Kinsler: Battling the storm and protecting the car
One of the more comprehensive thunderstorms struck last Wednesday in the midst of Natalie’s Zoom watercolor class, and while I intended to cover her street-parked car with blankets to prevent hail damage, I (a) delayed everything because that’s what I’ve been doing for some time now, and (b) chickened out when the marble-sized hailstones began to fall. One of them broke in two and both pieces hit me as I cowered on the porch.
I don’t think that hail dents in automobile bodies are as big an issue as they once were, for body shops have learned to pop them out like they do on airplanes. This requires a good deal of labor and/or some costly machinery to briefly generate the Mother of All Magnetic Fields through the dented area.
Well, the storm abated, and Natalie’s Honda suffered no damage. But her Zoom watercolor class is widespread and everyone was concerned with the weather. We were thus informed that the sky was darkening in Circleville, about 15 miles west.
So I grabbed a pair of blankets I don’t use much and laid them across hood, roof, and trunk lid. Another trip inside yielded some Harbor Freight welding magnets to hold the blankets down, and that’s how I learned that the hood was, um, plastic. That stuff does not dent, so I rearranged the hold-downs, adding a substantial chunk of sandstone for the trunk and a half-filled 5-gallon bucket for the roof.
Natalie says that insurance should cover most hail damage, but I feel responsible because my beloved 1964 Econoline van occupies her garage space, still awaiting a fuel line that actually works. If I actually get it running, I shall back the noble vehicle out of the garage and treat it to its first washing since ever. Then I shall apply a rinse of paint thinner and, hooray, apply what is probably its sixth coat of paint.
It began as light blue, was recoated in black when it was turned into what someone conceived to be a ‘hippie van,’ and then came my two coats of aluminum paint (15 years apart,) and finally the disastrous coat of Ford Blue Farm Implement paint. The aluminum paint worked best, so I’ve purchased a gallon of the best Krylon and a new spray gun.
We await Storm 2.0, and I just heard thunder.
Mark Kinsler, kinsler33@gmail.com, lives in a small, storm-tossed old house with Natalie and the cats. It seems that through published research in graduate school, I have become a grizzled old lightning expert. You’d think that would help in a storm, but it doesn’t. Please stay safe.
This article originally appeared on Lancaster Eagle-Gazette: Kinsler: DIY storm protection for your automobile
