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Join Date: Apr 2004 Location: Warwick,UK Real Name: Barry My Models: Aviation artifacts Visit wonwinglo's Gallery
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| Wax to protect a battleship.
As I mentioned in a previous posting,once I worked for a Vauxhall agency,that was a long while ago in the 20th Century when Vauxhalls were selling like the proverbial hot cakes,the one thing that I really hated was the way these cars were treated with a thick gucky wax and delivered like that to the garage,it was very labour intensive removing this wicked stuff and everyone had to muck in and get the cars ready for sale on the forecourt,I hated it even more because the manager had a set way of us getting rid of it,he would not allow any solvents and we had to use copious amounts of very hot water to shift the stuff which took hours and the job was boring,it was really over the top,I could understand it if the vehicle had been standing outside for months in a field,but no these were new order vehicles delivered straight from the Luton plants production line.
Anyway,said manager was a lazy so and so,he hardly did any work at the garage preferring to set up his tatterstall at the races,so one day while he was away making illicit money I decided once and for all to remove this wax on three cars that had been given to me that day,I emptied two gallons of paraffin into a big plastic tub,then went into the cleaning stores and grabbed two large bottles of meths normally used for cleaning windows,proceeded to tip these into the mix then poured in hot water to top it up,then just for good measure half a gallon of turpentine,it frothed and gurgled like something out of a science fiction movie,right I was cheesed off with this job anyway so if things go bottoms up I was ready for the high jump ! I then grabbed hold of a large medium haired horse grooming brush and walloped it into the water making sure that I had rubber gloves on my mits,then quickly covered all over the car,it sort of quickly went a horrible grey colour as I watched in horror at the icky sticky mess,no signs yet of any wax movement so it was time for plan B,getting ever nearer to wrecking a perfectly good car and thinking to myself,I hope he does not come back early from the races ? I blasted on warm water from the high pressure hose on the forecourt,the grey then went streaky and looked more like a desert camouflage on a German aircraft but still no movement on the wax,by now it should have slid off ? anyway I suddenly had a brainwave why not try some antfreeze ?!! dont forget I was young and fearless just wanted to crack this wretched wax once and for all,I managed to find some used containers of said antifreeze and diluted it with some water,then threw a load over the bonnet first to see the effect,in for a penny in for a pound I thought,suddenly without much warning the wax just rolled off like a ducks backside and revealed a sparkling paint finish underneath,quick grab the hose again,and I blasted off any traces of substance,the bonnet sparkled but the rest was still a mess,so having cracked the magic formulae I went to get more antfreeze,this time adding it to my paraffin,turps,meths mix,this time there was a sort of 'whooooosh' folllowed by a sort of dead 'glug' as the chemicals obviously reacted with each other,I really was playing with fire here but after a while it settled down and on went the mix,this time over the roof of the car lifting all traces in one swoop,hooray,cracked the Vauxhall wax treatment once and for all,it really does work ! by this time it was getting late and I needed to really move if the manager was not to see what I had been up to,quickly I mixed together more of the successful goop and wacked it on with the large brush,quickly followed with the high pressure hose,result three sparkling Vauxhalls drip drying in the yard,get rid of the evidence quickly,a quick hose down on the ground and everything looked ship shape.
He did eventually turn up thinking that he would see three streaky vehicles half finished,instead of a rocketing I got the job to do all of the deliveries on one condition which I set,that was they would all be done in my own time after work and I would get a tenner a car ! he was happy at that knowing the struggle in the past by everyone to move the dreaded 'Vauxhall curse wax' and we all lived happily ever after...
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