Dark Grey Car Polish!

[sniper9652]

Hi all, I have the two tone dark grey metallic (Toyota code: DARK GREY MICA 1E0) 54 plate Rav4 XT4, great car but quite a few surface scratches from the the previous owner! Been told by a body repairer to get a good dark grey car polish and this will cover the surface scratches? Looked at eBay and only seen turtle wax and some german stuff?

Any suggestions on this folks? I think I'm getting/got OCD as I can't stand scratches/swirls...etc on the paintwork!

TIA, Steve

[Mistermena]

You should contact CharlieFarlie on here about polish ect! He'll be able to steer you in the rite direction...

[anchorman]

Obviously the body repairer knows nothing about paintwork. He'll be telling you to put good supermarket diesel in it next.

Kev, Charlie or one of the other paintwork specialists will be along soon.

[Big Kev]

Obviously the body repairer knows nothing about paintwork. He'll be telling you to put good supermarket diesel in it next.

Kev, Charlie or one of the other paintwork specialists will be along soon.

Nope...not me.....this sounds more like a Charlie one to me. If the paint is scratched through to the white, that to me smacks of "need to replace the paint....?" If it has swirlies and holograms that LOOK like they need "coloured", if you can't feel them with a fingernail, good chance they may polish out, but with a machine.Good luck regardlessful,

There are coloured T-CUTS out there....they are absolute widdle, and Popeye will be jealous of yer biceps.

Big Kev.

[Hoovie]

When I had a black car I decided to try the "colour magic" coloured polish. You can get it in lots of colours including adark grey.

It did a great job..... of turning my hands black and the cloth I was using black. Did virtually nothing to the cars paintwork though. Pointless purchase TBH.

[Manxrav]

Steve, as Big Kev suggests a lot of "Piddle". If it was Me and I didn,t have a Machine Polisher, I would bite the bullet and get a "Pro Detailer" to have a look at your Rav and get his assessment. At least you would get it put right "proffesionally"

Turtle Wax, Colour Magic forget about them, at best they will only cover up the Scratches and swirls for a short time.HTH

Regards Clare

[t-spiritpete]

Steve, as Big Kev suggests a lot of "Piddle". If it was Me and I didn,t have a Machine Polisher, I would bite the bullet and get a "Pro Detailer" to have a look at your Rav and get his assessment. At least you would get it put right "proffesionally"

Turtle Wax, Colour Magic forget about them, at best they will only cover up the Scratches and swirls for a short time.HTH

Regards Clare

Agree on all the above,

the stuff like Colour Magic is used extensively by car sales people to make the car look good before it's sold and then a couple of weeks after you have made the purchase you wash it the marks are back and they blame you for it, very naughty!

[CharlieFarlie]

Firstly it would help if a picture or two was put up ?? Let the dog see the rabbit .....

Whether the damage can be polished out depends on two main things.. How deep they are and how much combination of paint and lacquer is still on the car after nearly seven years..

As pointed out above if You can feel the scratch or scratches with your finger nail then its a little more difficult but by no means impossible !!

Your car is painted with a combination of two elements. First applied was the base-coat. Then over this the lacquer coat ..

Typically you will find 6 to 7 microns of combined thickness a Toyota with the lacquer being the thickest of the two parts.. Providing the deeper scratches are not deeper than the depth of said lacquer coat then they can be polished out even if they can be felt with the finger nail..

Sometimes a car can have unbelievable swirling but it can still be restored. The risk is of course higher but if you can resolve yourself to the fact that it either works or its paint anyway then little is lost in trying !!

But IF the base-coat can be seen then its a paint job or localised paint and wet sanding.....

I once had a chap with a beutifull racing green Aston Martin that some clown had keyed.. I could easily feel the scratch !! It was awful !

Measured the combined coating and it has 4 microns of base coat and 11 of lacquer !!! As it was a case of paint if the polish did not resolve we decided to polish !! After about 3 hours of constant polish and measuring I was down to 4 microns of lacquer and 99% of the scratch removed..... Rob the owner said to carry on and try to get it all out...... MMmmmm I was sweating !!

An hour later with just 2 1/2 mics left the scratch was completely gone ! Result !!

As above Colour magic and the like are not worth the bother...

Some polishes like Autoglym contain fillers which can hide very light scratches and this will last a while but will eventually wash off..

The benefit of a Toyota's paint/ lacquer is that it is soft in line with all Japanese cars so polishing out swirling and scratches is far far easier than many cars ....

[benxt5]

I like this stuff -

Used it on my black MPS and the other half's black Juke.

Really easy on/off and a great shine. It will only do finer swirl marks though. For deep ones you will need a heavier cutting compound and nerves/balls of steel (or a paint thickness gauge). ;)

[CharlieFarlie]

I would swap balls of steel for the PTG any day..

The cutting rate of the polish is only one part of the process. Type and hardness of pad is equally important and the main thing is the machine used..

DAS are very very good machines and with the right combination of pad and polish will give excellent results..

For heavy or deep swirl / scratch removal the rotary is the way to go !! Think of a DAS as half way between doing it by hand and using a rotary....

Black hole is in a way a better version of Holt colour magic. Like many polishes that contain fillers the results are short lived...

Slightly off topic

Often these days you will hear of sellers claiming this or that wax is for this or that colour... Sorry but that is complete rubbish !

To the OP. I see a picture of your car but would need a couple of close ups to see properly how little or bad the damage is !!

That colour combination would look wicked if polished well.....

[CharlieFarlie]

Paint with light swirling. This would remove with a DAS. machine

Swirls removed with a medium (White) pad by rotary..

Again light swirling

Removed

This picture shows the clarity that is achieved by removing the swirls and allowing the flake to pop...

[Mistermena]

Some lovely work going on there my mate!