Well the termperatures here finally reached above freezing and I had yesterday afternoon off work so I spent a good 5+ hours washing, waxing and polishing the living hell out of my car as a "first" spring cleanup. Being black, and having sat on the dealer's lot for months I still need at least 3 or 4 more applications of wax and polish (and likely clay bar) to remove some scuffs, swirls, etc. from my clearcoat...but here's what she came out looking like when it was said and done. I took the pics in my driveway since the streets around here are so dirty moving it anywhere would have reseulted in a 4' thick coating of dust all over! Two weeks time I'll do it all over again since the summers will be insatlled by end of March and they'll be in desperate need of a cleaning!!







I followed hatrikstu's (think I spelled that right) article on detailing but had no 3M tape available, nor did I give it the clay bar job this time around, I'm sure it'll snow again just to spite me . Excellent article and I like how it points out the small things I didn't really think of...so begins the summer battle trying to keep the black car looking clean!!

Permafried-

 

wheel shine...you gotta use wheel shine....makes the car look not finished.

 

omg 4x4. jk, but seriously u need to drop.

 

I'm not going to invest a whole lot of time in them being winters, when I do a final clean I'll apply some protectant before they're stored, but the rims/tires due to our winters are going to look like hell in under two years anyways I've pretty much come to accept that . The summers will be a different story, the rims and tires will both get the full treatment every single time including shining them up till you could floss your teeth in the reflection .

Before I scrubbed the hell out of them the rims were caked with salt and the rubber was turning white...damn city uses WAY too much salt on the roads around here even when only millimetres of snow fall...it's a constant on-going battle.

Stetson, I'll agree with the snows on it does tend to look like a 4x4, but I'm not touching the suspension on the TC for a couple reasons (ride and winter being the primary reasons, we get too much snow the TC is almost too low for here as is )...I'll learn to live with the wheel gap .

 

yea thats a good reason. i dont have any on my car yet but i didnt find it to hard with my old car.