Since I bought my truck in mid-December I've been giving it a weekly bath. Our south Florida winter is really just a dry season. I made it through winter and most of May with only one sponge bath. Weekly $15 and 15 minute wand wash sessions were doing great to keep the dust off. I scrubbed the wheels once a month. Now that it's started to rain I gave it a sponge bath the past two weeks in a row. In both cases it rained the next day. I waxed and fully detailed the first week. Now I'm looking at rain chances high enough to not bother to wash it for the next 3 months. We get daily thunderstorms in the summer due to colliding sea breezes off the Gulf and Atlantic. Kinda depressing. I may skip a week (it's only been 8 days). My Maggie's exhaust tip has only been shiney for two of the 18 days it's been on. Now it's caked in mud again since my friend's live down dirt roads. Wheels wells are off-white. :sigh: So much work to just get trashed the next day.

It's a labor of love though.

ok [/rant]

carry on

 

I feel your pain, it gets really dusty here and I usually wash mine like every 3 days but when it's windy I don't even bother for a week or two. Now they just resealed the asphalt on my street and I have some sealant splashed on my exhaust tip Gonna be a huge PIA to get that off.

I hate being so **** retentive about my truck

 

just use goo gone... works awesome on all that stuff.

 

didn't think of that....hopefully it will work even though I'm sure it's baked on now

 

I feel you on the Florida pain. I grew up in Florida then joined the Navy. Now I have the dust problem like Roushlimited. I can't win.

 

Man, we finally got a small rain shower here yesterday evening; just enough to settle the top layer of dust. We have not had one drop of rain at my house in over six weeks before yesterday. Hopefully we'll get some of the rain you're having before long.

 

Definitely feel your pain. I am religious about washing my car once a week, but the summertime SUCKS. I haven't been able to wash in 3 weeks and it looks abused

 

 

I can imagine what a PIA it would be to keep a daily-driver F-150 clean. My daily driver is a Ford Ranger, and let's just say it is a heckuva lot easier to wash that vehicle on a weekly basis than it would be to do the same for my big ol' F-150!

Thankfully, my F-150 is my baby, not my daily driver, so he gets to spend most of his time staying clean and dry in the garage!

And oh yeah -- I would never drive my F-150 on a gravel road, and will only do it when I have no other choice with my Ranger! Me living on a gravel road would be an absolute nightmare, since it would kill me to have to drive my vehicles over a dusty or muddy road every day!

 

I work one block away from a brick yard. You can picture what the dust is like in 35% humidity when the wind kicks up. My truck looks great for Saturday and Sunday right after I wash, then by Monday noon it looks like hell and stays that way for the rest of the week. Only good thing is that my colour doesnt show dust like some do.

Dont even get me started on the slush in the winter months. All you guys complaining about keeping your trucks clean in Florida and the like have no idea what it means to try and keep a truck looking nice over the winter.

 

As someone who grew up in Minneapolis, I can attest to the fact that it is very difficult to wash a car when it is 14 degrees outside!

Two words: Winter Beater......

 

I can't keep the outside of my truck clean for more than a few hours. The trees and caterpillars are constantally sh-tting on my truck. I've never seen this happen before. It's supposed to be one of the worst outbreaks of caterpillars ever to hit the NJ PA tri-state area.

 

Well, I ended up washing my truck Friday evening (2 hours, of course), but it rained very heavily while I was at work today. I had to drive home on sorta wet streets. I'm sure it's completely trashed already. :sigh: It's cleaner than it would have been I guess.