Cleaning

For those of you who have to deal with falling ash from fires, such as the folks in Southern California right now, the most important car care tip for you could be not to let ash interact with water on your car or remain on the car for a long time. If ash and water -- even nighttime dew -- get together on your car's paint, the water reacts with the calcium, potassium, phosphorus and magnesium in ash and might result in chemical etching. It essentially has the same effect as pouring Drano on your car. And you wouldn't do that. While it's impractical to wash your car every night before putting it to bed, at least wipe it down.

[Source: Meguiar's | Photo credit: hypertypo]

Microheat Inc., the company responsible for inventing and supplying General Motors with their HotSpot windshield cleaning system, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The technology utilized heated liquid to clean the front glass of debris, ice, and snow. Unfortunately, a short circuit on a printed circuit board could overheat and lead to a fire (removing contaminants from much more than just the front windshield). As a result, GM recalled 944,000 vehicles and dropped Microheat, and their HotSpot product, from the lineup.