First car detailing of the year

** WARNING: Boring car stuff below. **

I stopped by my parent's house to see my mother for Mother's Day. We talked for a little while but she had some other stuff to do so I decided to take advantage of the beautiful weather today to clean my car. I don't like to drive around in a dirty car... and my car was FILTHY.

I went to the car wash and sprayed off all of the heavy grime. Then I clayed the entire car with Meguiar's Smooth Surface Clay Kit. In very simple terms clay removes junk that gets stuck in your paint. This was my first time claying a car and it went pretty well. I was actually surprised how much stuff it actually pulled from the paint.

After claying the car I used my Ultimate Detailing Machine that my girlfriend got me for Christmas to apply Danase Swirl Abolisher I to smooth out the very minor scratches and swirl marks.

I finished up the paint with two coats of Danase Paint Sealant and then I moved on to the windows and interior. I conditioned the leather with a leather conditioner that I picked up quite awhile ago. I forget what brand it is but it works well and smells like new car. I wiped down the dash, plastic trim and rubber moldings with 303 Aerospace Protectant (Amazon link). The 303 Protectant functions like Armor All but is not as shiny.

I still have to swap my winter heavy duty floor mats for the carpeted ones and vacuum the carpet. I ran out of light before I was able to finish.

Also, last week I picked up some new tires for my car. I decided to go with BF Goodrich g-Force Super Sport A/S tires in the stock size of 205/50/ZR17. So far, so good. They're much quieter than the stock tires that came on the car which wore out in less than 25K miles. The only bad thing is the person that mounted them chipped every one of my wheels in multiple places. Good thing I painted them myself so I have paint to touch them up...

I'm going to have to do that soon because that's another thing that bothers me. I'm so OCD when it comes to my car.

Anyway, after I finished up messing around with my car today I stopped to see my sister for her second Mother's Day. Her son, Alex, is getting so big! He's a funny kid, too! He's at the stage where he likes to "parrot" what you say.

(Edit: Removed dead links to Danase - 03/25/10.)