Enter Rainman

In much the same way Metallica describes the arrival of Sandman, we in the great Pacific Northwest greet the seasonal rains. Today, I describe alternatives to prevent the rain putting a hard stop on all of our projects.

Tarp

We start with the most obvious water protection: the basic tarp. I tuck you in, keep you free from sin... til the (Rainman) he comes. A tarp thrown over your made-of-steel project works great if you are trying to hide it from the neighbors. The benefits end there, however. No matter how awesome-fantastic your tarp is, it will capture / trap / hold moisture.. against that made-of-steel project. Your best-case outcome is that you have lots of mold or moss growing under there come spring when the rains stop. Your worst-case scenario is your project acquired a new rusty patina or one or more of your seals leaked and now you have mildew inside or rust inside. In the end, I think throwing a tarp over your project is possibly worse than nothing at all. At least when it is uncovered you will feel motivated to do something about it. A tarp just hides the truth from you.... until you remove it. All winter you're sleeping with one eye open.

Car Cover

I got one of those fancy $200+US bus covers from BusDepot a few years ago. It worked great the first year or two. After that, the UV light or something caused it to not work so well anymore. Last year, when I pulled the cover off, there was moisture all over the inside of it, mold on the fiberglass poptop, and a slime on the rest of the bus. Yuck. I know my seals are good, so this year, he is going without a cover, and I'll just cycle the cabin furnace (See Parking Heater 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, final) more frequently to keep him dry inside. Recall from Seasonal Cleaning, I use a desiccant as well. In the end, a car cover is little more than a collection of tarps that have been sewn into the shape of your car. They may last a little longer than a single season, but for the price, it just makes more sense to invest in something more.

Instant Canopy / Sun Shade

So, we can't have some plastic sheet draped over a car for 7 months and expect the car to be better for it. Who knew? So, we try one of those $99 pop-up canopy things. These are great in the summer when you're working in an otherwise sunny spot. They go up in minutes and you can do it by yourself. Most excellent. Of course, they are only 10 feet square, so the only kind of vehicle that could completely fit underneath it would be a motorcycle. Not even Oliver, the MGB, or the old corvette pictured here can completely fit under one. But it's close. So, you move it around to create shade where you're working. Enter Rainman. These things cannot withstand rain. I mean 0 rain. They are not designed for water to run off the edges. If you look at the picture on the right, you can imagine this scene: it pools up along the lower edge, slowly stretching the top until you have these large pools of water suspended over your project. At $99, the structure is not terribly strong, so something bends and then another thing breaks and suddenly, you have gallons of water dropping onto your project all at once. And, your canopy is trash.

Farmer Market Canopy

How about an upgrade? The canopies that the vendors use at farmer's markets and music festivals, for example, are great. They can withstand some wind, and some rain. They come with detachable sides. So far so good, except they cost about 3x an instant canopy. Of course, they are also 10 feet square, so no normal car can fit inside, just like the $99 deal above. I got one of these a while back, and I am using it for now, while I await my next solution. I have removed the front clip (front fenders and hood) from Zed, so the rear 2/3 are covered by the canopy, and put a tarp (yes, I know they are not great) over the engine compartment. No pooling water. The wind doesn't seem to touch it. Still, the 10 feet deep part makes it fairly unusable for working on a car in the rain, unless you don't mind either having half of the car sticking out into the rain while you and one end are dry or having the other end nice and dry while you and the thing you're working on out in the rain. The latter of those seems silly, especially since you just spent $300US on a rain-capable covering.

Temporary Carport

My last effort to foil the Rainman is a Harbor Freight temporary carport. These are 20 feet long by 10 feet wide, have no sides, but appear to be able to withstand rain. I don't know about wind. The videos I have seen online are unclear since most of them show a carport that is mostly protected on the sides by trees and/or shrubs or by a more permanent structure like a shed, garage or house.

Unfortunately, getting one of these things is becoming quite an undertaking. It seems that every restaurant that wishes to remain viable during the rainy season has concluded that these are the best way to keep their patrons dry during the CoViD no-inside-seating thing. As a result, as soon as a truck arrives in the greater Portland area with some, they are gone. So, I went online and ordered from their website. In a normal world, delivery is about a week. In this modern dysfunctional dystopia, I can't get an estimated delivery date. Why? Between COViD and the wild/forest fires, FedEx has effectively ground to a halt in the Portland area. For example: I ordered primer for Zed in early September. It took 2 weeks for it to get to a Portland FedEx warehouse, and it has sat there since. I called FedEx and asked about it. The response? Forest fires. They could have said "sunspots" for as helpful as that was. We still have no idea when it will move out of the warehouse. I may have to take a Saturday and drive out to the airport to collect it in person.

Temporary Garage

Similar to the carport, this is a Harbor Freight item which costs more ($170US versus $120US), but it includes sides and a roll-up door. Based on what I can see in the videos, however, you can't assemble them without the sides, so that reduced flexibility turned me off to them. Recognizing that I could roll up the sides, I looked for them at the big Harbor Freight in Tigard, and they were out of them just like the carports. So, either the restaurants are getting desperate or lots of folks decided that it was time to fight off the Rainman this year. Or, maybe, the supply chain issues we are all experiencing with seemingly everything has hit Harbor Freight as well. Regardless, I will wait for FedEx to get their act together since I'm already into this solve with an order, and my packages will eventually all be at the airport, waiting. I suspect these garages are fairly good, though the reviews indicate that they are not as weather resistant as their carport brothers. Maybe the sides catch more air, causing the structure to fail.

Car Content

After the last post about Zed's Bondo (See Bondo Zed), I continued to perfect his body with cycles of Bondo aplication and sanding for another couple of weeks. I found a technique that worked very well for getting the patch fairly perfect: on my sanding block, I had an old 320 grit paper. I held some some 80-grit onto the sanding surface and sanded down until I got to where I wanted to evaluate it. I then set the 80-grit aside and did a quick cuff with the 320 already on the block. This got the Bondo as smooth as the body so I could check for dips without getting false feels from the rough Bondo. And, this allowed me to use one block with 2 different grits, speeding the process.

I guess that's it for today. I have some winterization for Hapy to do: pulling the luxury battery, removing the cushions and fabrics, etc. Of course, that's hardly post-worthy stuff. There are things that need doing on Nemo, the A4, and Oliver. I just need to create a workspace that will keep me and the projects out of the rain first. I helped T load out of one garage bay, leaving just a few of K's belongings blocking up Oliver's spot. When the carports arrive, I'll get those up and get the projects moving again. Until then, we sit and watch Rainman have his day. Thanks, as always, for following along-