Maintaining your car

How to wash Sahara dust off your car

Cleaning carpandara / Shutterstock

Getting rid of the Saharan dust that periodically blows up from Africa is vital to the future value of your car.

Dust is bad news for a car’s paintwork. Not only does it dull the finish of your once immaculate motor, it can also be very abrasive, causing millions of minute scratches to the surface it’s sitting on. And the duller and less appealing a car’s bodywork is, the less it will be worth when it’s time to sell it.

Cleaning a car involves slightly more than giving it a wipe over with a wet rag. We’ve taken advice from car care experts Autoglym to give you four simple steps that will enable you to return your dust-covered paintwork to its former glory…

Step 1: the first rinse

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Home checks to help pass the annual MOT test

Exhaust MoT failureLike a check-up at the dentist, your car’s annual MOT test comes round quicker than you expect and can be a painful experience. It can also be more expensive than many drivers anticipate.

Last year, a staggering 40 per cent of the 26.9m cars that took the annual MOT failed. That’s more than 10 million vehicles. Of those, more than 3.5m were pulled up for having dodgy lights, something that could easily have been checked by owners before the test.

Here are the most common reasons for MOT failure (in 2012/2103) and a guide to carrying out your own pre-MOT test to minimise the chances, aggravation and cost of flunking.

Lighting and signalling: 18.7% of fails

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