DEAR CAR TALK: Please settle yet another marital dispute. When cleaning the windshield at the filling station, one of us always likes to give the headlamps a scrubbing; the other thinks that doing so puts tiny scratches on the plastic lens, and over the years this will lead to light scattering and reduced visibility. Is it OK to routinely clean the lenses in this manner, or should they be cleaned only under running water, with the scrubbing saved for emergencies?
-- Ronald
DEAR RONALD: I'm having trouble figuring out which position each of you is taking. I'm guessing you're the headlight scrubber. But I know if I showed an interest in cleaning anything, my wife would be thrilled.
Anyway, now most headlight covers are made of polycarbonate plastic and are covered with a clear-coat sealant of some kind. And over time, that sealer wears off, and the plastic gets yellowed and dulled. The biggest culprit is ultraviolet light from the sun, but road grit and the heat from the headlamps play a role, too.
Overly rough scrubbing of the plastic or using an abrasive cleanser certainly can scratch them up, too. But mostly, these lenses die of natural causes: sun and heat.
When the lenses get cloudy and yellow, your best bet is to take the car to a shop, where they'll use professional tools and special chemicals to buff out the yellowed plastic and -- in some cases -- seal it again. It won't last as long as the original coating on the lens, but it'll at least help for a while. There are do-it-yourself products, but those are even shorter-lasting, in our experience.
And in the meantime, you're free to clean the lenses to your heart's content. But I never would suggest scrubbing them. I'd clean them with a squeegee, like the one you use for your windshield at the gas station.
Wipe them with the wet sponge (with 50,000 windshields' worth of dirt, since the gas station hasn't changed that water since the Carter administration), and then gently clear them off with the rubber blade on the other side. Or wipe them with a clean, soft cloth. Or get your own squeegee and use mild soap and water -- and avoid the prehistoric mud and potentially abrasive grit in the water at the gas station.
And if this interest in cleaning things persists, Ronald, your wife wrote to me and wants me to suggest you wash some dishes.
DEAR CAR TALK: Two years ago, we bought a low-mileage, 2010 PT Cruiser for our middle-age daughter. The previous owner was the original, 50-something female owner, who took meticulous care of the car and had all her mechanical papers to prove it. It ran like a top. But in less than two years, we have paid to replace the water pump, fuel pump, radiator, starter and battery. And now it's sitting idle in our daughter's driveway with a blown head gasket. We've come to find out that her daughter, our teenage granddaughter, had some of her high-school friends soup it up, and that she will use only premium gas in it, despite the fact that it requires regular gas. When this one blew the head gasket, a family friend bought our granddaughter a slightly older, but nice, BMW. Again, she had her friends soup it up, and she uses only premium gas in it. It now sits beside the PT Cruiser, idle, with a blown head gasket. My question: Can using premium gas in a car that requires regular gas cause a blown head gasket? Is it possible that her friends, in souping up these cars, caused damage that resulted in a blown head gasket? Thank you.
-- Maureen
DEAR MAUREEN: Well, first of all, I have several buddies in the head-gasket-replacement business who are dying for this kid to move to their town. It sounds like she's great for business.
Premium gas had nothing to do with croaking these cars, Maureen. More likely, these kids are driving the blazes out of them and frying the engines.
I don't know what kind of "souping up" they did -- maybe they changed the valve timing or added a free-flow exhaust system or something. But the very fact that they're "souping them up" tells me that they're eager to drive the cars fast and hard. And that's the problem.
Is it possible to drive a car so hard that it overheats and blows a head gasket? It absolutely is. And circumstantial evidence strongly suggests that that's what your granddaughter and her friends did -- twice.
It doesn't make her an awful person, Maureen. Lots of kids do stupid things. My brother was in the Stupidity Hall of Fame as a teenager (first ballot) -- and that was before he ran our father's Chevy out of oil.
But your granddaughter clearly does not understand the relationship between driving a car hard and having that car stop running. Or the relationship between all that and money.
So while it's awfully nice of you and your friends to keep buying her cars, I'd stop doing that, and make your next vehicle donation to her a Schwinn.
Ray Magliozzi dispenses advice about cars in Car Talk every Saturday. Email him by visiting
cartalk.com
HomeStyle on 07/30/2016