When a crazed squirrel gets stuck underneath it and trashes your paint trying to escape! .

My 10 month-old MY03 sits in the parking lot where I work in Agoura Hills, CA all day. I've used car covers for the past 10 years with good results, so I bought a Noah cover for the S2000 and use it every day. It works great and the paint looks brand new.

Yesterday, I came out around 5PM and started taking the cover off from the back of the car, as usual. I noticed a small hole in the cover over the rear trunk lid and thought "that sucks." Then I noticed that the rear trunk lid was scratched and covered with brown dirt. I rolled the cover over the top, which had no dirt or damage, and walked to the front to finish taking the cover off. There were a dozen 1/2 to 1" holes in the cover over the hood and a huge, 4" flap, complete with scratches and dirt near the passenger fender top! At first I thought some of the local crows that hang around on the trees had a war on my car, then I thought about the dirt UNDER the cover and the fact that there are a lot of squirrels and other rodents in the hills around the place where I work. All I can figure is a rodent of some kind crawled up under the cover, got stuck on top of the car and freaked out trying to get free.

The cover is totally trashed and two hours of very careful hand compounding (I painted guitars for a living for 10 years) and buffing removed all the scratches without killing the clear coat. I don't want to let my car bake in the California sun, but I'm afraid of this happening again. Aside from the occasional cat thinking the car cover was a scratching post, I've never had a problem like this before. Bad karma or bad for my car?

 

Ouch that really hurts. Sorry for your pain.

 

I think it was just a freak day, if you've been using them for 10 yrs.

 

Let's face it, chances of it happening again in the near future must be remote. Park away from the trees next time!

 

Yeah, i just suggest parking it in a different spot... not so close to tree's. thats sorta justa freak accident that probably wont really happen again.

 

Yeah, just one of those freaky things that can happen. I ordered a new cover last night. We'll see how it goes. By the way, I'm nowhere near the trees. This sucker had to cover a few hundred feet from the trees to get to my car.

 

man that sucks....r u painting the car or buffing it?

 

How does the cover fasten? If it's tight under the base of the car, then since it's less likely they'd tunnel through the cover you should reduce the chances of one getting between car and cover.

Barry

 

Luckily, the car had a healthy coat of wax and something I didn't want when I bought it- paint protectant. The wax (making it hard for the little bugger to get traction to leave really deep scratches), combined with the protectant and clear coat to keep the scratches out of the color coats. I was able to carefully compound out the scratches without really thinning out the clear coat. I then worked it back to the right gloss level with a couple of polishing compounds and re-waxed the car. The scratches all disappeared.

 

This cover had pretty good elastic along the bottom edge and went under the car at the front and back a good 8 inches. However, around the sides, the cover simply hung down a few inches below the doors. I thought about putting the cable and lock on it to snug it around the body, but it seemed like too much trouble to deal with every day. I might have to rethink that one.

Rich