Wax on....Wax off

It really didn't take a great deal of thought to decide which car we would drive on this trip. Susan's car is great fun to drive, sporty and gets good gas mileage. When it comes to comfort, however my 2007 GMC Denali wins hands down. It seats 8 people in three rows of seats and I think that its size gives us an edge on safety. It is roomy, quiet, luxurious and has lots of storage capacity for luggage, etc. In terms of gas mileage, it got almost 18 miles to the gallon while we were on a little 1100 mile tune-up trip to Utah back in April. Susan's car gets about 25 miles to the gallon, so all the room and road-ability of the Denali costs us about 7 miles per gallon. On the predicted 7000 mile trip, it means a difference of about 110 gallons of gas. If we assume that we will be able to buy gas for an average of $2.75/gallon on the trip, it means an extra $302.00. To me driving the Denali was a no-brainer decision.

Since we are going to traverse the mid-west's tornado alley and then travel through the deep south where summer weather can be very unpredictable, I felt there was a high probability of running into some severe weather at least once. I decided that I really needed to get a good wax j0b on the Denali before we took off. I am sure glad that I started this task a month ago because it turned out to be a little more than I bargained for.

Still in my anal retentive mode from the fence work, I decided to wax the Denali with the same show car wax from Zaino Brothers that I used on the 1968 Camaro restoration. I did that car about 8-9 years ago and as best as I can remember it wasn't that difficult. While it does require a number of steps, you really don't have to rub very hard, so it goes pretty quickly. It didn't take long to find out that my memory was faulty.

First, the Camaro was only a couple of months out of the paint shop and had been stored inside the garage for the entire time. The Denali has been sitting outside in the weather for nearly 3 years and the paint had some oxidation and air pollution on it. The first step was to clay bar the whole thing to remove that stuff. That's when it became very apparent that the Denali has about 3 times the surface area compared to the Camaro.

So anyway, I stepped up to the task and clay barred the WHOLE thing. Then I put the base coat of All-in-One that reacts with the Z-2 wax coats to form the chemical bond for the deep, deep show car shine. Then I got carried away and put 6 coats of Z-2 wax, each time using the Z-6 Gloss Enhancer between coats.

As I admired the look after the last coat, I noticed that there was some wax residue caught in the various badges on the vehicle, around each door and in the joint where the hood joined the engine compartment. I remembered that the same thing had happened with the Camaro, but the Camaro has only two doors, a hood and very small trunk lid. The Denali has four doors, a liftgate, a very large hood and a window in the liftgate that opens.

I decided that I just couldn't leave it like that, so I put the AIO coat and a couple coats of Z-2 on all the door jamb surfaces and around the edges of the hood and engine compartment.

Last Saturday, I crossed the line between anal retentive and OCD. That afternoon, I wrapped a terry cloth rag around my right index finger and shoved it into every hole in the grille of the Denali at least 4 times.

Late that afternoon, Susan decided that it was time for an intervention. She took me out for sushi and then we went to the local Irish pub. We had a couple of glasses of wine with the sushi and then she bought me a Oban 14 year-old single malt scotch which knocked me on my butt. I woke up about 3:00am Sunday morning with a monumental hangover, but I think I am cured.