Winter Prep: Is Your Vehicle Ready for Winter?
The year has come and gone, winter is right around the corner! While we’ve all loved the warmer months and enjoying our prized possessions in the sunshine, the snow is ready to fall and the garage queens are ready to hibernate for the months aheed. While they’re at rest, let’s make sure your daily drivers and winter machines are ready for even the harshest conditions!
The easiest question to ask is: What Do I Need For Winter? Usually changing your washer fluid, upgrading your wipers, swapping out your battery, or even just adding an extra winter coat to your back seat for those extra cold days satisfies the answer, but what about your car’s finish? When you’re scraping the ice off your windshield or brushing the snow away from the door handles and hood, those harmful bristles are detrimental to your paint! Today, we’re here to help you prepare your vehicle for the snow season.
To start, we’d like to separate the vehicle into 5 key components: glass, paint, wheels, tires, and your undercarriage! These parts of your vehicle get the biggest beating from the elements when driving and you’ll want to take extra precaution when preparing them for winter, so let’s get to it.
Take a look at your windshield— it’s your porthole to safety when piloting your vehicle on the open road! Luckily, we have specifically designed products to ensure the safety of your family adventures and daily commute, while maintaining that crisp, sharp appearance to your glass. Enter Adam’s Glass Sealant: a unique blend of self-cleaning agents and alcohols that fill in and bond to your glass’s porous surface to make your windshield silky smooth and EXTREMELY hydrophobic. You’ll want to clay the window using our Detail Spray and our Visco Clay Bar to remove the excess streaking with a Green Glass Towel before applying the the Glass Sealant. Next, apply the glass sealant to both the window itself and a Microfiber Applicator — using back and forth, side to side motions, cross hatch the window in a basket weave pattern to ensure full coverage. After approximately 4-5 minutes, you can buff the cured Glass Sealant away with our Glass Cleaner and a Green Glass Towel.
Pro Tip: Splitting the window into 2 halves will ensure a much more thorough installation and allow for the user to monitor the hazing easier.
By properly applying a coat of Glass Sealant, your vehicle is ready for the elements brought on by the winter months! Drive with confidence and make winter washing and morning snow removal a breeze with Adam’s Glass Sealant.
Next, let’s talk about your paint, the pigment-colored pieces of metal separating you from the others. You’ve maintained your paint throughout spring, summer, and fall, so keep it up through winter! Carnauba waxes and natural-based protection items will take a back seat this season since they just can’t keep up in the snowy months! Gloss and shine go hand in hand with summer sunshine, but durability and hydrophobic are the key to a successful winter protection option. Synthetic-based sealants, Ceramic coatings, and inorganic waxes are your team players this winter and we have protection options for everyone! If you’re not familiar with our plethora of protection options, check out this short video explaining our different types we offer (insert link here).
For Winter Prep, we chose our Liquid Paint Sealant at a cost point of $19.99 for an 8oz bottle. This synthetic polymer resin sealant is the basis of our H2O Guard & Gloss chemical and while boasting a hearty amount of protection and hydrophobics, it still offers a ton of shine for not being a ceramic coating or natural carnauba paste wax. IE, the perfect option for winter! Not only can you apply this over current sealants or waxes, but you can use it by hand or machine!
Using a Microfiber Applicator is the easiest way to apply it by hand, but throw a grey pad on a Swirl Killer and get the most consistent layer of protection by machine! As always, buff away with either a Single or Double Soft Towel.
Protection Breakdown:
- Is your vehicle already ceramic coated? Wash your vehicle, then grab a Visco clay bar to remove any bonded contamination with some Detail Spray, then follow it up with a hearty layer of Ceramic Boost before the first heavy snow!
- Is your vehicle wax/sealed? Wash the vehicle, then clay it with our Visco clay bar and Detail Spray, then follow up with our Liquid Paint Sealant either on a grey pad if you’re using a machine, or with a Microfiber Applicator!
- Don’t have anything on your vehicle? Wash the vehicle thoroughly, then follow up with our Liquid Paint Sealant and a Microfiber Applicator. Buff off with a premium microfiber towel!
Now let’s go on to the wheels, your automotive legs getting you from A to B, taking the heat from your brakes, but still making the vehicle pop with their power-coated or painted finishes. You’ll want to take care of these since sloshing through the snow and rain can pack up around your spokes and get baked on with the heat of the brake calipers and rotors after driving home. Enter Ceramic Boost: Our SiO2 (The secret sauce in Ceramic Coatings) based silica spray detailer that gives unmatched gloss and depth to an already coated vehicle or seals a bare finish. This spray and wipe chemical was just recently reformulated to pack a ton of protection, slickness, and shine into a simple process. If you want to throw your car on the lift and pull the wheels off to apply Ceramic Wheel Coating, we HIGHLY recommend it, but if you’re looking for a slightly easier option, listen closely!
Simply spray your wheel faces and barrels down with Adam’s Ceramic Boost, using a Borderless Grey, Single Soft, or Double Soft Towel. to buff and polish to a perfect finish. By applying this layer of protection, maintenance washing will be a breeze and the snow will have a much harder time sticking to the slick surface, keeping your vehicle cleaner than the rest of the winter machines on the roadways.
So we’ve sealed your glass, you’ve protected your paint, and properly dressed your wheels for the occasion… What now? Your Tires!
Your tires are the most underrated component on a vehicle. Keeping you straight on the highway, staying grounded in a rainstorm, or grabbing a hold of the pavement when you punch it from a stop light, your tires are the MVP’s. So how does one clean and prepare them for winter? Glad you asked! Adam's Tire & Rubber Cleaner is a citrus-based cleaner that cuts dirt, grime, and road debris at the source and gives your tire that tuxedo black appearance. When preparing for winter, you’ll want to do a thorough cleaning of your tires to remove any left over mold release agent from the factory if they’re new, or get rid of any unsightly browning brought out by the summer sun. Now, you don’t need to go crazy with Tire Shine or VRT, but you can if you want! Adam’s Tire & Rubber Cleaner contains a surfactant that both cleans and leaves the slightest film on the rubber to make dirt have a bit hard of a time sticking to it when it comes in contact, making it ideal for winter prep! Not only is Tire & Rubber Cleaner designed for your tires, but it also comes in handy for cleaning those all weather floor mats after a weekend of skiing the slopes!
Lastly, you’re probably wondering about the packed snow in the fender wells, and it’s okay! We have something for that too! For those plastic fender liners, clean them thoroughly and remove the summer’s mock and dirt away first, then spray a liberal application of our Undercarriage spray on the plastic fender liners. If you have plastic skid plates, bumper guards, or mud flaps, feel free to spray those down too while you’re at it! For the carpeted fender liner folk, a thorough cleaning with a pressure washer is perfect for winter prep, and for those painted fender wells on the truck beds, treat them as you would your wheels with Ceramic Boost!
Winter Preparation Quick & Easy
Winter Preparation In Depth
Well, you’ve covered everything you need for the winter months and properly preparing for it, so get out there and enjoy the open road! We’ll see you back here in a bit for a winter washing follow up to maintain all that hard work you just did to prepare— so let’s keep it up!
As always, feel free to email our customer service team at tips@adamspolishes.com or call and say hello at 866-965-0400. Be sure to follow us on Facebook and Instagram, or join the community forums at adamsforums.com
We’ll see you next time.
