Anyone else NOT baby their car? (cosmetically)

[shellslinger]

Originally Posted by Tromatic

I'm learning to relax and live with the dent I caused by dropping a soft-cased rifle onto the passenger side roof above the door. Still makes me furious with my stupidity, which is an improvement over rage.

Eh, just get it PDR you'll be fine. Most PDR jobs are pretty cost efficient. Must of been a heavy rifle, I'm assuming it was either a 300 Win Mag or a 338 Lapua?

[Scubaru]

Originally Posted by Target70

I have owned my car for about 1 year 3 months. I have never washed my car, except a cup of water and a paper towel on bird crap to keep it from eating through our thin paint down to the metal.

[D88]

Originally Posted by Jonsey

but this is a $26,000 general production car that can be easily replaced.

Maybe I'm misinterpreting you but $26K is not something I have just lying around to replace my car. I have never understood this argument.

[Jegan_V]

I like my car to look as clean as possible...but I realize this is my DD and if I freak out over every possible thing...then this stops being a car and instead is a 1/1 scale model. Instead of freaking out, I simply just added a clear bra so that I stop worrying about rock/stone chips and you know what...after 1 year and my car spending 75% of its time on the highway...no stone chips...my windshield though has a tiny nick. Once the salt is gone I'm probably going to put Opticoat on it, didn't do it last year due to time so hopefully I won't see scratches. As for dings and dents, after my 1st month I apparently had 3 dents in the passenger door...sent it to my PDR guy and they're gone.

[GhostRai]

I like to care for my car cosmetically, but I don't hold it paramount. As mechanical reliability is the most important to maintaining a car for years to come, that takes priority, but unless you purposely want to, washing/cleaning your car at least once or twice a month (or really just depending on how much you drive it). I see friends whose cars are absolutely filthy (wrapper in the back seats and just trash everywhere) and they don't seem to care. Sure they probably don't really care or know much about cars, but it doesn't excuse them from treating it like some $2 throw-away toothbrush. I don't have an FRS. I'd like to, but I don't. I currently drive a 12 year old SUV with 75,000 km on it. Just because I don't necessarily like my car, doesn't mean I shouldn't care for it. If I owned a car like an FRS (a car I find pleasurable), I would try to take good care of it, but not to the OCD extent. Door dings/small scratches are everyday occurrences and are bound to happen, of course I would hate to see it happen, but its just not worth getting all worked up over.

[hmong337]

THANK YOU!!!!

I actually refer to my 13' FRS as "the beater" ahah. It's my DD and I use it as such. It does a great job at that. But being DD it's got salt from my boots through the winters, has stone chips and paint scratches from my 130km round trip highway drive to work, and I got a crack in my windshield from end to end because of those g'damn transport trucks! The windshield will be replaced soon though because I'm sick of looking at it.

But yea, it's my beater. It's completely stock other than a drop-in filter and tails-as-turns lol.

I do keep it clean and oil spray every season. 90 day touch less car washes and mechanically maintained on schedule. It was never intended to be a garage queen. Hell, me and my wife took the FRS fishing!

I'm scared of the rust cancer though. This car seems like it was built with shitty Mazda rusting type sheet metal. My muffler pipes has some mean cancer going on

[dreamingat30fps]

I bought it used with a decent scratch in the front to get it over with. I use to be one of those people who freaks out over any little ding. Now it doesnt bother me. I mean dont get me wrong if I notice a new ding or scratch I will be like "%^&&^%%!" but then that's it, I'm over it.

I also wash and detail my car all time, but I'm not going to go out of my way and spend a bunch of $$ to fix some dings and scratches. Plus I spend most of my time INSIDE so I can't even see the imprefctions.

[Teseo]

Before i was very maniac about it specially in the interior.
Seems i get over and now i even fart in it.

[hmong337]

Originally Posted by Teseo

Before i was very maniac about it specially in the interior.
Seems i get over and now i even fart in it.

Lol. So you used to pull over and get out to fart?!

I blessed my interior smell on like the 10km drive home from the dealership ahaha.

[Teseo]

Originally Posted by hmong337

Lol. So you used to pull over and get out to fart?!

I blessed my interior smell on like the 10km drive home from the dealership ahaha.

Haha, i did not pull over but i took out my shoes before hop in
Now i just dont give a shit

[Tromatic]

Originally Posted by shellslinger

Eh, just get it PDR you'll be fine. Most PDR jobs are pretty cost efficient. Must of been a heavy rifle, I'm assuming it was either a 300 Win Mag or a 338 Lapua?

Ruger Model 1, 45-70. But guns are icky and it fell in a river.

ETA: Had a PDR done on a rock hit on the hood. Fantastic work, I can't find it now. Same dude was concerned about pulling paint, so we decided not to. I'll fix it one day. This car has taken more damage in a year than any car I have ever owned. A .338 would have gone through!

ETA: Lesson learned after action report: Take heavy rifles off your shoulder before bending over to put shit in car seat. I've been hit in the head enough times with heavy rifles to know that.

[extrashaky]

Originally Posted by NWFRS

I'm confused.

I'm sorry to hear that.

Originally Posted by NWFRS

Isn't it possible to daily drive these cars AND take care of them? Scuffs and dings happen, sure, but I can't imagine not dealing with it right away. As soon as you start letting the little things go, I feel like that's sort of the beginning of the end...

Next thing you know, your car is covered in dents and you're fifty years old with a pile of stuffed animals and fast food wrappers on your back dash...

Okay, so let's take that to its logical conclusion with a couple of real examples.

I bottomed out on one of Louisiana's shitty roads and scuffed the bottom edge of my front bumper cover. My first thought was to fix it, which would cost me what, about $600 or $700 for a painted replacement bumper? Insurance wouldn't even bother with that. I didn't get it fixed. And you know what? That was a good thing, because I scuffed the other side of it three months later, which would have had me out another $700. Or put a different way, I saved myself at least $700 by not fixing the first ding.

Same thing with my hood. I took a rock to the hood that left a 1/2" mark that is ever-so-slightly dented. Since it chipped the paint, PDR is out of the question. A body shop quoted me $600 to fix it, since the hood would have to be painted. Not long after that, I got another ding in it from a flying rock.

If I took this thing in to fix every ding as it happened, I would have wasted thousands of dollars by now for small but repetitive repairs. Instead, I'm not worrying about the little problems. At some point it will be time to restore this car. That's when I'll get a package deal to have all of it taken care of at once. Then I'll be freakishly protective of it for a couple of months until the first idiot opens a car door into it, at which time the process starts over.

[TEWwild]

I too believe these cars should be used, when I got my first one I was obsessed with keeping it clean and waxed, all the normal things started happening and I finally just had to choose between driving it or spending that time washing, buffing and waxing....I chose driving. I do still wash it every couple of weeks, wax it every 6 months or so and do all scheduled maintenance so she was still taken care of. Unfortunately I ended up replacing her after an incident during HPDE...The new one will be taken care of, but not obsessed over.

[myusernameisrob]

It costs less than $10 for a bottle of touch-up paint so things like that won't bother me.

It's the floor mats that look like shit over time that bother me because I'll use it as an excuse to drop way too much money on 86 ones...

The struggle is real.