It took me a while, but I finally learned my lesson. With the excessive heat wave we had in NJ the past few days, and the fact I haven't washed nor waxed any of my cars since winter ended, it was getting to be that time of year. You know what I mean; the time when you spend a full day detailing your car. You hit the paint job with a clay bar, pull off as much of the blemishes and old wax you can and, since one of my cars is black, hit it with a three-step wax complete with applicators and a buffer set on low speed. Next, you hit all of the trim with a protectant to shine it up, clean the glass till there are no streaks, hit every crevice of the wheels with cleaner, a brush, and polish, goop on the tire shine, and fagetaboudit, the outside is done.
You then move on into the interior, where you hit the floor mats with shampoo, vacuum the rug until it's spotless, clean the dash, seats, and door panels, and finish things off with a new air freshener. By this time, the day is done, your arms want to fall off, and a shower and cold beer are at the top of the priority list.
In the case of your humble scribe, it goes without saying that as soon as I spend an entire day doing all of that to one of my cars, you can bet your derrière that within 12-24 hours, it will rain. I'm not talking a gentle spring rain, but a deluge. Even though I would have sweated my buns off this weekend, I was about ready to pull the car out from under the car cover and do the job. Then I looked at the impending weather forecast, put the cleaning stuff back in the garage, and went back in my air-conditioned house. I guess you could say I learned my lesson, because-yup, 16 hours later- we got rocked with one of those patented New Jersey summertime thunderstorms. I still have to clean the cars up, but at least I didn't feel like I wasted my time doing it, only to watch it rain.
Now if I could only find the time to actually detail the darn car...