Well, I just spent 6 hours taking care of my paint exterior. I live in one of those Hirise condos with a communal garage.. But even so, I just park my car near one of the overhead lights with a socket nearby. I plug my extention cord into the socket and I plug my PC and my Homelight yellow detailing light into the extention. I usually just try and make do with the overhead lighting, but today I used the homelight for the first time, and it allowed me to see all the swirls that have accumulated on the sides that I normally dont see. These swirls in the sides of the fenders and the door panels were put there when the car was new some 8 yrs ago when I took it to some auto carwashes. .Those things had those huge swirling brushes that whipped at high pressure blue nylon strands around a vertical drum... Those things closed in on the side panels and really did a swirl number. Today for the first time I got most of them out. I used a Cutting pad with PB SSR2.5 followed by a LC White pad with SSR2.5 followed by Finsesse-It. That got most of it. The only other panel that had damage was the hood. Over the years, a combination of road sandblasting, and gravel blasting from tarp covered dump trucks whose load would tend to fly out the back, combined with finding myself all of a sudden on an asphalt repair segment of a road all took their toll on my hood. Ive done my best to remove those scratches which I could, and round off those I was afraid were too deep. Being a white car, even though its not perfect, its very liveable, and to the untrained eye, it IS perfect! Theres no more helpless feeling than to find yourself on a major thruway, and start to hear the unmistakeable ping, ping, ding of pebbles bouncing off your paint. You see the culpret up ahead, and you try to slow down and fade back in hopes of distancing yourself enough from the offender.. When that doesnt do any good, you do the only other thing possible; you speed up and overtake him asap... But in the process, the damage is done.. Or other times, the sides of the road are covered with sand, and just normal traffic kicks it up, and it always just seems to find my hood.
I think I need to reach the point where I convince myself that I dont have a show car; I have a daily driver that I take alot of pride in, but its necessary to realize its impossible to keep it as pristine as a true show car, after putting 8 yrs and 70k miles on it. The fact that it looks as good as it does is a testament to my obsession.. But, its not perfect.. .DAMNIT!!!!
IN the same way, when I wasnt obsessing about the paint, I was obsessing about the power.. Adding an intercooled Supercharger, and then getting together with custom tuners to develop software to support a boost bump to 11 psi providing a power increase of more than 150 hp more than stock was even more an obsession than the paint at one time. But in the same way I had to learn to live with the fact that there are others whose cars will be faster, I need to find a way to accept the fact that while it looks great, it wont be perfect anymore. Now without a hood repaint. Most people would think Im nuts, talking about a hood repaint.. Unless its indoors under revealing light, it looks perfect.. Even indoors, only detailing afficianados would detect the damage on the hood. can anyone identify?
