*sigh*
As expected, it was not exactly an easy job. I went out there with a bucket, Dawn dish detergent, and a new sponge, and I rubbed every single square inch of that truck's body repeatedly with that damn sponge to get all the shit off.
I probably washed off about ten frickin' pounds of dirt.
But the truck is now white again. Not off-white, not "white with a grungy grey top"; WHITE.
So I busted out the wheel cleaner and got the brake crap off the wheels, and cleaned the dashboard and center console with 409; then took it over to the car wash and spent $1.50 on vacuuming out the interior.
It's not perfect by a long shot--I really need to do the door jambs too, and giving it a coat of wax would make future cleanup a hell of a lot easier--but from five feet it looks clean and I don't think anyone's going to be giving it the white glove treatment. There are also spots (mainly on the roof) where I just could not get all the dirt off, so there are little patches where it looks like the paint is speckled. A clay bar would take that crap off, and all that requires is that I go buy one and then spend the time doing the job.
The weather was nice and cool, too. It won't be thus tomorrow.
...which is one of several reasons why I decided to wash the Jeep and not to smog it today! Yahoo! I'm a Bohemian!
*shudder*
But man, are my arms tired, because it wasn't enough just to run the sponge over the dirt; I had to scrub it off. I'll tell you what: if you want an impenetrable coating, tree sap and dirt hardened in the sun is the way to go. I probably washed off about ten armor points.
Well, come to think of it, dirt and some kind of binder, hardened in the sun? That's adobe, man, and people have been building houses out of that shit for centuries. I didn't just wash dirt off my truck? I washed a frickin' mexican house off my truck. No wonder I had to work so hard!
* * *
Now I'm going to treat myself to General Tao's Chicken. Whee!