How to properly clean your car’s interior windshield

One of the Hardest parts of the vehicle to get clean and maintain is the interior windshield.

First, just the angle the windshields are placed at makes it difficult to reach everywhere and maintain good pressure and consistent wiping. Often your hand or fingers will smudge the glass as your cleaning just because of the angles you’re at trying to clean. Getting an extension could be a good idea if you’re always going to be a do-it-yourselfer.

Just breathing in your vehicle starts the build up of oils on the windshield, but also when your vehicle sits in the hot sun the temp inside the vehicle will also cause oils to leach out of your dash and deposit themselves on the glass too, this is why it’s important to put on sunscreens when parked. Not to mention, if you’re a smoker, you’re adding a layer of oil and tar on top of that. The worst part is if you try to clean a windshield yourself (improperly) it only gets worse, and you don’t notice until it’s dark and you have oncoming traffic headlights affecting your view because of all the smeared oil and grease.

So what to use?

• Good APC
• Magic Eraser (or the equivalent)
• Good glass cleaner
• Multiple clean dry towels

Remember to always spray your rag before wiping, don’t try to spray the window or you’ll get spray on the dash and other parts of the vehicle and you’ll just add more work.

Spray APC directly onto a Magic Eraser and completely scrub windshield in various motions. Side-to-side, up and down, small circles. Be sure to be generous with the APC, this is what’s breaking down the oils and grease on the glass, plus it’s usually pretty inexpensive.

Next, use a dry towel to remove all APC and moisture from the glass. Grab the window cleaner and go from corner to corner multiple times.

Lastly, use a dry clean towel to buff off any remaining moisture or smudges. You may have to get in and out of vehicle a few times to check for imperfections, especially around edges and rear view mirror, also may be a good idea to move vehicle to be able to inspect from different angles of sun/light. It’s important to double check your work at night before driving. Oncoming headlights have a way of really showing imperfections in glass, plus if you didn’t do a good job on your first try, smudges and bad clean up could cause impaired vision, which is the worst thing that can happen.

If your feeling good about your cleanup, you can add an anti-fog spray after you clean the windshield to stop condensation build up in the morning and nighttime.

Remember, just call LotWash if you don’t want to deal with it. It’s what we do!

GLTA
– Mike at LotWash

PS: At LotWash we have professional grade cockpit creams that dissolve oils and grease from glass, so we will clean your windshield different than the steps I’m describing, but those products are relatively expensive, so we don’t expect customers to buy them by the bottle when windshields usually only need a good scrubbing 1-2 a year.

PSS: Obviously cleaning the exterior windshield is important too, but they don’t take nearly as much time or effort.