Sunday, November 07, 2010

TAR REMOVAL

Nine months ago I noticed the whole of the side of Thomas's car was covered in thick dried tar. From the pattern, I could tell the car had been driven over wet road tar splattering the wing, front and back door and even as far back as the petrol cap. It looked awful and was in such a state it was obvious we'd never be able to trade it in for a new one one day without paying to have it cleaned.
First, I tried picking at it with my nails - it was never going to work. Scraping with a plastic object caused damage. A metal scraper was obviously out of the question. We tried a pressure washer and all sorts of detergents but that made no impact. Dad rubbed it with paint restoring polish. No luck there either. We gave up and left it all summer. It wasn't like we planned to trade it in soon anyway, it's only done 15 000 miles.
Recently it started to bother me again. I decided to google how much it'd be to hire a steam cleaner (£38 a day). While googling that I noticed people mentioning on the Internet that WD-40 melts road tar on your car. It sounded somewhat far-fetched but at £3 a tin instead of £38, I decided to check it out before blog-ranting that it was a load of nonsense. I convinced Marcel the job might pay for his trip to the fireworks last Friday, so off he went on a bus to the shops, picked up two cans of WD-40 and returned. It was duly sprayed on and after a half hour's wait he went out with an old towel to wipe away the thick layer of tar the WD-40 would have melted.
I came out to watch... It only bloody worked!!!! Result! The car is spotless, perfect, beautiful. I stand amazed!

No comments: