One of the more important things for a safe and pleasant driving experience is a being able to see out of your car. So having clean glass is a must! Driving into the early morning sun or again then in the late afternoon is just dangerous when you cannot see right, we initially combated this with our Glass Cloth, quite ingenious as the material of the cloth is made to clean glass without the use of any sprays. However, it is not ideal for really dirty glass or the exterior areas either. So we made just the right thing for it, which we lovingly named, Naked Glass.....
Our number one car detailer, Serina. showing off her favourite new product.
ZERO AMMONIA IS WHAT YOU NEED
The chemists we employ have been working away for the last few years trying to find something we could use on the glass of our cars. There are a LOT of glass cleaners out there, the formulation by itself is not that hard, as long as you use one ingredient- ammonia. However, we realised early in the piece that ammonia is not the best thing to be spraying around in your car for a few good reasons;
1. It is not good for plastics, rubber or fabric. The over-spray gets on them and works to break them down… Nothing car care in that type of formula.
2. It wreaks havoc on window tint, we have all seen this on other cars after someone uses a household window cleaner on them, helps with turning them a shade of purple and then makes the tint weak and brittle, so it begins to break apart. Ammonia is also used to remove window tint, so you can see why putting it in a glass cleaning product is not ideal, nor what we were after.
3. Ammonia is linked to salivary gland cancer… err your spraying this stuff around the interior of your car, in a closed off, confined area whilst breathing in the toxic fumes.. Count me out of ever doing that.
Very important that we have nothing to harmful in this formula that could affect our devoted car cleaning team.
So any of the good things ammonia brings are far outweighed by the massive negatives. With that in mind our chemists have been trying to find something to replace the ammonia with. Others have tried and made different formulas replacing ammonia (or just lowering it's concentrate) to make for a "tint safe product" But our use of them shows that they smear quite a lot and don’t seem to clean very well at all.
Then one great day one of our newer chemist's known as Beaker #2 or B2 found something. And we finally had our Glass Cleaner, which we call Naked Glass for the fact that it leaves your glass clean and bare like nothing is there.. ooh it’s naked.
Tru Blu, one of the most legendary cars in our collection, loves the Naked Glass.
THE BEST PROPERTIES WHEN USING NAKED
• Non streaking formulation, something that was essential to us after frustratingly using so many of the other “car friendly” cleaners that left half the product on the screen, making a nightmare job removing it all.
• No harmful ammonia. For all the reasons listed above we did not want this in the formula! It is safe for internal use in the car as well as on tinted windows.
• Stops dust particles attaching to the glass surface and helps resist hazing. Just a cool little additive we put in the mix, because we wanted it to stay cleaner for longer.
• Effective cleaning agents remove haze, grime and minimise fogging. Enough cannot be said about this aspect of the Naked Glass, as we did our testing and found on dirty screens that most the glass cleaners with no ammonia just did not clean well enough and took a lot of extra work to get a great finish. Also, with the screen being clean, we have found that it is less susceptible to fogging up over a dirty screen, something essential in the older cars we have that don’t have effective air con or heating in them to demist the screen.
• Fast drying and easy to polish off. Again this is all about having an easy product to use, giving great results every time. For this reason it is also very good for cleaning mirrors and chrome as it leaves no residue, just a beautiful shiny finish.
NO STREAKING WHEN YOU USE NAKED
With the constant use of this product we can give you some little hints and tips to make the cleaning process that much better. Firstly, get yourself one of our Glass Cleaning Cloths, which we use as an applicator. It is already a very effective cleaning cloth and using this in conjunction with the Naked Glass just ups the cleaning power as they work together. The Glass Cloth is best only used for applying, as it is not made to buff clean the glass, mainly as it has such low absorbency. For removing the residue, we recommend using our Microfibre Buffing Cloth as it eliminates streaking leaving a perfect finish every time. You can use absorbent paper towels and the like with this product in place of the suggested microfibre, but we find the microfibre way more effective and give the best result every time.
When using Naked Glass inside the car make sure it is out of the sun and not overly hot inside the cabin. The hotter it is the more the chance the product will evaporate (called flashing) and will not be able to clean the glass. Then on the other side, using it on a very wet and cold environment gives it less of a chance of evaporating, thus leaving streaks. A simple formula we have used is that if it is hot, use a little bit more product and if it is really cold and wet, use less than what we describe below on the glass cloth.
We have found how clothing can damage leather seats, so it is best to wear minimal clothing, Full article on this can be found in the "How to Use" care care section of this site.
Like many products, if you use too much it does not help with it's effectiveness, so we find it is best if you spray four sprays of the Naked Glass into a clean Glass Cloth, then wipe over the glass to be cleaned. Have the cloth nice and open, so it can easily move about the surface. After that get the clean and dry buff cloth and wipe any remaining residue off the screen, that’s all there is to it, super nice and easy.
When buffing it off the glass, use the cloth as shown here, and turn it to a new dry section regularly
For very dirty glass, we find spraying the product nice and evenly over the glass surface, then letting it sit for a few seconds before buffing it all off with the Buffing Cloth, once again gives the best result. When doing this it is always good to keep turning the buffing cloth to a new dry area, the Naked Glass has a pretty low "flash' evaporative point so it will dry on the cloth pretty quickly, but any excess build up can help smearing, especially if the cloth is dirty. For any overspray residue just wipe it away with the buffing cloth (providing the surface is clean). Or if it is your dash or a dirty surface, clean it down with our Vinyl Care and appropriate cloths, to both clean, enhance and protect it at the same time.
And that’s it, you can now need to go for a drive with no fear of the early morning or late afternoon sun as your glass is perfectly clean, clear and naked.
For some extra uses, try it on hard chrome plated parts (not plastic chrome) and any mirrors. Spray it directly on to the surface (As long as your not going to get messy over-spray everywhere!) and remove it with a buffing cloth, you will be pretty happy how well it cleans them up with very little work.
WHERE CAN I GET NAKED?
You will be able to find this great new product at the best AutObarn stores around Australia, as well as many of our independent retailers all listed here. Likewise, you can see the Naked Glass on our website by clicking here.
If you need any more information on this article, or anything else car care related, please feel free to email me here dan@bowdensown.com.au or give me a call on (07) 5445 6065.
Love your car,
Dan Bowden
Share
