TLC : Cleaning & Cosmetics & Caring

Today I spend a bit of time on cleaning the car. As mentioned, the previous owner had nothing done on the car as for cleaning and washing. The interior was quite dirty. And for me a clean car drives simply better, at least pshycological.

And I was lucky as I found the missing knob to lift the back of the chair forwards so the rear passenger can step in. If you look closely on this old advert photo you can see it was already missing back then (metal pin lever). But it was simply fallen off and located under the chair. Another item ticked off my list.

And I was even more Lucky as I found a dime (duppie in Dutch slang). Although I'm not supersticious I now consider this my Lucky Dime and will keep it in the car. Let's see how much luck it will bring me.

I only vacuum cleaned the car which made already a good improvement. Last time I had also cleaned the midconsole and removed the alarm box. So now it looks more tidy.

The leather cleaning and treatment will happen another time as that will take up quite a bit of time. Perhaps it looks ok on these pictures but I can tell you it's not the case.

Next I removed these silly car alarm stickers. Quite period correct but the car has no longer the Original radio, nor a Philips radio. Instead it has this ugly Pioneer radio.

And here the ugly decals before removal on both sides:

I found this old wallpaper scraper in the shed which helped to remove the sticker. Once the corner was peeled off I didn't needed the scraper anymore as the sticker let go easily.

Then a little bit of cleaning to remove the glue staints and presto, all looks shiney and clean:

While I was at it I also removed the plastic protection covers on the doors. These grey fat covers does not look good to me.

They were easily removed and of course showed very little marks underneath but nothing worrisome in my opinion. Only the coachline stickers underneath had obviously a slightly different color/teint and also were a little deformed. But I like it better this way, makes the car so much cleaner:

By now I also noticed that one interior light in the back was not working and also one light on the right front door was not working. I can see though in the first picture at the start of this blog it was working though.

First I removed the cover at the backside. The plastic cover was of course very fragile and one of the plastic pins snapped, sigh:

The bulblight was very dark and I though it was broken. When I wanted to take it out it suddenly brightened up, so likely a bad contact. When moving around one end snapped off, so it was surely broken now.

On to the door light. Easily removed the lense and took out the broken lightbulb. The contacts were lightly corroded.

Drove to the gas station to get both lights but they only had the ones for the door. The other lightbulbs were off a smaller size so I need to obtain them elsewhere. This pair costed me € 2,50
Of course I replaced the other side as well.

Today I was just in time for the car spare parts shop to get these other light bulbs. Only € 1,50 for a pair. On 2nd look I could now see the lightholder unit could simply detached, which is the appropiate way, rather then taking off the lens. Luckily the old lens went back in without trouble. And of course I replaced the other side as well. Another minor job done.

These smalls jobs are so rewarding.