Showing the world a clean set of wheels

Cleaning tales

This week's Saturday was the first day I could seriously contemplate cleaning Shifty's feet, face, bum, top and sides. This was the first time I have washed the car since it arrived a few weeks ago. I was faced with gently removing two and a bit thousand miles a road salt and farm track "muck" that turned Shifty's broody storm silver clothes to an industrial grime grey.

A few hours and ten 5 litre buckets of water later, I stood back to admire the return of the sparkly car I drove off of our local Honda Dealer's forecourt last month. Shine was courtesy of some gentle sponge and chamois work by yours truely and a big helping from AutoGlym car valeting technology.

The usual AutoGlym team were there in force:

• Bodywork shampoo and conditioner.
• AquaWax spray carnauba wax
• Micro-fibre polishing cloths.
• Fast-glass window cleaner.

Cleaning a car properly gets you quite close to all the design detailing and I found the new model Jazz is very different in all sorts of places I hadn't noticed before.

• shorter bonnet
• extended central part of front bumper
• smaller windscreen rake angle but absolutely huge windscreen
• larger door mirror surface but with a smaller enclosure
• very long, straight driver's side windscreen wiper, very short angled passenger one
• larger tailgate and lower opening
• stubby, central rear roof radio aerial instead of thin longer one at front centre of roof
• bold character and bone lines along the sides of the car

One thing that I hadn't really appreciated until it came to cleaning the car is the 15" alloy wheel design is one that not only looks great but also allows you to get your hand through and in behind the spokes. This means you can clean the usually unreachable inner wheel surface or the the part of the brake disk that the wheel attaches to. Finally! A car that I could easily reach in and wash off the accumulated salt residue, dirt and brake dust. The end result were wheels that looks like they were fresh out of the showroom.

With the exterior done, the interior had the usual treatment with a handheld rechargeable Dyson DC-16 (Animal) vacuum cleaner. Dyson provides a useful set of car valeting accessories. For instance, the soft dusting brush accessory is the only thing I let near the clear plastic lenses in the instrument panel. Also, to prevent getting dirt onto the seat faces, I have a duplicate set of nozzle attachments one I only use for carpets and the other for the seating upholstery and door trims. Battery recharge time is several hours so I bought an extra battery - the two used one after the other lets me get the interior of the car done (and no more).

Aside: Dyson have now replaced the DC-16 by the DC-30/DC-31 which have longer battery life.

How's this week been?

If you've been reading from the start then you'll know that I didn't like the i-Shift at all. I started out complaining that it wasn't like the two CVT Honda Jazz cars I had had before. Now that the two thousand mile marker has past, what are my thoughts?

In the UK we have a rather famous food product. It's a spread called Marmite. It has a successful marketing approach which accepts that you either love it, or you hate it. It embraces both.

i-Shift is to gearboxes what Marmite is to toast. Here's why I love i-Shift:

• fast gear changes - what? no. That's not what the press says though... it's true. You can't get into an i-Shift and know how best to drive it. Just like the CVT, i-Shift takes a degree of skill to drive with it. I am still learning but I can see the promise of happy times ahead.
• economical - I have never reset trip 'B' on Shifty and it shows that I have achieved 58.8MPG (imperial) over 2400 miles. Pretty good for winter driving, often in sub-zero celsius, with a 1.4litre petrol engined, automatic car.
• a cooperation between i-VTEC value control and i-Shift means that low revs in high gears really do deliver good torque delivery and have the benefit of quiet running and better fuel efficiency.
• the yaw/pitch sensor and information about throttle pedal position help make driving on undulating twisty roads an absolute delight.

More importantly you ask, ah but do I like Marmite. Answer: No. I hate it!