My baby turned 300 at last (pic heavy)

[Bizkets is Drunk?]

5k is what I do.

[Ralph Wiggum]

Oil < Engine

[k31th]

Once a year, so far, with my car... but that's about 1,500km

[discostig]

Back when I bought her Simon at XFT said change every 5k, or 7.5k but he stressed "at most!". If it was all car cruises I'd be down at 5K intervals but I think the long drives I take off boost have made it easier on the engine. At least that's how I justify it

I'm sure it's not just a placebo effect though, feels smoother and sounds better when revving high. I dropped it early for the RW change and it was still black, so...

[discostig]

Well the oil pressure sender crapped itself about 3 weeks ago, I've been driving around with a small sock over the gauge to hide the flashing warning (signal out of range). Thing was possibly leaking a bit too. Finally got it sorted today during the oil and filter change

Thing lasted almost exactly 5 years, not bad for $25 or so (gauge and sender/wires about $55 IIRC).

Still yet to fit the proper autometer gauges I scored from captain retard...

Oh and the rear Invos that went on for Racewars in April were well and truly dead, then I got a screw in one, so bought some Michelin Pilot Sport 3 replacements for $250ea (down from $300), same 245/40/18 size. I noticed these are a Y rated tyre, meaning good for higher maximum speeds, 300km/h I think as compared to 270 for all my previous tyres. Treadwear is 320, we'll see how they go at 40PSI.

Car needs a proper wash, car wash stations don't get the real dust and grime off, but I'm living in suburbia right now with nowhere to wash the car properly except the side of the road, first world problems.

Passed 279,000km yesterday. Should be a couple hundred less kms each week living in the 'burbs at least.

[discostig]

Forgot to mention an important point, I have had the driver's side engine mount changed to a stock unit, the exhaust leak was apparently killing the Technico engine mounts (2 in a row). They get super harsh vibration when dead. Need to get the car in for a small overhaul on the exhaust/turbo side of things, a lot of air is going missing, hopefully that's the entire 5mph that I'm down on the 1/4!

Also still sick of tightening those bolts so when it eventually gets the overhaul I'll have them fit some sort of locking washers etc.

[discostig]

Well I had the car in for a bit more of a check up and was hoping to get those exhaust leak issues sorted as well as that slow oil weep but it's had to be put on the backburner on advice from the mechanic. It would take a lot of time to address as the leak looks to be from the sump as well. They suspect a crack has formed in the dump, so the combined work would dent my savings which I kinda need the majority of to get a house built. Can't get that done soon enough, even though I'll lose access to Kyle's NBN hahaha.

Instead they fixed a power steering fluid leak (had a couple of buzzing feeling steering wheel moments which are hopefully just low fluid...looked a bit low but not much so I'm keeping an eye on it. Couple of other minor things.

Since I had to wait on the major maintenance work and the other half was driving back to her country work posting this morning I decided to wash and wax the car. It's been ages since I did it last and I've possibly paid the price for not doing it regularly.

I started at a bit after 8 and finished about 1pm. It's great on the arms/shoulders, but I'm too scared to use the random orbital I was gifted years ago in case I burn the paint. Would sure speed it up though, which means I could be arsed to do it more often, maybe. Anyway...

Plenty of wax on, wax off, one pic is enough, nothing interesting to see really.

Squished a redback mid session, which sprayed its guts all over the just waxed car, little sh!t. Had to do that bit again as it actually dried and started to stick in only 30 seconds!

The problem with silver cars...all that work for very little real world gain. Looks OK.

Looks more impressive back in the garage though. Not bad for 283,xxx km and maybe a total of 5 or 6 waxings? Hardcover helping show off the boot here, onya Kyle.

Here is an example of the pros and cons of silver vs black. The ute has about 200,000km less on it.

Black has decent reflections despite being a bit dirty and not having a fresh wax either! But...you can see the "spider webbing" on the A pillar, silver has probably the same amount but you simply can't see it. Sorry about the square jpg compression pattern (most noticeable on the silver front fender). Wasn't paying attention to my settings.

If I ever get a full respray it will be to Phantom or Shockwave I think. Colours FTW.

One thing the car has NEVER had is a polish or clay bar. Not once. I only ever wash. Sometimes I go after tar specks if I'm feeling generous, which means there's loads to find when I do.

Here's some pics of a lightbar reflection, I was too lazy to try and focus the phone on the webbing but it's hard to notice unless you really look for it anyway. What we can see is the overall quality of the reflection degrading as me move from the less wind and sun buffeted areas to the most...

Bumper sucks but was at the wrong angle to get the light bar so not a great comparo. Just focus on the vertical boot surfaces.

Passenger door isn't bad.

Bonnet is OK in the lightbar pic but in low light such as overcast days you can tell the image is not very crisp.

Boot is OK, but damn look at the spoiler. Quite diffuse. Good comparo shot.

Spoiler seems to be copping it hard and needs a polish. I've noticed this with the other plastics such as skirts and bumpers. The front bumper I can understand but the rear bar not as much. Maybe it's suffered due to collecting so much more soot and road tar. There's ten times as much on the back of the car as any other panel. It could also be the dodgy bros respray that I had done back in 2008 come to think of it, after they backed it into something in their workshop and we made them respray the bar to fix the scratch...

[discostig]

Now on to the real paint trouble. I've recently discovered the clear coat lifting in multiple spots :( I have a suspicion that it's my use of high pressure washers in the area I moved in to, getting in to gaps and pushing under the clear coat when I've been blasting away. Think I'll stick to hand wash like the previous 6+ years...

Second theory is high speed driving for extended periods in the country.

First I spotted the front garnish.

Just for fun I am also showing off the mass of stone chips with some side on lighting

For some reason the passenger side guard is lifting along the bonnet edge, as well as on some stone chips

Lifting where it copped a stone chip and what seems to be a wider area abrasive hit (hard to make out in pic, about palm size), no idea what from. This one I've filled in with touch up paint which is why it's darker in the pic. Oh and the wipers are chipped but whatever, artline can fix that hahaha.

Finally on the boot lid spoiler, looks like the wind/dust rushing over this last sharp edge has worn it down

So not really sure what to do here (respray to Phantom aside), I'll have a bit of a google or maybe start a thread to clutter up the place.

[k31th]

Still looking quite good for a almost 300,000km car, mate.

The only real way to fix those bits and pieces (without respraying) is to polish the fark out of it with cutting compound (only really useful if the paint on that portion of panel was reasonably thick to start with) and keep polishing/waxing it regularly.

Love the pic quantities

Just a tip: stop saving in JPG completely use PNG as it's lossless - compress with just a compression intensity/power of "1" (not "0") and it'll give you an image of similar bit-size to a JPG and will be perfect

[discostig]

For real? I hate PNGs online as I know they are lossless but they are usually a few MB at these resolutions of digital photos. Didn't know there was a save option to improve compression, I'll look into it. I made the mistake of saving them at "80%" quality on the JPG save option (I think Paint Shop pro lists that inverted as 20), normally I use 85% or so.

And yeah my youtube-ing showed that basically it's rub off the separated clear coat like you say with something gentle and then either spray clear over it or more likely as you say is smash heaps of wax on it. I use Meg's Tech Wax 2.0 which is synthetic so it lasts longer.

Is there a really hard wearing coating I can buy in a small bottle for a reasonable price? ie up to $50 since it's only a few areas I'll be using it. Pain in the ass but that's what I get! I should try out the polisher I was gifted on Jen's Yaris hahaha...no farks given if I mess up a little patch learning to use it.

Edited 15/10/15 05:35 AM by -Stever-