Vinyl/Rubber Protectant not working!!!

[buckshot333]

Last night I had a few friends over for a car detailing party. It was a lot of fun and I got to show some of my friends some different products like a clay bar and vinyl/rubber protectant and tell them how they worked and that was really sweet.

I have one question about the plastic on my friend's 1995 Saab. He has some plastic on his front and back bumpers that is really smooth and the GC Vinyl/Rubber Protectant didn't want to stay on it. It just like started streaking and then eventually would evaporate away or something! I know that there's nothing wrong with the protectant I was using b/c I used it on different kind of plastic on his car and it looked great! I've included a picture of the front bumper below.

Anyone else ever ran into plastic like this? Is there a different kind of protectant I can use that will stay on it? Any suggestions would be great.

Thanks!

[Mike Phillips]

Re: Vinyl/Rubber Protectant not working!!!

The car is from 1995, since then, over the last 11, almost 12 years, have these plastic components been faithfully maintained with some type of product?

It possible that plastic like this, when constantly exposed to the environment over time, and not maintained, will deteriorate past the point of no return, with our products or with any companies products.

Sometimes these plastic components will turn whitish in color, when this happens any fix is going to be temporary.

Plastic that is smooth usually isn't very absorbent, this means any dressing you apply will tend to be topical and will tend to come off because it's just sitting on the top of the surface.

In a perfect world, car manufactures would offer us vehicles in which all the components could be worked on with good results and this could be on a one year old car or a 20 year old car, but the reality is a lot of components on newer cars will go bad, (deteriorate), and once they've deteriorated the only honest repair is to replace the component.

Not sure what if any product in our line is going to give you better results on smooth, hard plastic that has deteriorated and hold up over time.

What kind of condition is the overall car? Does it still look show room new? Or has much of the car also gone down hill? Such as the condition of the paint and interior?

How about a picture showing the entire car from the side or from a corner angle?

[Mike Phillips]

Re: Vinyl/Rubber Protectant not working!!!

One thing you could try would be to take a piece of terry cloth and saturate it with the Gold Class Protectant and aggressively work it over the plastic and in so doing this will help to clean the plastic, remove some of the dead plastic and push some of the cleaners and conditioners into the plastic to whatever level they can be pushed into the plastic.

This may help to produce a more even, darker black appearance. If this does work it's in part because of how you work the product against and into the plastic material, to simply wipe the surface will not be sufficient.

[buckshot333]

Re: Vinyl/Rubber Protectant not working!!!

Thanks for the reply, Mike! I am quite sure the car has not been maintained very well, at least not anytime recently! There was no wax on the car, when I clayed it my clay bar was turning black, all the vinyl and plastic changed color when i applied protectant, etc. So you are correct in saying that it has not been properly cared for, and I would imagine that the bumpers have deteriorated beyond the point of restoration. I would like to try your idea of working the protectant in more aggressively, though. If my friend is free sometime soon I'll try it out and let you know how the plastic turns out!

[Whelan]

Re: Vinyl/Rubber Protectant not working!!!

The plastic is so dried out it is absorbing everything but shows nothing. One thing you might want to try is seriously get a jar of peanut butter. Get a rag or paper towel. The peanut oil will penetrate and should produce some results. I am dead serious about this, me and my brother did it to his old 1984 Volvo 240 DL with great success.