Colin Ellis #456 It'll be alright in the end. If it's not alright, it's not the end
Just a little up in the acrilic polishing.
I found a very rare item, an old "mobile" phone from a Range Rover Classic, from around 1988/9.
It was a mess!
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And I even did worst when I was cleaning with Alcohol!
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After a search on the web, I found that with cheap products, we can have the same reults with much lesser waiste of money.
Firts step.
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Just rub the acrilic face with wet sand paper (1000 grade), gently!
After that the acrilic face seems a little milky! Don't worry!
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Next step, polish with Duraglit with a soft cloth.
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And the result:
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... then after using Meguiar's 4 small sanding pads, not a little elbow grease, then their cream and drill bit attachment tickling stick, after an hour ...
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.... then the rain came so i will have another bash tomorrow
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and this after a second polish with the Meguiar's Plast Px topped off with a sliver of Autoglym polish. Lots of fine scratches from the polishing but the opacity is much less and the surface feels smoothe. Might have a go with the duraglit idea some time too
The trick to successful polishing is to use the appropriate abrasive material reducing in grit size (increasing fineness) and only move onto a finer abrasive once all of the 'scratches' from the previously used abrasive material have been removed. This can often most easily be achieved by applying the abrasive at right angles (90 deg.) to the previous operation, this will show up any previous 'scratches' that need to be removed. The quality of the final finish will depend on the fineness of the final abrasive and whether all of the previous marks have been removed.
Polishing plastic can be achieved by initially using silicon carbide paper (wet and dry) increasing in fineness from 600 to 1200 to 2400 to 3000. This can be done by hand but must be done wet with plenty of water, the abrading action generates heat which will cause the plastic to soften and 'drag' you can then finish off with something like Duraglit or even T-Cut. You can get specialist compounds for the final polish, 3M do one as well as Meguiars.
If you use a machine polisher for the final polish use a slow speed and avoid too much pressure, the generation of heat during this process can be a disaster.
My next 'How To' will be based around teaching Grandmas to suck eggs.
Nich.
Nicholas John Peter Tinker - # 484
Manufactured on Tuesday 27th April 2004 @ 12.17.47.
Commission Number: 24468.
Brochure Model: M3 Tourer 4.6 V8 260PS.
Specification Code: L01B.
CICode: D1511.
Trim Level: TL8.9 (M3).
65th ZT-T 260SE to be made out of 115.
11th ZT-T 260 SE in Pearl Black (PBT) out of 23 produced.
Manufactured in the UK by MG Rover Group Ltd.
Thanks Nich
It will be years before i rub all the plastic off completely
Hi,
the link in the first post doesn't seem to work now, what product did you use ?
Roger Layton-Smith
NOW SOLD :-( 260 SE #462 Pearl Black - "Black Beauty"
Replaced with AMG ML63 :-)