Friday, March 20, 2009

1/2 tank...90+ miles / Cleaning

I saw that I was on 1/2 a tank today, and I looked at my trip meter and it was reading over 90 miles! If this keeps up, I will have gotten closer to 180 miles on a tank instead of more like 120-130! I am being optimistic, but still...not overly so! The weather is great until Wednesday next week--the day I get to truly test my rain gear!

Since the mud issue yesterday, I went home last night, washed and waxed the bike. I'm not really a person who waxes a lot, and never really for the visual aspect. I only did it to protect the paint some. I swear it. I used regular Turtlewax paste. I even use it on the shield, and it makes rain bead like a mother. I am serious! What I didn't like is the way it clouded up on the grain of the dash, handlebar trim, etc. I'm never doing that again. I had to used a wet rag and then rub it dry right after that (sometimes multiple times) to get it off. Also, Turtle Wax likes to sink in where ever there's a crack or crevice and leave a mint green bit of hardening goo there. I had my Swiss Army knife out--the screwdriver and put the blade inside of the cloth and ran that into the trim crevices to get all the limegoo out. Not something I really want to repeat again, because it was a PITA. I have these detail wipes that I can use inbetween washings if there are spots that start looking really bad. Last time I washed the Roketa, I took it up the street to the car wash and just used the sprayer, but didn't pull the trigger so it was relatively low-pressure.

What do you use to clean bugs and goo off your plexi windshield??? The warning about "CAUTION: CLEAING WITH ALKALINE OR ACID CLEANER, GASOLINE OR SOLVENT WILL DAMAGE WINDSHIELD." and "USE NEUTRAL DETERGENT" kinda scares me. I'm even a little worried to use standard glass cleaner, a lot of which has ammonia, I think. That's the stuff that smells good in enclosed spaces and makes you really happy, right???

1 comment:

Coop a.k.a. Coopdway said...

I don't really use water any longer, unless there are chunks of mud and even then, I'm careful to only soften and slide them off, stopping at that point.

I use Pledge furniture polish on everything, seat, body panels instruments and windshield too. I 'won' two cans of Honda polish at a rally and grab either that or the Pledge, whichever one is closer.