This winter has been horrible. I washed my car, well I drove it through a car wash last week, and was shocked at how many new dings and scratches have materialized over the winter. I should have put a clear mask on when I bought it. Its way too late now - there's nothing left to protect.

Then to make matters worse (I could really just cry) I hit the passenger side door last night with the snowblower and ended up with a nice 3 inch gouge/dent. I have no idea how much that will cost to fix, but I'm guessing north of $250.

The engine compartment is a mess, the aluminum has oxidized and looks horrible no doubt from all the road salts. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to remove the oxidation?

The "Frost" interior is a mess - my next care will have black leather!

To add insult to injury, it was -2 this morning. I really hate winter.

 

I am really feeling your pain right now. I have frost interior and it just looks like ****. And my car has about 10 new paint chips and a nice little dent on the door.

 

Yea, the northeast is horrible for anyone who appreciates their car.

I have learned that I will never buy another car that I will have worry about. At least not until I can afford to have more then one so that I can garage it over the winter.

From now on, just a dependable rust bucket / dent magnet would be nice.

For me, I spend too much time being worried about the road salt and where I park it then I should.

 

Ditto,

that is why I bought the dark floor mats that come with the gray/black interiors.


Everytime that I washed my car this winter, we got hit by a snowstorm within two days. This winter has indeed been rough.

 

Yeah i wish i had kept my 3rd gen.





















j/k i miss my 3rd gen a lot.

 

On top of that some non parking A-hole grinded their bumper against my rear leaving a 6"x4" area of lines.

How can I say it, I HATE SNOW


#1 snow hater
SHIFT_woosh

 

i'm up at Uconn and the idiots here cant drive/park to save their lives. i've had both my headlights scratched pretty nicely and 2 small dents appeared in my hood. they're tiny, but its enough to make me angry... and to top it all off, we just got another foot or so of snow last night. woohoo... i love snow and all, but keep it up in the ski region.

 

I know what you are talking about, The cold is wrecking my car! Today up where I live in Saskatchewan Canada it is -39 with a windchill of -51!!!!! Thats in degrees C, so if i can do math that is -38.3 and - 59 in degrees F!!!! I cant even go outside! Its the coldest day of the year!!!!

 

I can definitely agree with the rest of you guys. Up here in Boston, this winter has been a PITA big time! Makes me cringe everytime I drive during snow and hearing all the salt hit up against my wheel wells.

I'm probably going to be washing my car tomorrow, and I'm afraid to find out what's underneath all the dirt and salt. Hopefully I haven't been so unlucky as to pick up rock dings and scratches. I'm very careful about driving in the snow, trying to avoid any potential scratches and chips, but not everything is in my hands.

But anyways, I can definitely relate to all of your frustrations. I just hope the summer will make up for the dreadful winter thus far.

 

Brutal winter, I've had many things destroyed too. Luckily I have 2 cars, a beater and my Max. A tractor trailer hit my beater (95 Talon TSi) That was almost totaled.

I managed to keep the max out of the worst of everything until that point. Then the one day I absolutely had to drive the max, I hit a HUGE pothole.

Front and rear rims are bent (TE rims )

This was one of those winters I felt like I just couldn't catch a break. At least I know it wasn't just me.

 

its 80degrees here now, and it sucks!







Florida is so beautiful


eric

 

damn!!!
i wouldn't even try to start the engine in that temp....it'll be a minute before the oil start working and you'll have metal grinding metal.....plus your trany oil wll be half frozen and they take even longer to warm up and will be grinding like crazy too!!!!

 

That's why most cars up there have engine heaters. I drove from Chicago to Edmonton last year in March and the temperature went from 40F to -25F by the time I got to Brandon that first night, just past Winnipeg. I noticed that all the cars in the hotel parking lot were plugged in to outlets. I was the only one without a engine heater, I was afraid that my car wasn't going to start in the morning. I woke up twice during the night to start the car. The tempurature started to go back up once I got close to Edmonton, it went all the way up to 0.

 

Sorry to hear the bad luck is following you around. I do have a suggestion on how to clean up the frost interior: Use some "Automotive" Simple Green diluted to 10 parts of water to one of it. Will not discolor and definitely will clean up things very well. It does have a different smell to it but after about 3 or 4 days of nice weather with the windows cracked it works out. I have used this on they frost floor mats in our 2k since new and it works great. If the spot it real bad, use it straight from the bottle.

Travis

 

this winter has been horrible. Since Im away at school most of the time my car sits at home in the driveway(freshman cant have cars at my school), but when i come home ive always gotta dig it out if i dare to take it out, which i hate doing because im so **** about how my car looks and i really dont wanna ruin my baby on these awful roads and with all these awful drivers. Luckily, we have an extra car in teh family so ive been driving that all winter, 96 cadillac STS, not a bad car lol. But its gonna get sold come spring so im gonna have to buy a beater for next winter if i dont wanna drive maxi. My parents think im crazy for not driving the maxima in the winter. I constantly get the "Its a car, its meant to be driven, its not a showpiece, if u cant drive it at all time get rid of it" speech everytime i come home....They just dont understand i guess. Winter sucks .



-Steve

 

2 cars in college! Man I was doing something wrong

I hear you about how you feel about your car and how no one understands. Luckilly, I've got a beater car (93 Mazda MX-6) that my sister gave me. My Max has never seen the snow nor will it if I can help it. Right now it's sitting in my garage waiting for the snow to melt / dry up but I did get to wash it on Sunday when it was about 50 degrees It's supposed to be nice in NY tommorrow.

 

Well the caddy technically isnt mine, My parents are just letting me use it because its there and barely gets driven. Anyways, took the max out today for the first time this winter and within 20 minutes of driving it was covered in salt....O well ive given up on trying to keep it nice...My parents keep giving me speeches about how i need to stop spending money on it because its not a showpiece and why spend all that money on it if i seemingly never drive it. Im getting really fed up and im seriously about to sell the damn thing and buy an SUV and just give up modding because im sick of all this sh|t i have to deal with to try and do something i enjoy.....Im in a bad mood tonite.....



-Steve

 

LOL, just like what you said,,,, I had to take my maxima out of the garage today to replace the block heater cord on my 200sx. Well I left my Maxima out for abou 3 1/2 hours and when I started it up all i heard was grinding from the engine cause the oil was so think and it was not geting though the engine!! Then I took it out for a drive and the brakes were sticking because it was so cold! I dont think nissan ever palned these -40 tempatures!!!

 

some people dont understand thats why theres us and for me my dad likes cars too so he actually helped me sometimes to mod my old 4th gen

 

Steve, I used to think the same way as you when I first bought my 03 (about 4 months ago). I was SERIOUSLY paranoid of anything going wrong with the car, including any paint chips, scratches, bird ****, etc. My parents and friends were also saying that I was too paranoid and it's just a car, it's meant to be used, etc etc. I didn't really want to listen to them because I thought they just weren't as "enthusiastic" about their cars as me.

However, after a while, I really got tired of not being able to enjoy my car because I was constantly stressed out about keeping it mint. I would be driving, and almost sweating trying to keep my distance from the next car ahead, watching out for trucks, thinking 10 moves ahead, etc etc (sweating part is a little exaggeration), so you get the point. Then I thought about it. I paid a lot of money for the car, so why not enjoy it? I mean it's inevitable that scratches, paint chips, etc will occur, unless you leave the car in your garage/driveway and just look at it. Don't get me wrong--I still try to minimize the likelihood of scratches and paint chips, but I'm not as overly paranoid as I was before.

So, just enjoy your car. Do everything that's in YOUR hands to minimize wear, and things that you can't control--well, just let it be. Cars ARE made to be driven, and WILL incurr wear and tear. But, you need to worry less, and drive it more.