Monday, June 29, 2026

Well, I missed the local car group’s monthly cruise-in yesterday. My stomach was a mess (thanks to the delay in getting my latest GLP-1 script filled) so I spent part of the day hugging a hot water bottle. I hadn’t really figured on going anyway, they’ve predicted 50 percent chance of rain all week for yesterday, then nary a drop fell from the sky. Must be nice to have a job like a meteorologist and be wrong all the time but still keep your job!

Right now the 55 wagon is sitting in the shop under a newish car cover. Its a low-buck one that I bought in December 2025, got the largest cover I could. Didn’t need to be weather-proof since the cover’s job is simply keep the dust off the car after its clean. Well, the cover arrived and I opened it, opened the drawstring bag it was in but didn’t take it out. I put it on a shelf near the overhead doors on the ast side of the shop.

The cover is black with orange accent panels. Nice looking, relatively inexpensive. Just a nylon cover, nothing waterproof etc. The goal for the cover is simply to keep the dust, dirt and birdshit off the car between weekend jaunts. It makes life much easier when on a Saturday morning I can whip off the car cover and the car is clean and ready to roll.

I recorded some content for my YouTube channel regarding the car cover. After it arrived in December, I opened the package and opened the string-closure storage bag the cover was in. Realizing that if I took the cover out, I would NEVER get it back in that drawstring bag, I set it on the shelf behind my chair … and didn’t think about it until earlier this month. The open end of the drawstring bag ended up facing outward, though I never realized that it was also subject to direct sunshine when the east overhead door was open, which it pretty much stays open from March through the next December.

I had noticed the the bright orange on the edges of the cover visible in the storage bag had faded due to exposure to the sun, though I didn’t think much about it.

Well, a couple weeks ago, I decided to unpackage the new car cover and give it a try.

RIPPED DOWN THE MIDDLE? The first surprise was finding that the main body of the car cover was split down the middle, from front to back. I mean, from the elastic on the middle of the front edge all the way to the middle of the elastic in the rear — cut like it was with a knife!

WTF??

I never had a knife near the cover or its drawstring bag. The car had to have been packed with that split in it. My wife said it looked like they forgot to finish sewing the middle two panels of the cover together. She volunteered to do just that, and I have to say, the job she did looks factory. The repair job she did made the cover useable.

She helped me put it on the car and it looked fantastic — until I began putting the cover on the drivers side fender. That was the area where the black center panel and the bright orange side panels joined. Well, at the front of the fender, where the sun had bleached out the orange until it was almost white, the orange fabric split apart. Fell apart is more correct, the sun had damaged the orange fabric severely, and it took no effort at all to pull the fabric apart from the seam it shared with the black nylon fabric.

My wife has volunteered to sew in a patch panel for that sometime. More importantly, its a good lesson about how the UV rays of the sun can damage nylon fabric — i.e., the orange fabric on my car cover.

I suppose my concern will be if the continued UV exposure is going to continue to degrade the orange panels. I suppose they will. I think however if I keep the cover on the car inside the garage, UV exposure will be minimized.

The cover was one of the cheapest, largest covers, so its not like set me back a bunch. I think with the car cover on the car, none of the orange panels are going to suffer much more UV damage. I could be wrong, of course.

Now I didn’t mention this to my wife, but after finding the cover was split down the middle, I located a less expensive, large car cover on TEMU, so I have a back up. Of course, I still have that fabric car cover that I rescued from the trunk of the 56 Plymouth. There’s no nylon in that thing! If it survived mold, mildew and rust stains, it’s going to last a long longer as a car cover.

I went back and looked at the Amazon listing for the car cover. They suggest that is weatherproof and durable. Not sure about those claims. Reviews aren’t so hot for this, based mostly on complaints that sizing isn’t accurate. No problem with that, but others said the fabric ripped when trying to stretch it on.

While I may not need it, I just ordered some very inexpensive car covers for the shop in the event I’m going to paint or primer. These are cheap, thin clear plastic covers, but they’ll do fine to keep overspray off whatever car I’m not working on.

COST A BIG, FREAKING FACTOR. The biggest factor in car covers for me is the cost. Other than the one I bought, other car covers range between $200 and $600. No, no, no fucking way! I’m happy with my inexpensive one, even if I have to ask my wife to make repairs from time to time.