My mate Brian sums up my attitude to cars quite nicely: “a car is just an airconditioner on wheels!”
On Saturday I washed the exterior my car for… ooh, the first time in a year, I reckon. I vaccuum the inside of it every few months, but the outside I’ve really let go. The birds had been using it for target practice, and though roadworthy (I hope!) and reliable, it was quite definitely the dirtiest car in the street.
It’s funny to think that in the years I’ve had it, I started out cleaning it weekly, but that quickly slipped to closer to monthly, and now it’s about annual. It’s not just the water restrictions in place; it’s also the fact that I moved to a place with a gravelly-sandy driveway, and I have no wish to reduce it to mud.
But having noted the appalling state of the thing, I took it to one of those self-service cleaning places. For just a few dollars, I was able to get most of the gunk on it, and while it’s not perfect, it’s much better than it was. Hell, it’s actually shiny now for the first time in ages.
And how did the car reward me? By producing steam on the way home today. A leaking hose pipe, and the RACV man urged me to get them all looked at, pronto.
Bloody cars.
One reply on “Cleaning the car”
You do realize, don’t you, that bird droppings eat through car paint?? (It depends how much actual paint you have on the car. The more paint you have – ie darker coloured car – the less likely this will happen.)
Ask me how I know????!!!!! I had a Light Blue 1975 Honda Civic – with white primer on roof. My father got fed up with seeing the steel roof (“fade marks”) on the car roof so he painted it with primer! (This was 20 years ago though.)
(I live on a large island with lots of fresh salt air, pitch from trees and bird turd (seagulls).
j :)