Date:         Mon, 10 Sep 2007 20:46:20 -0600
Reply-To:     Martin Jagersand <jag@CS.UALBERTA.CA>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Martin Jagersand <jag@CS.UALBERTA.CA>
Subject:      Washing the Westy top
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A season of grime and bird droppings had settled on top of the poptops of my
two westys. Encouraged by how well my kayaks cleaned
up with the turbo nozzle on my pressure washer I decided to try this.
(I'm not using the turbo nozzle on the sheetmetal for fear of damaging the
paint, but for the plastic top it was ok)

On the fibreglass top on the T3 indeed the grey layer of dirt came
off much better with the pressure wash than with any amount of brushing.
The pressure washer really gets into the perforations of the somewhat rough
surface of the top.

On the T4 I was not as successful. It has a sandwich construction
and some other kind of plastic on top. (More akin to the "royalex"
found on some canoes). After much pressure washing of tiny areas
at a time, and little progress I decided to try a different idea.
It turns out that a green scotch pad scrubbed off the dirt, but
didn't seem to scratch the poptop material. To speed things up
I cut two pieces of pads slightly bigger than my shoes, and
performed a little dance on top of the pop. Luckily it was still
early in the afternoon, so no neighbors were around to watch the
show.

End result was two sparkling clean poptops.

Martin
--
Martin Jagersand
University of Alberta
http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~jag/