CLEANING YOUR CAR - GET MORE FOR YOUR MOTOR

When it comes to selling your car, a couple of hours spent on valeting and cosmetic repairs can make all the difference - in fact £500 worth of difference, according to motor trade journal Glass's Guide.

Certainly, a car that's well presented inside and out will particularly impress both dealers and private buyers - which should mean they'll pay more for it. In return for a bit of elbow grease and a small outlay on valeting products plus essential parts, sellers could easily realise that extra £500 on the value of any second-hand car.

So how should you go about cosseting your car - and what should you buy to prepare it for sale? Hopefully, these guidelines might help.

Body and Paint Work

* Shoddy bodywork is a big turn-off. Scratches on paintwork and patches of rust not only make a car look scruffy and neglected, they automatically lower the price that a buyer is prepared to pay.

* Make sure that rusty areas are treated with Rust Treatment

* If the rust is too far gone, use a little body filler to fill up holes in the body work

* Use a colour brush to cover up stone chips and minor paint work problems that need an exact colour match, or use the new Stone Chip and Scratch Repair System -

* Big motor stores like Halfords have wide ranges of car paints and normally offer a Special Order Paint Service for more obscure shades, with an exact match for any colour

* Make sure that the less obvious areas are also pristine. Take care to treat marks on wheels, inside the engine and on bumpers with specialist paints

* Replace any individual wheel trims that are missing and ensure you have a matching set

Cleaning

* First...