A Woman’s Point of View: Tar a la mode

by Colette Cooley, Cars for Keeps office Manager

One day last week I was innocently driving along, thinking everything was right with the world when, suddenly, there came a very loud ‘thunking’ from my rear tire. The sounds coming from the wheel well reminded me of rocks in a rock tumbler. All that racket simply shattered my peaceful afternoon drive. It’s amazing how quickly a person’s mood can go from contentment to irritated.

I arrived home to discover that I had picked up a rather large chunk of patching tar on my rear wheel. It was covering about a quarter of my tire and was firmly ground into all the little valleys and crevasses. Talk about Gunk! That stuff is worse than chewing gum. Which reminds me that I sat on some gum last weekend, but that's another story.

Anyway, I got out a screwdriver and some rags and patiently started to chip away at it. After ten minutes of scraping this incredibly sticky substance, I deduced that this stuff could hold the space shuttle together. After another ten minutes of strenuous scraping my mood plummeted from irritated to downright grumpy. I had cleaned a spot about the size of a quarter. OK, so physical labor is not going to do this job. It was time to use logic mixed with a healthy dose of slyness.

I found a can of something in my craft supplies called Oops. I read the directions with anticipation and, Yes, it says it removes tar. I squirted that whole can onto my tire. It softened that tar to the consistency of ---well, soft tar, which was enough to let me scrape the rest of it off in about an hour. By the time the job was done my mood had hit rock bottom. Only one remedy for that. You guessed it. Ice cream liberally covered with chocolate.

PS: I heard, but did not try, that WD40 works pretty well for tar removal too.