Breeze's first wash!

[MagneticMan]

Was fullfulling yet had a few set backs. Pull up a chair and hear my story

I have two vehicles, the GT and a Toyota Tacoma. Both were filthy from the recent spate of snow, freezing rain, slush, mud, road nasties.

Been too cold to do anything about it until this weekend, got up to mid 60's and bright and sunny!

But now I'm faced with a dilemma. Do I wash and wax and the truck and do the Mustang next weekend? Or do I wash and wax the mustang and do the truck next weekend? Or do I just wash both and do the waxing later, which will require a new car washing.

Main goal was to get rid of the grime and road salt, etc. So I decided to just wash the two vehicles and do the waxing another weekend.

In preparation I decided to do some simple maintenance on my pressure washer, a Northstare 2800 PSI 2.5 gpm unit with a Honda 160G engine and a Comet pump. I changed the oil a while back for the engine and needed to change the oil in the pump.

Changing the oil in the pump required removing the pump, turning it upside down and letting the oil flow out. This was straight foward, drained the oil, reattached the pump and had to fill it with 3.4 oz of Mobile 1 15W30.

How to measure 3.4 oz? Not going to use the kitchen measuring cups - they're for food not motor oil. So when I drained the old oil into an old soup can I used a straw as a dipstick then poured fresh oil into another clean soup can and using another dipstick, filled it with oil until the oil on level on the two dipsticks matched.

Then like an idiot I put a long skinny funnel on top of the fill hole on the pump and poured the 3.4 oz of fresh oil into it. Except it didn't go into it!
Not sure why but the oil didn't want to go down into the pump, when I lifted the funnel about 3 oz of oil went every where on the pressure washer and pump.

By trial and error I found if I poured oil from the can so it was a little stream and took it real slow, the oil would go into the pump.

So I did the Tacoma, even rinsed the engine bay, parked it in the street as my driveway is sort of small and focused on the Mustang.

At this time of one neighbors popped over and wanted to see the new car.
This lead to the inevitable "Let's go for a drive!". So we hopped in, took the top down, and went for a drive

He liked it

Before I washed Breeze I decided to vacuum the driver's side foot area, this meant dragging out the shop vac, putting on my special car vacuum nozzle, and sucking up the dirt

Here's the nozzle, looks sort of like the ones you see at car washes

So far so good....

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[MagneticMan]

Now for the car wash, I read somewhere about water getting into the heat vents on the hood. So I blocked them off with blue painter's tape. What I didn't notice was I didn't have the hood closed all the way, more on this later.

My technique is to use the pressure washer to soak the car with pressure wash vehicle wash, then I'd hand wash the car and then use the pressure washer to rinse the soap off.

This was straight forward as well. I used this for the handwashing

Then I used chamois to dry the car and the popped open the hood, gas cap door, trunk and doors and used an ordinary towel dry the water in those areas. There's always some water in the trunk channels and on the door sills for example.

Being a convertible I didn't see any need to wash the cloth top so I just let it be.

Then I let the car air dry with all the doors, trunk lid, hood open

Then I took a much needed break, been at this for over 2 hours now, remember I washed my truck immediately before this

 

[MagneticMan]

Remember I didn't have the hood all the way shut? This part of hood insulation was soaked! Water was dripping from it. The water go in from the passenger side windshield wiper area when I was rinsing the hood

Had to use a towel to catch all the drips

Before I put the towel there I noticed some water dripped into the vent holes of the battery compartment

I kept on squeezing the soggy corner of the insulation until it was damp but no longer dripping. Then I realized I never took the battery cover off before and just how much water actually dripped down there???

I got two of the plastic fasteners out by hand and one was loose enough to remove the cover but it stayed in the middle hole of the plastic battery cover. No big deal. Until I turned the battery cover upside down and placed it on the fuse box while I inspected for water in the battery compartment.

Then I heard a plop, plink, rattle, knock. Yep, the third plastic fastener fell out into the abyss that is the front passenger side of the engine compartment :doh:

Got a flashlight and hunted for it for about 10 minutes. No luck. I'll get a new one and couple of spares. But it'll irk me forever now not knowing exactly where it's at.

Oh well. Time to air dry the brakes and whatever water was left. This meant another drive

Headed to a grocery store and snagged some soda (didn't really need any, just needed a flimsy excuse to go for a drive), on the way saw a 5th gen black mustang and did a courtesy wave. Upon leaving the store I put the top down and galloped home.

Popped the hood and the wet insulation spot pretty much dried out.

Oh, the blue painter's tape trick worked, no water inside in the engine from the heat vents

So in all:

1. clean truck
2. clean car
3. vacuumed the car
4. got oil all over the d*mn place
5. lost a battery cover fastener
6. took neighbor on a joyride
7. took a joyride afterwards

That is my tale, thanks for reading
:cheers:

 

[Am1nal]

Great looking magnetic!!!

 

[MagneticMan]

Found the missing battery cover fastener!

Searched in engine bay again for 10 minutes with a flashlight. Saw it on the undercover right in front of the fan.

My claw pickup tool was about 1/2" too short to reach it.

Wrapped some duct tape on end of a wooden dowel and able to snag it that way

 

[adam@10fintec]

Looks great!


What trunk organizer is that btw?

 

[MagneticMan]

Looks great!


What trunk organizer is that btw?

The official Ford Accessory one http://www.mustang6g.com/forums/showthread.php?t=17081

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