A post-wash return to Artsy Fartsy Sentiment

High-contrast black and white accents the imperfections. I'm proud that it's a beater.

This week I washed my Miata for the first time in many, many (many!!) months. It's still not very clean: I need to buy a better scrub sponge to get most of the bug residue off it before I can give it a good waxing -- which is also severely overdue. I miss Farm & Fleet; car cleaning products seem much pricier at Advance Auto Parts, and in much smaller variety.

Visible Flyin' Miata frame rails. Hot colors and saturation!

This car has been filthy for a very long time. With the crazy long commute I used to have, deep cleanings only made the car look nice for a couple days. I've also been so incredibly busy ever since the engine rebuild and subsequent cross-country move to Florida that I haven't had a chance to do anything but rinse the ocean's salt spray off of it once. The greasy handprints all over it from my pre-move engine rebuild stayed on, and now seem to be a semi-permanent fixture.

These Konig Britelite wheels look so much nicer when they're clean. Toyo R1-Rs are grippy as shit, but getting balder by the day. Anyone want to give me a set of 205/50-15 tires for free?

The wheels actually took longer to clean than the rest of the car, and they're not perfect either. From aggressive brake pads and a lot of neglect, brake dust and rotor shavings accumulated on the wheel lips and rusted, making them look super gross. It took a lot of A2Z wheel cleaner and a couple Scotch-Brite heavy duty sponges to get them to where they are, though there's still some tough residual brake-dust-rust buildup. (I am not paid for these plugs. Those 3M sponges have served me well from cleaning dishes to removing cylinder head gaskets, but I'm not certain the wheel cleaner is any better than others. Does work pretty well though.)

The suspension looks saggy on the right. I'll  have to check for broken springs again. It's only been 2 months since I bought this replacement set from Flyin' Miata. Bummer. I hope this doesn't mean I have a bent frame.

Regardless, its current cleanliness could be considered impeccable compared to its previous state, so I decided to take some pictures. And like any good former-photography-major, I figured it was time to be all artsy again for once. Crouching and bracing myself against myself to take long-exposure hand-held shots brought back memories of my film days. As did tweaking color, saturation and contrast levels in Photardshop.

The complications of washing a lowered Miata

I tried to take the Miata through a car wash on my lunch. It's been winter here (as in most places in the northern hemisphere), and I've been driving that car through 100+ miles of heavily salted Illinois roads every day for the last month or so. It's finally above freezing today, so I decided it was time.

There's a gas station down the street. I filled up and paid for the wash at the pump (20 cents off/gallon with wash) and went around the back. Woops.

It was a brush wash. That wasn't a bad thing in and of itself, but the mechanism is. It has one of those tracks that pulls your car along, and on either side of the track is a rail that keeps your tire from hopping out. And sure enough, the rail is about 6 or 8 inches high.

I pulled my car up to it very slowly, and heard a bump. Rolled back a little, got out and looked under the car. Sure enough, my steering rack was starting to ride up the inside rail. There's no way in hell I was gonna let my car get dragged along its underside for 50 feet just to get it washed. Turns out my car is no more than 5 inches off the ground.

By this time though, 2 trucks had lined up behind me. I had to ask them to back out, which made one guy unhappy, but oh well.

I went into the gas station and asked for a refund. The guy looked at the receipt and gave me $7 in cash.  I got to keep the gas discount, but my car remains covered in salt.