pilotpip
06-14-2020, 08:59 PM
New car for the wife, neat story to go along with it.
My screen name gives away what I do for a living. I'm a corporate jet pilot. A couple weeks ago I took the owner of a major dealership group in the area to his summer home in Northern Michigan. He's a great guy, very friendly, and his family has given a ton to local charities over the years. In recent years his sons have taken day-to-day operations and he's enjoying the fruits of taking a small used car dealership started by his father in the 50s to over a dozen dealerships with almost every brand possible all over the metro area. Several of my family members work for this chain, and I've bought a couple vehicles over the years from them. We get to our destination, and his car comes out to the aircraft to offload bags. His first comment, "(several expletives) that thing is a mess!" It was brought up in the fall, and typically cars get cycle through every year but because of COVID it stayed at the airport through the winter and spring.
Wifey tells me last week that her 2014 explorer sport was starting to have some dumb electrical issues. We've liked it since we bought it but it was never quite the right vehicle for us. MPG was horrible because of the "sport" transmission programming and the ride wasn't super nice. We started looking and had a pretty good idea what we wanted. Due to said pandemic, we were having a tough time finding what we wanted with the exact options we needed. We drove a couple and almost pulled the trigger on one that was close, but the dealer wasn't willing to meet our price and we walked. By chance we looked at the dealership my customer owned, and saw one that checked all the boxes. Best part, because it had a couple thousand miles it was close to $10k below sticker. We give them a number, sales guy does his thing. We come to an agreement.
While filling out paperwork, I casually ask why it's so dirty. "Well, the dealership owner just had us bring a new ranger up to him to replace this car that he had up there last summer..." yeah, I bought it. Messy isn't an accurate description. It was parked under a tree, so there were a ton of twigs and crap in the wiper arms, and door jambs. Tons of dirt in the windows and seams. The detailers did a crappy job. Today, Mrs. Pilotpip and I took care of that. After washing, the paint wasn't terrible so it didn't need a ton of correction.
2 bucket wash
Iron-X
Wash again with blackfire clay mitt (why did I take so long to buy one of these?)
McKees 360 with LC thin pro orange pad on my PC
McKee's trim restorer on the plastic
Because Mrs was working on the trim, I decided to bust out some DP max wax I haven't used in years just to add a little extra
DP wheel coating
DP interior cleaner and protectant inside
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50006710058_6cc5cf09c4_w.jpg (https://flic.kr/p/2jbVsGb)https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50007491577_b0f08d0d1c_w.jpg (https://flic.kr/p/2jbZt1D)https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50007233406_d1ec160508_w.jpg (https://flic.kr/p/2jbY9gq)https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50007232441_024390c949_w.jpg (https://flic.kr/p/2jbY8YM)
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50007234371_4f2b1fc760_w.jpg (https://flic.kr/p/2jbY9y4)https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50007234406_6cae817952_w.jpg (https://flic.kr/p/2jbY9yE)https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50006706933_3c028ec570_w.jpg (https://flic.kr/p/2jbVrLi)https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50007233386_1beed79168_w.jpg (https://flic.kr/p/2jbY9g5)
My screen name gives away what I do for a living. I'm a corporate jet pilot. A couple weeks ago I took the owner of a major dealership group in the area to his summer home in Northern Michigan. He's a great guy, very friendly, and his family has given a ton to local charities over the years. In recent years his sons have taken day-to-day operations and he's enjoying the fruits of taking a small used car dealership started by his father in the 50s to over a dozen dealerships with almost every brand possible all over the metro area. Several of my family members work for this chain, and I've bought a couple vehicles over the years from them. We get to our destination, and his car comes out to the aircraft to offload bags. His first comment, "(several expletives) that thing is a mess!" It was brought up in the fall, and typically cars get cycle through every year but because of COVID it stayed at the airport through the winter and spring.
Wifey tells me last week that her 2014 explorer sport was starting to have some dumb electrical issues. We've liked it since we bought it but it was never quite the right vehicle for us. MPG was horrible because of the "sport" transmission programming and the ride wasn't super nice. We started looking and had a pretty good idea what we wanted. Due to said pandemic, we were having a tough time finding what we wanted with the exact options we needed. We drove a couple and almost pulled the trigger on one that was close, but the dealer wasn't willing to meet our price and we walked. By chance we looked at the dealership my customer owned, and saw one that checked all the boxes. Best part, because it had a couple thousand miles it was close to $10k below sticker. We give them a number, sales guy does his thing. We come to an agreement.
While filling out paperwork, I casually ask why it's so dirty. "Well, the dealership owner just had us bring a new ranger up to him to replace this car that he had up there last summer..." yeah, I bought it. Messy isn't an accurate description. It was parked under a tree, so there were a ton of twigs and crap in the wiper arms, and door jambs. Tons of dirt in the windows and seams. The detailers did a crappy job. Today, Mrs. Pilotpip and I took care of that. After washing, the paint wasn't terrible so it didn't need a ton of correction.
2 bucket wash
Iron-X
Wash again with blackfire clay mitt (why did I take so long to buy one of these?)
McKees 360 with LC thin pro orange pad on my PC
McKee's trim restorer on the plastic
Because Mrs was working on the trim, I decided to bust out some DP max wax I haven't used in years just to add a little extra
DP wheel coating
DP interior cleaner and protectant inside
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50006710058_6cc5cf09c4_w.jpg (https://flic.kr/p/2jbVsGb)https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50007491577_b0f08d0d1c_w.jpg (https://flic.kr/p/2jbZt1D)https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50007233406_d1ec160508_w.jpg (https://flic.kr/p/2jbY9gq)https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50007232441_024390c949_w.jpg (https://flic.kr/p/2jbY8YM)
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50007234371_4f2b1fc760_w.jpg (https://flic.kr/p/2jbY9y4)https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50007234406_6cae817952_w.jpg (https://flic.kr/p/2jbY9yE)https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50006706933_3c028ec570_w.jpg (https://flic.kr/p/2jbVrLi)https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50007233386_1beed79168_w.jpg (https://flic.kr/p/2jbY9g5)