What have you done to your car today?

[nath247]

Went at a single segment of a rear door with some T-Cut, and made it lovely and red again. 30 minutes later it had gone back to pink...

Red t-cut is a con, it just stains the paint and then fades.

Always thought T-Cut should remain as that dusty old product collecting cobwebs at the back of a shed! You need a DA, sod that doing that by hand.

Didn't think about going to a breakers, was just gonna order a used one from ebay! Thanks for the suggestion

I was the same, looked on eBay and at the time they wanted £20 or so before postage for one. Quick trip to the local breakers and got one for £8

 

[Armageus]

Red t-cut is a con, it just stains the paint and then fades.

Silly question, but which one did you use?

The red bottle "T-Cut original" or the red specific "T-Cut color fast"?


The original should be good enough, but then obviously needs waxing or sealing to "lock in" the colour and prevent further oxidisation.

T-Cut color fast is more of a polish / "filler" - similar in use to Autoglym SRP in my opinion, in that it has an extremely mild cutting action (e.g. for removing paint transfer etc), and has coloured fillers that will fill/colour light surface scratches, e.g. that show as white scratches - It won't cut enough to restore fresh paint.

 

[acemastr]

You'll never hand polish pink paintwork, it'll need to be cut with a rotary

 

[Clarkey]

You'll never hand polish pink paintwork, it'll need to be cut with a rotary

What? Oxidised red paint is the easiest thing you could polish by hand, it's extremely easy.

 

[Akagi]

I used the colour fast one which is coloured red.

I then cleaned the panel again, and went over it with expensive polish (auto finesse stuff) and it looked lovely and red afterwards, an hour later its peachy pink again.

Need something more aggressive... It has been suggested that I wet sand it, but that sounds scary...

Some of it has lacquer on where it has been sprayed in the past. It is these bits that are proving to be the main issue. The edge of one of the rear doors is brilliant red where the lacquer has flaked off, but the rest of it is pink and when I polish it, it just goes back to shiny pink...

Whereas the bonnet for example has no lacquer, and it is coming up lovely.

 

[Armageus]

I used the colour fast one which is coloured red.

As per my post above - that one isn't any good for actual cutting - you want the original T-Cut (e.g. http://www.halfords.com/motoring/pa...air-paint-restorers/t-cut-original-500ml-2015), although I'm sure there is probably something a bit more sophisticated available these days.


edit:
looks good

http://www.meguiars.co.uk/fifty-sha...ed-paintwork-with-meguiars-ultimate-compound/


although depending on whether you already have a DA or rotary polisher, I would just get a local detailer to quote to do something similar

 

[grudas]

I'd get some of the G3 products!

I used -;

http://www.halfords.com/motoring/pa...ecla-g3-permanent-scratch-remover-paste-150ml
http://www.halfords.com/motoring/pa...ir-paint-restorers/farecla-g3-colour-restorer

on the mazda in a few spots and it brought back the paint

 

[Cleisthenes]

I used the G3 stuff on some small area on the GTV and it did a pretty good job. That was with scratches as opposed to restoring the paint but a polish was part of the process and it seemed to come up nicely.

 

[andy_mk3]

Mine were tight enough that I'd need a breaker bar to undo them. This one won't ever be seeing something quite as big as a GT30. At best a GT2860 but so far the T25 that's on it is doing a good job at stage 3. Just need to loose the heatplate from the inlet manifold and I should see about 275hp crank power.

That's good I started off at stage 2 t25 circa 220bhp. Then moved on to a gt28rs running 356bhp. It had more to come out of it too as that was just a bench map running quite rich top end. But then turbo failed and I rebuilt it with aftermarket parts which did not last. So I sold it and now have a gtx2867r waiting to go on, hoping to see past 400bhp on that.

 

[adam cool dude]

Acme with a good machine polish you will restore the colour easy.

This was a Toyota Celica Carlos Sainz (Partially stripped for polish) that someone bought in quite horrid but solid condition.

After polishing it now looks like this and the difference is night and day.

 

[Akagi]

Did half a door with some old aggressive t-cut and then polished afterwards, leaving it to see if it still fades. I know I need a DA but I don't have it yet and I get irritable and have to go outside and do some vigorous rubbing!

 

[Phil W]

You will get reasonable results if you hit it with Super Resin Polish after the next few washes. When you are ready for wax, go for something like Collinite 476s.

 

[Frozennova]

Deploying tactical smokescreen to hide from the Mustang

 

[Blackhawk47]

Broke my mpg record. Haven't been able to get 40mpg for months.

 

[Cleisthenes]

I hadn't realised that acme had bought an Audi too

 

[adam cool dude]

29 miles.......

 

[Will Gill]

Broke my mpg record. Haven't been able to get 40mpg for months.

You're doing it wrong:

although boringly I managed 30mpg from London to Cornwall once

I will never ever drive an in/out-law anywhere again....

 

[Phemo]

2mpg is impressive What distance was that over?

 

[Blackhawk47]

29 miles.......

Whats wrong with that....

 

[mrk]

29 miles isn't enough distance to gauge a decent average based on varying traffic conditions. You could have just cruised up 29 miles of B roads.

I'm on 24MPG long term average since March last year. And I never speed