Always nice to have a relaxing Sunday, but I decided to spend some time fighting with some minor fixes on the cruiser. Since we got it, it has had some nasty water spotting on the outside of all the windows, and the tint on the pass-side window is a little bit fogged as well. The lack of visibility finally drove me nuts enough to try to tackle it. At first I thought the spots were just hard water, so I tried vinegar. Nope. No effect. I moved up to muriatic acid, but that didn't help either so I figured that the "spots" were really etched into the glass, not on top of it.

Fortunately, I found some pumice-based windshield cleaner at the hardware store and figured it was worth $4 to give it a whirl. Well, whirl is the word of the day. It took a lot of scrubbing, but in the end the stuff seems to have worked nicely. I may go back and do a second treatment, eventually, but at least now I can see out of all the windows, even at night, which is a big step in the right direction. Here is a pic of one of the rear windows, on the left it is just-polished, on the right, original state of disrepair. I went back and cleaned up the right edge of the left window when I saw this picture, but in reality you don't see much of the spots at all anymore.

What I did was: rinse window. Apply compound with wet rag, covering window well. Used polishing pad attached to power drill for first pass, then did a second pass by hand using more pressure, rewetting the compound or adding more as necessary. It seems important to keep the pumice in a slurry as if it dries you get little scratches in the window (bummer). Did a final pass with the drill to buff, then rinsed and ragged it off. After a final rinse, I cleaned the windows with some ammonia-based cleaner, inside and out.

I also pulled the tint off of the front pass window. I like the look better with all the windows tinted, but I prefer to be able to see out. Eventually I'll replace the tint on the two front windows, but only if I can find nearly-clear tint here. The dark stuff just doesn't work for me.

I also took some time to put some roofing leak-repair tape on the underside of the hood. The repair tape is asphalt based with an aluminium liner and in theory it should add some mass to the hood which will help reduce the amount of noise transmitted into the cab. We'll see. The tape is an awful lot cheaper than the stuff that you buy at specialty auto-sound stores, and I don't really have access to the fancy matting anyway. Also, it is too darn heavy to bring down, a big roll of dyna-mat or fatmat or similar weighs over 50lb. I'm not about to devote an entire checked luggage bag to just sound-deadening unless I'm convinced that the $15 I spent on this tape stuff won't do the trick. { edit: the tape helps, a lot. When I close the hood now it is much more a "thud" than a "clank". } I didn't cover the entire hood area as I've read that covering 50-75% of the area is about 90% as effective as covering the whole area. Diminishing returns and all that.

I finished up the hood install with some roofing insulation that is basically 3/16" of plastic foam with a mylar (aluminium) layer. This should help absorb some noise and reflect/insulate the heat from the motor.

Labels: landcruiser