When did you start taking care of your car?

T

Theroy

New member
I'm brand new here. Just found the site today. I'm 32 and I never used to care about the appearance of my cars until I recently bought one brand new. My first car was an old Audi with electrical problems ($600). I could honk the horn by pushing on the steering column and the ash tray had to be pushed all the way in or it wouldn't start (no joke). Suffice it to say, I really wasn't worried about how it looked. I washed it every couple of months but never polished it. It was dish soap and a rag. Succeeding cars didn't fare much better.



Now that I've paid top dollar for a brand new (albeit economy) car, I really want to take care of it. Other auto enthusiasts I've met seem to be the type that take care of all their stuff or have always been anal about details. I'm not like that, which made me wonder if I was a freak. Am I the only one who came to car care late? When did you start taking proper care of your cars (detailing, waxing, etc)? Was it a new car that did it or were you swabbing and waxing the old clunker when you were 18?



Glad I found this place!



~Theroy
 
First :welcome to Autopia.



Second: I always took care of my car but the difference is the knowledge I have now. I did not know about clay, MF, polish, PC, etc. I tried to do it but I was causing some damage at the same time. Don't be so hard with yourself. It is good that you found this place and be ready to learn.



Click on learn icon to begin with your training. How fun.

:xyxthumbs
 
1st question: How did you come about finding out that by pushing in the ash tray, the car would start ??



19 yrs old, when I bought my first Toyota P/U....Was a whopping $7400.00, with a/c am/fm and a sliding rear window, even "wing" windows. Was perfect for racing thru the canyons to get to the beach to surf....I used Rain Dance religiously....

I quote my mother, "I wish you would spend as much time cleaning your room as you do your truck." Prior to that, I had a 65 Malibu, thats what I learned to drive in, nice machine, but out of style for a 16 yr old punk.....(((I WISH I STILL OWNED IT NOW))), course im in my 40's now....lol

Takes forever to learn common sense......
 
Well, I was a teenage smoker and I was sitting there smoking, wondering how the hell I was going to get this car to start. I put the cig out in the ash tray, pushed it in to close it, then tried it again. It started. At first I thought it was a coincidence but I came to find that it would only start with the tray in! It must have put the right amount of pressure on some wiring somewhere. That car finally died a year later and no amount of ashtray maneuvering would make it start!
 
I am also new to car detailing..... i am 26 years old. I never washed my vechiles more than once a year and never waxed. At the time I also used Dawn soap cause I didn't know any better. I now drive an old pickup that is paying the price.



We bought a new car for my wife and I didn't want to make the same mistakes again, so I started reading this site. Now a I am changed man, :).



BTW, my first car was an old escort that i bought from a bank repo lot. It had been through a flood so you can imagine what it was like. It also had 3 13" wheels and one 15" wheel with an even bigger tire on it. It was hard to look cool driving down the road with my car tilted awkwardly, :). Ahhhh, first cars......



pico
 
I got my first car when I was 17. It was a cherry 70 Mach I. I could barely afford the car. Mom and Dad told me they would pay my insurance as long as My GPA was over a 3.5. I couldn't afford to have someone else fix or take care of my car so I started early. That was 20+ years ago and I've been taking care of them ever since. The story about the ash tray is pretty funny and reminds me of an electrical problem I had once. It was on a 79 Ford F-150. While the truck was at freeway speeds if you honked the horn the cruise control would automatically accel until you either hit the brakes or turned it off. This happened when the cruise control wasn't engaged. I did a little research and found out that the cruise control and the horn ran through the same relay and traced it back to a short in the steering wheel. Made for some interesting experiences the first couple of times I experienced this problem. :eek:
 
I'm in my forties. Owned more cars than I care to count. Only drove them thru the occasional carwash. Bought a new Mazda in 1991, same treatment (only worse, counting the time I scotch-brited the entire thing to get overspray from work off). Fastforward 2002, bought a glorious new Mazda 626 Wifemobile (for our 20th anniversary). The (5 years) car payment was higher than our mortgage. It was at this point I got serious about taking care of an auto's finish. And, thanks to Autopia (and hard work on my part), I can honestly say the car looks better than new, nearly 2 years after we bought it.

I plan on still saying that when it's paid off, in 2007. In the mean time,

BLING BLING
 
Welcome to Autopia. I started taking care of my first car, a 66 GTO, when I was 15. I used 3M wax and powedered soap and also Turtle wax. Although the car was broken 50% of the time, I still have fond memories of the goat.
 
Yeah, since he asked when did I start caring, I guess I did. heh

In my teens, I had more tickets (speeding mostly) than my age. I can remember two cars that I never changed the oil or plugs in, cause they didn't last _me_ that long... Sometimes it takes a while to catch on, doesn't it?

;-)
 
I was raised in an Auto Repair enviroment and I took care of all my cars but not in the Autopian way. I found this site two years ago at 40 and never looked back. Enjoy the new car.
 
Ever since I can remember I would always help clean the family car. When I could finally afford a car it was always high mileage, but I wanted it to look like it was new. I remember back when cleaning my Mothers 1976 Olds Cutlass Supreme, I thought that the painted trim around the canvas top would look better if it were sliver. With enough elbow grease and a brillo pad I succeeded in removing the paint. I thought it looked good, but Mom was a little pissed. She couldn't get too mad cause I was like 10. Also it started to rust shortly there after.



A little work in the beginning will keep that new car looking even better than new!
 
I always thought I did take care of my vehicles, but not to the extent I do today. The bottom line is knowledge and that's where this site has helped tremendously.
 
Andriver -- not only was my first car a GTO ('66 as well), but my second ('66 convertible 4-speed) and third ('70 convertible 4-speed) were as well. Nothing quite like the GTO convertible. I was into Meguiar's even back then, though most of the work was done by hand. I do have fond memories of using a WEN buffer back then. No foam pads (they weren't around), but plenty of wool pads. And no, not a single burn!!
 
So it sounds like it's about half and half (or maybe tilted towards the side that has always taken good care of their cars). I guess what I'm also wondering though is: Are you guys as detail conscious in your daily lives as you are about your cars? Do you try to get your house looking as good as your car etc? Or is the car your baby and everything else suffers? I know that I have always been kind of a slob and this included my cars in the past. Now, I'm taking care of my car but I'm not quite as "detail" oriented in the rest of my life.



PS: Thanks for all the replies!:bow
 
I was brought up to always care for a car. We had (and still have) a 62 Olds Starfire and a 67 Grand Prix Convertible. We were putting them in shows, so we always waxed them. It may not have been Autopian standards, but did fairly well. We had a Pro orbital buffer with terry bonnets. We used Pro Power Pak to clean the finish. Their Polymer Sealant, then topped it with Miracle Wax. I don’t know who made it, but we bought it in a gallon paint can.



As I got my own car, I tried all sorts of stuff. Mother’s was my favorite. I also used something called “The Treatment� that first told me to apply in straight lines (1989 I figure). I even dabbled with Meguiar’s Mirror Glaze line. I still have a bottle of Final Inspection from back then.



Even mechanically, I change my own oil, plugs, broken parts (this happened a lot) and anything else. I can’t think of a time when I didn’t car for cars. I even used to wax my car models…:D
 
Theroy-



To answer you last question, I find that I am all about the "details". So yes, I try to keep everything perfect, but it seems that it ranks importance. The more I care about it, the more attention it gets. With a new daughter at the top of the list now, I am finding it much harder to keep up with the cars and "Curb Appeal" of the house. Also doesn't hurt that my wife cares more about keeping up the inside of the house which is lower on my list.



But that's just me.
 
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