good time to stop and think.  Am I using the best tool for the job and with more cloths and miracles that the manufacturers promise it seems like there is so much choice you may as well pick something random and hope for the best. 

In this section we will endeavour to demystify the types of cloths available and once you recognise the types and their uses you will be able to pick the right cloth for your job every time improving your speed and quality of outcome. 

With pricing of microfibre cloths significantly dropping over the last decade there really is no reason to ever consider using anything else.  If you are heart set to use a rag to clean your car you can skip this section and cotton works best  just stay away from any polyester and you will have an ok time.

If you are after clothes that make your job easier and significantly improve your outcome then this section is for you.

 

Multi Purpose Cloths

Multi-purpose cloths are used for dirt removal from dust absorption to wet dirt removal the long open pile side of the cloth is ideal candidate when you want to take a dirt from a surface and safely embed it into your cloth.

These are the clothes that have the most versatility around the vehicle as well as being one of the cheapest to manufacture so having a few is normally not an issue.  You can differentiate them from the others as they are asymmetrical with one fluffy ( long pile, open loop ) and one significantly smoother close loop side.   As the long pile side is the one you are after for cleaning in recent years some manufacturers have started selling multi purpose clothes that are essentially stitched back to back giving you long pile front and back .  While this may seem like a good idea it really carries little merit as they are more then twice as expensive to manufacture and subsequently purchase as well as also making their cleaning notoriously difficult as getting dirt out from between the clothes takes a significantly larger amount of washing and rinsing prolonging your job.  In short by a decent pack of 5 to 10 affordable single layer multipurpose cloths and you are set.  They are affordable, easy to clean and typically significantly outlast any of the improvements in design that are being advertised.

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Glass Cloths

These clothes as the name suggest are ideal for getting your glass cleaned but very little else.  You need a very small qty of these as they tend to last an extremely long time if only used on glass.  It is a very easy to spot cloth they are almost smooth on both sides with no open pile.  This makes them fantastic at clinging to extremely small dirt and oils that leave smears on your windows but essentially hopeless when it comes to any other cleaning as they simply don’t have the capacity to absorbe a significant amount of dirt or large dirt so they would just end up smearing it around.

In conclusion you can buy 1 or 2 of these and as long as you keep on using them primarily for glass cleaning you should have no issues with them lasting for 10s of car cleans.   We have glass clothes that have been used on 100s of cars and washed a numerous amount of times still going strong and performing like they did out of the bag on day one

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Drying Cloths

Other than their share size making them obviously different these cloths should have one of the two possible designs.  Honeycomb/Square pattern or extremely long pile fibres. They excel at clinging to water and are almost completely useless at absorbing dirt.  As an added bonus when they get full if you squeeze them out they will continue to absorb 99 %of the surface water from your car leaving it dry and removing the risk of water spotting.  In conclusion one of these is more than enough for anyone and as they are literally just whisking water off your vehicle there should be no reason for them to get dirty/ ripped or need frequent changing.  If you do however get them dirty ( especially the long pile versions ) take extreme care to completely rinse / wash them afterwards as any dirt in your drying cloth is essentially just sanding your car as you dry it and causing swirl marks.

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