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Thursday, March 28, 2024

Doug's Domain

Doug Vetter, ATP/CFI

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Monday, October 26, 2015

Car Cover

My reports have been few and far between on this vehicle and it's not hard to understand why -- even approaching 10 years old the car still has less than 20K miles on it. And that situation is not likely to change soon. But there are times, like during the last few weeks, where the E46 is occasionally forced to come out of hibernation to serve as my daily driver.

Unfortunately, October is the start of crummy weather around these parts -- falling temperatures, higher winds, and most annoyingly, falling leaves. Given favorable experience with the Covercraft cover I bought for the E36 last year I decided to pick up another one, this time a custom fit for the E46. I selected the same fabric (WeatherShield HP) since I realized I was able to quickly and easily clean the existing cover in my horizontal axis washer.

Shortly after the cover arrived the weather service issued an ugly forecast for Hurricane Joaquin and an unrelated large storm system tracking across the east coast, so after stocking up on essentials I cleaned the car and installed the new cover using the same techniques. Over the next four days I watched the Hurricane track change from something eerily reminiscent of Sandy (headed directly for NJ as a Cat 2 no less) to follow the outlier atmospheric model and go out to sea without affecting US interests. Unfortunately, while we escaped the direct impact of the hurricane the other storm system leveraged the moist tropical flows induced by the hurricane to dump several inches of rain and inflict high winds on the area for several days.

I'm happy to report that the cover did is job and protected the finish throughout the storm. As the wind shook the leaves from the trees they were washed clear of the cover by the material's slick outer surface and by the end of the event I was left with a clean cover and a clean car. Perhaps one day I'll be able to get back into the real estate market for a reasonable price but until then I'll leverage car covers to protect my vehicles.

Mileage: 19500