Keeping your car clean topside is easy; but it’s the undercarriage that takes the most abuse, and though you can’t readily see it, over time it will take its toll on reliability. Well, Logan McCombs visited a local shop that is using a clever and eco-friendly technique to clean up that grime on MotorWeek’s “You Drive!”

LOGAN MCCOMBS: Cleaning the underside of your car is one of the hardest things to do on your own. And I’m sure you’ve heard of this new thing called dry ice cleaning, or maybe you haven’t. And I’m here with Brian today, from “Polished 2 Perfection.” Brian, can you tell us a little bit about what your business does?

BRIAN RICE: Yeah, so, um, we’re a veteran-owned small business. We, uh, we do dry ice cleaning. Um, it’s a relatively new process, um, it’s been up and coming the last two years. You know, it’s nice, because a lot of people now are.. you see car auctions, you know, on tv and online, Bring-a-Trailer, Barrett-Jackson, those sorts of places. And, you know, the people want to see the underside of the cars, and a clean undercarriage is always going to bring more money.

And, you know, the nice thing about the dry ice cleaning is, you know, it’s environmentally friendly. We don’t use chemicals, there’s no secondary waste. You know, it’s really good for the underside of the car.. it’s not abrasive, we don’t remove any calk marks, paint marks, stickers, anything. It just removes the dirt and leaves a pristine finish.

The dry ice hits the dirt, the dirt hits the floor and carbon dioxide is in the– the atmosphere. And dry ice is created from carbon dioxide that’s in the atmosphere. So again, it’s great for the environment.

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LOGAN MCCOMBS: So, like something we may know is like media blasting, where there’s a lot of leftover debris and things like that. So, that’s great that it’s much better for the environment. What is that process like on dry ice cleaning a car?

BRIAN RICE: So, with dry ice cleaning, you have three things that happen: You have the speed of the pellet that comes out of the machine, that hits the dirt and it kinda breaks it apart. The dry ice is negative 109 Fahrenheit, and it super freezes it and it shrinks it. The dry ice pellet going from solid to gas creates a little explosion and blows the dirt apart.

LOGAN MCCOMBS: Well thank you having us here, Brian, thank you for showing us the process of dry ice cleaning. It was very interesting”

BRIAN RICE: Well it was my pleasure to have MotorWeek in my shop and showcase what we’re doing here.

LOGAN MCCOMBS: If you have a question or comment, reach out to us, right here, at MotorWeek.