MORLEY’S WORKSHOP
DRAG STRIP SEX, HEADLIGHTS AND FLYING MACHINES
The Melbourne Bloke Centre has a new tow-pig. I finally got sick of not having cruise-control and air-con( not to mention that the old tow-car was a manual… not so good for dragging tandem trailers around) so I stuck it online and had a bloke buy it, fly down to the MBC, pay me cash and drive the old girl home about a neat thousand kays. He phoned me 24 hours later to tell me that she ran perfectly and to say how happy he was with her. Nice. I like a happy ending.
So any way, there I was with no tow-truck in the driveway. I considered my options. One idea that popped into my head was to buy an early Porsche Cayenne. These first-gen models had an atmo V8 and a transfer-case wit h low ratios, so I could even use it off-road if I wanted to. And man, t hey are cheap considering the Porsche badge and the level of kit you get in a car that is still really only about 15 years old at the outside. I also have a bit of history with early Cayennes, too: I rallied a factory-prep ped one across Russia and Mongolia in 2007 and 2008 in an event called the TranssyberiaR all ye. The first year was a wash-out when the car wound up at the bottom of a three-metre ditch, but in 08, we finished–I think– 13t h outright.
Ultimately, though, the thought of something expensive going pop turned me off the idea, as did the fact that I already have an off-roader. Also, shovelling half a cubic-metre of topsoil into t he back of a Porsche just doesn’t seem right. So I turned to my suburban past and followed my bogan instincts. And I bought another Holden Ute.
This one’s aV Y SS in lovely Hothouse Green and it’s an auto with leather and an aftermarket head unit that includes Bluetooth. And it also came with discoloured, cloudy headlights courtesy of a decade-and-a-half of Aussie UV. Now, I know you can buy kits designed to rejuvenate yellowed headlights, but these were beyond that. Felt like the polycarbonate lenses had been sandblasted AND yellowed.
After asking around, it turns out that good old fashioned wet-and-dry and an aluminium polish can do the job. The first thing to do is mask off the painted areas around the headlight (duh) and then start with 1200 wet-and-dry before working down to 2500 or even 3000-grit. Then, you slap a bit of polish on a rag and give the lenses a final buff. To be honest, the end result isn’t brand-new, mirror-finish stuff, but at least t he car doesn’t look like it’s been driven through pea-and-ham soup lately. And I’m told that a quick shot of clear two-pack paint will seal the lights and make them even clearer. So that’ s next. For the moment, though, I’m calling it a success and doing the mechanic’ s victory danced own at the MBC.