If you’ve read this blog for a bit of time, you’ll notice that I’m a huge believer in the all purpose cleaner (APC for short). Instead of having five different products for different applications throughout the interior and exterior of the car, I can simply have an APC take care of all of that for me.
Instead of hauling around more 32oz spray bottles and buying more detailing products, I can simply use an APC, mix it at different dilution ratios, and use that to detail 80% of all jobs that I get.
In this blog post, I’m going to share the top five uses for an all purpose cleaner.
APC For The Interior
This is where I use the APC the most. Unless the interior calls for a very specific type of leather cleaner (like the King Ranch that requires a specific leather cleaner), an APC will do fine.
1. Use it to clean leather and cloth seats- If you go to your local auto parts store, you’ll find there’s interior cleaners such as leather cleaning solution, vinyl cleaning solution, and cloth cleaning solutions. It sounds like you need one for each, but realistically, an APC will handle all those jobs.
2. Wipe down all the dust on the door panels and dashboard with it. When I first started detailing, I bought a dashboard cleaner. Now that I look back at it, that was a complete waste of time and money .
APC For The Exterior
The exterior has a lot more versatility than the interior does.
3. Engine cleaning- Depending on the type of engine you have (or at least one year car you have), most of your car engine will be water sealed tight by other plastic housings. So in reality, all you’re doing is cleaning plastic. But even when it comes to metal and hard surfaces, an APC does absolutely fine.
4. Wheels and tires- Some detailers like to argue that based on the type of wheel that you have you need to use a specific wheel cleaner. But I have used it on cars that cost over $1M and I have seen no troubles with using an APC
5. Removing bug guts and bird poo- Remember, this should always be one ASAP after yo notice it. With the ease of using an APC, you should have no trouble removing it.
Conclusion
I sound like a broken record, but an APC has really found it’s place for me. Which means I pretty much use it for everything. It’s much more affordable, it has dozens and dozens of different uses, and I simply know the product works.