Out With The Old

After a long trip back from Augusta, GA I got in at 9am this morning and ran a bunch of errands and then set to work on what I thought was going to be an afternoon claybar session.  What I ended up doing was a very thorough cleaning of the car from tip to tail.

First though, new tires!

There is nothing quite like the smell of fresh rubber.  I wrapped the OEM steelies in 195/60/14 Falken Azenis.  Not to many soft options in the 14" tire, but these will do well.  Cleaned up the hubs a little and mounted everything.  It's slowly becoming like the 5th gens of my youth.

Next up a wash, then roof molding removal, then side molding removal.  I hadn't planned on doing all those but there was mold on the side moldings which wasnt coming out and I wanted to see what was under all of them.

The top moldings come out easy, just open the hatch and give them a good slide backwards.

Some solid build up of gunk underneath, but no corrosion, looks good.  Onto the side moldings. 

Rough...again a serious build up of dirt and grime.

So the afternoon/evening turned into a solid cleaning of all the cracks and crevices untouched all these years.  It was also interesting to see the faded upper part of the door, and the less faded part under the molding.  That 1" the molding jutted out provided some shade.

All clean and ready for phase 2.  Claybar, cutting, polishing.