A Five Dollar Wax Job.

The rear door is underway, the front door shows an obvious film.

 Ian Cooper

The other day we were at Walmart buying hamburger meat and melatonin tablets, which we appear to be living on these days.

That and a little bit of beer, ladies and gentlemen, but the point is that we decided to treat ourselves to a five-buck spray bottle of Speed Wax.

Canadian Tire is right across the street if you want to pay more.

Where I live, I park under a tree and there's all kinds of birdshit on her most days. A coat of wax will make that easier to wash off next time.

This morning, we made sure to have all kinds of coinage and we took her to a high-pressure car wash, which takes three bucks and you kind of have to hustle along if you don’t want to be sticking more quarters in there before she’s done.

Next time, we;ll do the interior.

We don’t worry about hot wax in the spray booth. We start off with soap, go as quickly as we can and at the same time being thorough, especially along the sills, under the front and rear bumpers. Et cetera.

There’s no real need to wash the windows, and quite frankly I’ve always wondered about using hot wax on the car windows.

But they were clean enough and water appears to bead up on them pretty well. In fact I’ve been wondering how they did that as the car came from a used vehicle lot and them guys make a science out of cleaning cars if nothing else.

Once the car is fully blasted off, we quickly switch to rinse and then just try to get all the soap off before the machine stops. If we got an extra minute, we can do the wheel-wells and the rims and tires. Since this is prep for our next task, we were happy to be able to do that and all of a sudden there was that clunk and we had run out of money, hence water.

Okay.

So then we took a little drive across town, letting her dry in the sun and the wind, avoiding dirt, gravel or sandy roads, obviously, and then we ended up at a nice little suburban park where they don’t have rails along the road. Some people are real idiots, and they’ll take great delight in driving the big 4 x 4s on public property, ripping it up for the sheer hellery of it as much as anything else. A lot of parks have curbs or rails or fences, is what we are saying.

Be that as it may, we took our five buck spray bottle and a bit of old terry-cloth towel, and started at the back. As soon as we began, it looked like it was going to work. The instructions call for micro-fibre towels, which basically means that it won’t leave lint. This is what the pro detailers would obviously use. I’m just some guy, and I also thought of that already.

She looks okay, ladies and gentlemen.

Basically, for that we have an old tea towel, which is not terry cloth and takes the lint off well enough. Once the car has been waxed, rubbed down as best one can with the sticky or dirty rag, we did the whole vehicle over again with  the clean cloth, noting any smudgy places and buffing them down as best we can.

When you’re down on the hands and knees, sure enough, there are a few places on the plastic bumpers that ain’t ever going to come up, but she’s an old car and she looks pretty good when we’re done. When you're buffing, you want to rub very lightly, pushing too hard just seems to smear it. Sometimes you wax over a water spot, and then you have to wet it with a bit of wax and clean her off again.

I honestly thought the car had mag wheels, it turns out these are simply fancy-schmancy chrome hubcaps. This wax did a nice job of cleaning and polishing those, and it saves us the cost of a proper alloy wheel cleaner anyways.

Other than that, we didn’t even vacuum the car, and there are water spots and a bit of film on the windows, which we obviously do not wax.

We have to admit we’re pleased with the results.

There is plenty left in the bottle—easily ninety percent, and the next time, we’ll find a cheap spray bottle of something to do the interior of the car. As a smoker, yeah—she tends to get a bit grubby fairly quickly. As a smoker, you want to do the inside of the windows pretty regular.

Other than that, she looks all right.

END

Before

After.

Performance Wish List for the PT Cruiser

Ian Cooper

This is my wish list for a few performance parts for a 2004 Chrysler PT Cruiser. There are all kinds of mods you could make. Just so you know, mine has the sunroof, a five-speed manual gearbox, power everything. The stereo is nice and there is a driver’s side seat heater for those cold winter mornings.

My first thought was a set of Hooker headers. It’s a lot of money although I’m sure it would sound good. It seems a bit nuts to put headers on there if you don’t plan on doing anything else to the engine. However, we could sure get a nice sound from a cat-back free-flow exhaust system like this, and who knows, it might add a horsey or two onto the top-end figures.

Every kid knows about cold air induction. But this kit looks fairly inexpensive and you might get a couple of additional horsepower on the Chrysler 2.4-litre four cylinder engine in the PT.

This is some kind of spacer that goes in between the thingy and the thingamabobber.

It’s only eighty bucks so we might as well throw that in the shopping cart…I have no idea what that does but I do love tormenting the neighbours. That will teach you to look over my shoulder all the time, Mofo.

I saw a PT going down the road the other day and it sounded pretty good. It also had some stripes on there, most likely factory. That car was purple, which does say something about the driver. The horn blows too, as we all know. But I sort of wondered and then Googled around. 

These are really cute, I kind of like the chrome colour.

In the bad old days, we might have used premium fuel for the simplest, cheapest performance boost possible. The occasional tank of 94-octane (as opposed to the regular 87-octane) won’t hurt the engine or the plugs. A little jug of fuel injector cleaner in there once or twice a year won’t hurt either.

All kinds of tips and pointers here.

Bearing in mind the price difference between regular and premium, that might not be worth it these days unless we plan on jacking into the engine computer. In this particular case, we have no plans to do that.

Simply removing the rear seats might take a hundred pounds from the car, although one comment here says two hundred. Mine are the leather ones, which probably are the heaviest. On a car of this weight, 3,123 lbs., you’re maybe taking three percent of the total mass away from your package. This is the cheapest extra horsepower you’re ever going to get. Yeah, I don’t have kids and most of the time I’m alone in the car. The real problem is where to leave them when you live in an apartment and the car is three hundred feet and a few flights of steps away.

Also, I’m a lazy cunt.

When you’re young and the hair still hasn’t started falling, you really ought to get a set of Recaro bucket seats. If this doesn’t convince the ladies of the sheer bulk of your cojones, this writer is completely mystified by women.

Oh, yeah, Baby. Put a pair of them in there for me, willya? And we probably need one of these in here too.

We really ought to throw some aftermarket electronic goodies on there as long as we got that old Kickstarter campaign going….shit.

Did I say that?

Please don’t tell the ODSP.

One of these babies would work well. I could have a second career as a tech blogger if I'm not careful. (All the tech bloggers have them in their airplanes.)

Oh, yeah, and she’s looking a bit dusty lately.

Did I say she’s black, with black, on black, with black trim and accessories and a little bit of extra black checked off on the option list for good measure?

For that we’re going to need some wax and a couple of bikini-clad skankers.

Fog lamps are always worthwhile, and who knows, maybe you won’t have to go to the speed shop to put them in. Ah, who are we kidding.

Then there’s the whole Cragar thing. (Mag wheels.)

I’m just kidding, ladies and gentlemen. Ha! We’ve already got mag wheels on there.

Sorry. I was just goofing around.

Pirellis. Because it’s a wish list. It’s not like I have the money to do any of this!

Fuzzy Dice. (Wiki.)

Other than that, it’s pretty easy to piss away a lot of money on a crappy old car.

It might be fun, though.

This might be the last car I own before I die.

Which is kind of sad, when you think about it.

(Aw. – ed.)

END

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