CARING FOR YOUR CAR with Car-Fé

When storing your car goes wrong

Rob Bonnici is the Car Guy. Rob lives, eats and breathes car cleaning products and services. Having a background in chemicals, car cleaning products and now owning a 7 day a week car cleaning and grooming centre, he is without a doubt the most passionate and the most knowledgeable car guy in New Zealand. Rob, along with his wife Siobhan, owns Car’fe facing the motorway in Barry’s Point Road, Takapuna and can be seen most days attending to the many unique car cleaning issues with his valued clients. Issues such as acid rain on windows, paintwork, odour in cars, stained seats, tired paintwork, faded trims and so on. Rob provides an interesting monthly motor vehicle car care column for Channel Magazine. He is also very happy for you to contact him should you have a problem that you would like to address with your car. Email: Carfe.takapuna@xtra.co.nz or Phone 488-7000.

You can do everything right as our happy customer did in the case detailed in the photos below, only to be met with a surprise when taking your car out of storage.
Firstly, if you are putting your car into storage, I encourage you to have a look at this web link (http://www.techguys.ca/howto/winter.html) as not being a mechanic myself I found it very easy to follow.
Raising the awareness will make everyone do that important last check over your car before locking it up and heading away.
In this example below the mice found their way into our customer’s car through one of the drainage plug holes. The actual plug was in the car so potentially it was pushed out by the mice.
The main issue with rodents – unlike other animals (cats, dogs etc.) – is that they urinate often and not in one place.
With this particular vehicle we had to remove all the boot lining, back seat and the underlay.
It was quite a big job as we had to continue to keep stripping as the mice had got into areas we thought impossible.
Utilising our Ozone machine and carpet shampooing, we were able to make this car usable.
So take my advice – once you have prepared your car for storage, make sure your rubber grommets and drainage plugs are secure and fixed in place.
Give me a call if you need any further information or advice.

Carfe – 87 Barrys Point Road, Email: Carfe.takapuna@xtra.co.nz or Phone 488-7000.