lost1
04-18-2010, 06:44 PM
So it got up into the 70s here today, I was feeling my oats, and decided to do some minor retuning of the engine and clean the waggy as thoroughly as I could before running out of steam.
I noticed that the tailgate doesn't appear to have a clearcoat on it, but instead an ultra-thin coating of factory looking paint over a tougher coat of faded factory paint. Do I smell a maaco job here?
Also, I noticed that the driver's side door doesn't have anywhere near the luster that the rest of the driver's side does. Strange... the woodgrain looks to have aged at the same rate on that side, but the paint is decidedly less shiny to my eye. And ONLY on the driver's side door. From straight on, you'd probably never notice the difference if you weren't a pro painter. I only saw it looking down the length of the rig.
Do I smell a door replacement, or has this happened to others?
To make matters worse, what I once though twas simply cracks in the paint at the rear quarter panels, right at the bumper? Well, it's not paint unless paint came on these rigs at about 1/4 inch thick. I'm not sure what I'm looking at, but it appears to be a body filler of some sort. I don't even want to know where else this stuff might be yet. Under the cracked and falling stuff is.. yup... rust.
I have no illusions about my Heep, she's got 290k miles and they were hard ones with utterly minimal maintenance. The doors don't always close right, the tailgate doesn't close right and in fact will pop open if I don't have the glass propped in the 'up' position, and the... well, you get the picture.
The VIN comes back clean, no accidents officially. However someone did about half of a job replacing the vinyl woodgrain, there's some wrinkling of metal at the lower front of the rig, and now these little discoveries.
Does it sound like my jeep's had a major facelift somewhere in her storied past, or am i getting antsy over nothing?
PS: On the upside, the jeep's idle is just about right now, the exhaust note no longer stinks as bad, and I can actually hear that miss I've been imagining for the last few hundred miles now.
I noticed that the tailgate doesn't appear to have a clearcoat on it, but instead an ultra-thin coating of factory looking paint over a tougher coat of faded factory paint. Do I smell a maaco job here?
Also, I noticed that the driver's side door doesn't have anywhere near the luster that the rest of the driver's side does. Strange... the woodgrain looks to have aged at the same rate on that side, but the paint is decidedly less shiny to my eye. And ONLY on the driver's side door. From straight on, you'd probably never notice the difference if you weren't a pro painter. I only saw it looking down the length of the rig.
Do I smell a door replacement, or has this happened to others?
To make matters worse, what I once though twas simply cracks in the paint at the rear quarter panels, right at the bumper? Well, it's not paint unless paint came on these rigs at about 1/4 inch thick. I'm not sure what I'm looking at, but it appears to be a body filler of some sort. I don't even want to know where else this stuff might be yet. Under the cracked and falling stuff is.. yup... rust.
I have no illusions about my Heep, she's got 290k miles and they were hard ones with utterly minimal maintenance. The doors don't always close right, the tailgate doesn't close right and in fact will pop open if I don't have the glass propped in the 'up' position, and the... well, you get the picture.
The VIN comes back clean, no accidents officially. However someone did about half of a job replacing the vinyl woodgrain, there's some wrinkling of metal at the lower front of the rig, and now these little discoveries.
Does it sound like my jeep's had a major facelift somewhere in her storied past, or am i getting antsy over nothing?
PS: On the upside, the jeep's idle is just about right now, the exhaust note no longer stinks as bad, and I can actually hear that miss I've been imagining for the last few hundred miles now.