Mechanic's Tale: The Big Cat by Douglas Flint (8/21/2006)
I fell in love with a machine - and lost.

More Mechanic's Tales from Doug Flint  

My neighbor is one of those guys. You know, the kind who set a standard that make the rest of us look bad. He tirelessly hauls mulch and flowers from one end of the yard to the other, built his own massive garage and laid his own driveway.

One day I watched him pull in from a weekend getaway. He hustled his family into the house and within a minute was back out with the hose cleaning the road grime off his car. I thought, that ain't me, Lord. (But just this weekend, working with a ditch-digging machine, he hit a main power line, nearly incinerating himself. That ain't me either.)

Nonetheless, there is strong evidence that a clean car with a well-kept body performs better. When I do a major repair on a car, I usually try to vacuum and wipe down the interior and wash the car off, or if I don't have time to do it myself, I run it through the local carwash - and boy, does it make a difference with the customers.

Now if you're one of those people who hold a ruler up to your car finish to see how deep the shine is or send paint samples to the laboratory for electron microscope analysis after a body repair, stop reading. But if your goal is for your car to look good at five yards distance and not feel embarrassed when you haul your kids' friends around, there's a lot you can do.

You can do it!

Obviously, washing your car is a good first step. I myself prefer dishwashing liquid and I hook the hose up to the sink in the shop so I can use hot water, or a five-gallon bucket of really hot water will do just as well. Caution: the average garden hose is not rated to carry scalding hot water!

Once the major layers of dirt are off you can begin addressing the road tar and other by-products that mar the lower portion of the body panels. You will want a can of tar and bug remover for this. But what about that long mark on the rear quarter panel where the neighbor's mailbox jumped into the street? If ordinary elbow grease does not remove it, try polishing compound, which is a fine grit that will take off a micro-thin layer of paint. Work in very small areas the size of a fingertip using a very light touch. You will be amazed at the number of imperfections polishing compound will take off, but use it only on metal surfaces. Unfortunately cars today have a lot of plastic trim panels and plates, and polishing compound will not work on them. Worse than that, plastic tends to fade out with age well ahead of painted metal.

Are you ready to take it to the next level?