Washed both the Astro and the S10 yesterday afternoon late.
They get dirty just standing around and if I looked at buying the S10, parked out on the sidewalk, a clean car would sell easier than one covered in a weeks worth of dust and spiders webs.
I also spoke to Dennis and he suggested going in gentle with trying to shift the paint on the glovebox lid.
Starting with brake cleaner and a coarse rag.
The ashtray can be removed and actually is made of black plastic.
I am not sure if that is the way they were originally made, and if they then were painted in the factory process to the colour of the “dog box” and other dash pieces, as the one the radio surround came from in Arkansas had brown down there.
The glove box can also be removed with three small screws on the hinge, making a possible repaint easier, and not necessitating a huge mask up of the interior.
This will also affect my decision making later today, as to what avenue to follow.
So I went at the whole thing for some time, using both elbow grease and a fair amount of brake cleaner.
The only place where the brake cleaner actually worked was the ashtray.
I never felt any change in the consistency of the clear lacquer over the 90’s graffiti at all.
Eventually giving up on that.
I will take the glovebox lid off some time today and take it to a local (7 miles) paint store and see if they can colour match the plastic on the inside of the lid and then just paint it directly over the clear, as more paint will lose the texture of the plastic, and I do not want to melt down the existing plastic by any aggressive use of strippers etc.
Final result was not encouraging.
But the ashtray is less grey.
Fingers crossed for later.