Painted plastic trims

[Janneman]

Hello,

I'm planning a thorough treatment of my car: a 2001 Volvo S60. There is 1 big problem: some painted plastic trims look awful ! See attachment.

The car is painted in blue with a clear coating (metallic). The trims are also coloured but I suppose without the clear coat finish because I tried a mild polish and the cloth I used turned blue.

Can you give me tips on how to make it better ???

Thanx,
Jan

[Mike Phillips]

Re: Painted plastic trims

Originally posted by Janneman
The car is painted in blue with a clear coating (metallic). The rims are also colored but I suppose without the clear coat finish because I tried a mild polish and the cloth I used turned blue.

Can you give me tips on how to make it better ???

Thanx,
Jan

Hi Jan,

Welcome to Meguiar's Online!

From your description, the wheels are not clearcoated. It's important to know this because if you use to aggressive of a product, or even a mild paint cleaner to work on the paint, you could affect the appearance of the metal flake in the paint if you were to remove too much paint.

The safest approach would be to follow Meguiar's philosophy,

"Always use the least aggressive product to get the job done"

In doing this, we would suggest trying to clean the paint using our Deep Crystal Paint Cleaner.



This is a chemical paint cleaner only, (very gentle), and contains no diminishing abrasives. Try applying this with a clean foam applicator pad to the paint and then remove and inspect the results. If you can use this to remove the defects, next apply a coat of NXT Tech Wax to leave behind a coating of protection.

Do you have any idea how this happened?

[Mike Phillips]

I took the liberty of uploading your photo to your gallery here,

Your Gallery




For the benefit of all who will read this, here is why the Attach File feature on this forum is not enabled.


How to put pictures into your messages

Hi everyone....

A lot of people want to share a picture in their message and naturally try to do so using the Attach file option at the bottom of where you type in your message...

That would be right below to the left where it says "Attach File"





When I say that the Attach File option is not enabled, what I mean is it won't insert your picture, but instead inserts a link. You can still click on the Browse button to select a picture off your computer, but it won't actually insert the image. See below,





The "Attach File" option is turned off because over time the data base tables become corrupted and the wrong pictures show up in messages, (everyone's messages). What this means is overtime, if you were to read a message you posted you may see someone else's picture in your message instead of the picture you originally Attached. This can be very annoying. For example, you post a message about the horrible swirls in your car's finish but the pictures shows beautiful car, or something else. When this happens, you message doesn't make sense you to, or anyone else that's reading the thread.

The other problem with using the Attach File option is that it creates two data bases with pictures, (one for the gallery and one for the forum), which is a bad use of resources and causes long back-up times.

For the above reason, we provide all our registered members with their own gallery to keep their photos in. We ask all of our members to upload their pictures into their gallery and then use the IMG tags to insert your picture into your message.


It would look like this,



Note: In the above picture, there is a Yellow Box drawn around what is called the URL Address of a picture that is on the Internet, whether it's in your Meguiar's Online Gallery, or somewhere else. To snag this address, all you have to do is Right Click with your mouse on the top of any photo on the Internet, and then select Properties. An information box will appear on your computer screen with information about the pictures. Look for the words, URL Address and then use your mouse/cursor to to highlight the address and then Right Click on the highlighted text and select Copy, to copy this URL address into the IMG button/tags.



It's pretty simple and easy to do, once you do it a few times. After uploading your pictures and inserting them using the IMG button, you will get the hang of it and it works the same way on most forums.

Here are some tutorials on how to work with images in the vbulletin environment. These can be found in a forum called, Meguiar?s On-line Technical Tutorials.

1) How-to Crop your photos before uploading them to your gallery
2) How to resize your photos using Easy Thumbnails - Free software!
3) Step-by-Step Picture-Posting HOW TO


In most cases, you should follow the above order when working with your images. That is,

First Step - Crop your photo's. Cut out the junk so that your picture contains what's important, the picture should tell a story even if the story is, "Look at me, I'm a beautiful car". There is an example in the tutorial).


Second Step - Resize your photos. It's bad Netiquette to post pictures that are wider than 700 pixels wide as it will not fit on the majority of peoples computer monitors and in order to see you picture, the viewer will have to horizontal scroll, ugh.... A lot of digital cameras take very large pictures, so you you must resize them to make them easy to view as well as faster to download.

The Tutorial for his shows you how to do it with a free software program that I use, but any software program that you already own and know how to use will also work.


Third Step - Upload your picture to your gallery, this is covered for both PC computers and MACcomputers in the tutorial.

When you see someone, especially a new member trying to attach a picture using the Attach file option, please be kind and share with them the link to this message so that they will understand why their pictures don't show up and so that they can learn the proper procedures for inserting photos into their messages.

We want to encourage people to post their pictures, but we want to show them how to do it the right way.

"Each one, teach one"

Thank you!



Mike

[Janneman]

Thankx Mike, for uploading the picture. I do understand the point of handling pictures this way. I changed my original posting also.

[Mike Phillips]

Originally posted by Janneman
Thankx Mike, for uploading the picture. I do understand the point of handling pictures this way.

Yeah... I include the above post just as way of sharing with everyone who reads and posts and finds the Attach File feature doesn't work.

How about those stains, have you tried anything on them yet?

[Janneman]

Well, I didn't try anything yet.... I slept ! Living in Europe people tend to sleep between 11 pm and 7 am. I am at work now.

I also discovered that my original posting had an error (which I've already corrected). The problem concerns some painted/coloured plastic TRIMS (not rims).

I hope I get some tips.

Greetz,
Jan

[everglo]

I know what he speaks of. He's referring to the trim on the roof of the car(where roof racks are mounted, for example). Typically, it's black plastic running the length of the car located near the outer part of the roof, above the door(s). On Volvos, this is painted plastic trim. It fades/oxidizes quite easily unless cared for properly. Something similar to it would be painted plastic grill trim. I have seen this condition but have not had the opportunity to treat one. Perhaps ColorX? I would wait for a response from Mike or Tim.

[Janneman]

Everglo is right about the part I mean!

Being a dutchman my english isn't all that bad, but I don't know all specific words.

Greetz,
Jan

[Don]

I've detailed cars where the entire bumper cover was non-clear coated, just like your trim. The Deep Crystal Step #1 like Mike said should work fine, if not try the Color-X or even the Consumer Line Cleaner Wax (maroon bottle) should take care of the staining.

[Mike Phillips]

Originally posted by Janneman
I also discovered that my original posting had an error (which I've already corrected). The problem concerns some painted/coloured plastic TRIMS (not rims).

I hope I get some tips.

Greetz,
Jan

Same tip as above...

The safest approach would be to follow Meguiar's philosophy,

"Always use the least aggressive product to get the job done"

In doing this, we would suggest trying to clean the paint using our Deep Crystal Paint Cleaner.

This is a chemical paint cleaner only, (very gentle), and contains no diminishing abrasives. Try applying this with a clean foam applicator pad to the paint and then remove and inspect the results. If you can use this to remove the defects, next apply a coat of NXT Tech Wax to leave behind a coating of protection.

You could also try a cleaner wax such as Meguiar's Cleaner/Wax, or ColorX, Meguiar's Cleaner/Wax is a mild cleaner/wax and ColorX is a powerful cleaner/wax, either of these should either fix the problem of be an indicator as to how serious the defect is. (by this I mean if the stronger of the two doesn't fix the problem then either the paint is very hard or the defect has permeated into the paint rather deeply.

Another product to try by hand would be Meguiar's ScratchX. This is paint cleaner that utilizes a microscopic diminishing abrasive plus chemical cleaning ability. Applied with a clean, foam applicator pad and a little passion it is capable of removing most defects. If this product cannot remove the defect safely, then only a machine applied professional product will do the job.

How to remove a defect by hand with ScratchX