Elbow Grease: Tips For Those Exhaust Tips | United Kingdom

Cleaning what may be the dirtiest part of your car doesn't have to be difficult, but it can vary depending on whether your tailpipes are bare metal, ceramic-coated, chrome -plated, or otherwise. So basically you need to know what exhaust tips are made of.

If it's chrome, you'll likely want to look at the different metal polishes available depending on the amount of dirt on the surface. For example, you have Belgom Chrome or Belgom Alu (for aluminum surfaces, of course), cream-based metal polishes and the old, traditional Solvol Autosol.

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However, on a very hard coating like chrome I often use wire wool. If it's good quality chrome, it's incredibly durable. So I would use wire wool to get rid of the worst of the dirt, like tar stains burnt in from the heat from the exhaust tip.

After cleaning them, I went over them with the appropriate polish. But a word of warning: when using steel wool, wear gloves. What you definitely don't want are metal fibers embedded in your skin. You may not feel it at first, but a day or two later you will press your fingertip and feel a sharp pain from a small metal file...

Materials like chrome and brushed metals require slightly different techniques to look their best. Photos: Roland Brown, Allard

If your exhaust tips are already clean but you're more interested in giving them a little shine, window cleaners can often work well on chrome and polished metals - they evaporate well and quickly and don't have time to leave streaks. Ditto for brushed aluminum - you don't typically get a brushed aluminum exhaust tip, but it's worth knowing for future reference.

They're fairly rare, but cars like Jaguar's Project 7 and Project 8 and some Aston Martins have exhaust systems lined with a ceramic material like Zircotec. It's like a powder coating and you shouldn't rub too hard when cleaning as you risk peeling the coating off.

Audis tend to use stainless steel and you can polish it and use metal wool, but it's wise to rub this surface in the direction of the grain of the metal rather than across it or it will look and feel like you have it scratched. .

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