Hard to believe it was all clean and shiney a couple of days ago!

 

Yep, if you live in the eastern US, you are wasting your time and effort if you wash your vehicles this time of the year. I will hose them down with a few quick sprays but I will not do a proper wash again until late April / early May....

 

When I wiped bird crap off my X150 at work yesterday, the door looked so much blacker than the rest of the car lol. It's that fun time...

 

Geez, what a mess pollen can make of your beautiful car exterior. Bit like seeing BBQ stains down the front of your wife's dress.

Here in Bahrain, we have the occasional "shamal" dust storms blow through. Even though my car is fully garaged, I had this sight this morning.

Those are the paw prints of my arch nemesis - Ginger - the next door neighbour's cat.

My ambition in life is to make the car off limits to him. Would consider discouraging the cat by electrifying the body (something BC in Texas would be familiar with), but......

 

Yeah I've heard sand over there gets into everything no matter what! I have a small farmette and we have one outside cat that used to be an indoor cat (her decision) and a few ferral ones that roam around. I feel your pain with the paw prints. Or cat has been known to jump on the bonnet and clamber it's way onto the hood when you pull into the driveway. Of course she hasn't done it on my Jag since she went flying the one time she did it. Lol

 

my cat works as a guard dog. Nary a scratch on the original paint ('66 GT350).






Z

 

Can a cat be a guard dog?

 

I think that depends on the cat. My Bengal cat regularly terrorizes the neighborhood dogs, so he a guard "against" dogs.

Z

 

I know some people think those California Dusters are evil, but there's a right way and a wrong way to use them. Don't let the weight of the duster drag on the surface, but rather hold it above the surface so that the yarns just lightly touch. As long as you keep the car waxed and do it that way, it won't scratch and you won't notice swirl marks building any faster than normal.

On our OP's photo, it looks like it recently rained. If I have no choice but to drive when its going to rain (really looking forward to retirement), I've found that if I dust my car off first, then it doesn't have that load of pollen to congeal into spots and doesn't look so bad afterward. It really bugs me if my car gets rained on Monday but I know I won't have time to wash it till the weekend. Even worse if Tuesday through Friday are going to be nice and they forecast rain on Saturday & Sunday.

But what's with all these pictures of cats on top of cars? There was picture posted in another thread just recently, and it made me think of this TV commercial. Apparently, its not the cat's claws you need to worry about......

 

Actually I think it was pollen, then it was either frost or dew, then pollen. Then sunny weather drrrrrrrrrrrr! Yeah the wife's car has a couple of cat scratches in the paint. I'm constantly concerned about the cars deciding to use my XJS's rag top as a claw sharpener. They will disappear if that happens lol