The secret trick to auto detailing a car interior

For my wife's Mother's Day gift, I promised her to detail her car, something we do almost as a family tradition. Well, this year, I got the outside of the car done in typical fashion, but the interior was a pain. Until I tried something different.

A leaf blower.

Yep, that is the secret weapon. First off, know that a leaf blower will kick up an amazing amount of dust, so I highly suggest trying this outside on a clean blacktop or cement surface.

So with that in mind, here is what I did on my wife's car: Open up all the doors, remove anything that has the remotest chance of flying loose, get the car mats out, empty anything in the door pockets, etc. And let 'er rip with the leaf blower! I did this, and the amount of dust, crud, fried chicken bits, gum wrappers, crumbs, dead skin, and general funk that went flying was just off the scale. All that fuzz on the dash couldn't survive the 240 mph hurricane. Crud embedded in the carpets started lifting out. Mystery funk at the base of the the knobs on the instrument panel lifted out. French fry stubs appeared out of nowhere. Fuzzy hard candies showed up. I blasted the air vents on the dash, under the seats, the back, everything.

Now this process generates a humungous pigpen cloud in the car, so I used the blower from the outside of the car to push that dust cloud out of the car. Did I mention this process churns up an incredible amount of dust? Yeah it does. But once the dust settles, and hopefully not in your car, it's ready for a good cleaning and Armor All (or whatever you like) and it's got that pro detail look.

A leaf blower. Who knew?