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Orangepeel.

Truck's nearly 6 years old now (2001 Dakota club cab 4x4). From a distance, when clean, shiny and well-cared for.

Closer up though, she's starting to show her age. Orangepeel everywhere (cept where we had the bumper fixed in October), scratches and swirls that no quantity of scratch-X will take out. I tell myself that's just the character of an older, well-used truck... but it still bugs me.

Is orange peel just one of the ravages of age? Is there anything that can be done about it?

The water here is incredibly hard. So hard (How Hard Is It? broke a glass once when the faucet dripped! ), and it's so hot, that water drops are nearly instantaneously burned into the finish. I have to go over the entire truck with detailer or scratchx after drying in order to get the water drops that were faster than I am. Wondering if there's a trick to keep this from happening?

If I wanted to get the covering of not-fine-enough-for-scratchx scratches out, how would I go about it?

Can you tell I've just come in from washing the truck? Sometimes I miss the Chevette. Didn't take nearly as long to wash :)

Hope you're all enjoying your Northern Hemisphere spring. Here, we're enjoying the fact that Autumn finally and suddenly arrived last week, and here winter's only about a month away. Now it's all the way down into the 70s during the day.

jmc

Reply to
jmc
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Wow, I thought I had it bad in Birmingham, Alabama. I usually try not to wash the car until later in the day just before the sun goes down, then rinse the whole car frequently while washing to keep it all wet, until I can sprint in and get a chamois to dry it with. If I don't dry it - let it air dry - the spots are there forever. I have had moderate luck in the past removing minor surface defects with a cleaning wax (contains very mild abrasive). This is usually most effective on much older cars with the old-style paint, which becomes chalky with age. Never had the orange peel problem you're talking about, though.

- Larry A.

Reply to
Larry A.

It's actually always been there... it's in the base coat. The only way to eliminate it is to wet-sand the base coat before clearing over it... not going to happen on an assembly line. The reason it's becoming more noticable is that the clearcoat is wearing away - and that's just due to age.

Wash the car under a canopy, and use a squeegee to get rid of the standing water. There is/was a product, I think from Mr. Clean, that attached to the hose, and acted as a rudimentary water softener, used during a final rinse. I don't know how well it worked, but for a few dollars, it would be worth a shot. There are also some small, sort of "point of use" water softeners you could get, and hook your garden hose to.

Back when I had a black truck, that would show even the shallowest of scratches, I had good results with the Meguiar's Professional products... I think it was their #9 scratch filler, followed by their #7 polish, then topped off with their Gold Class wax, that made them disappear - at least for a few weeks.

In the end, I learned it was much more enjoyable spending time making the truck go faster and pull harder, than it was making it look pretty... but that's a personal decision :)

Reply to
Tom Lawrence

besides that....the jaw of the driver in the rice rocket or the mustang drops faster when a beat up ole work truck blows their doors off.

Reply to
Chris Thompson

Yep... it's harder for others to notice the scratches at a higher rate of acceleration. Bryan ;^)

Reply to
Bryan

Suddenly, without warning, Chris Thompson exclaimed (20-May-07 10:46 AM):

Ah, there is that. Once out-accelerated some slinky sports car, back when the Truck was new. Man, was that sweet.

(going from a 2.4l truck to the 4.7l, I was a bit silly the first couple of weeks)

jmc

Reply to
jmc

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