Milpower

Thought you'dd enjoy some car care tips I learned this past weekend.

First of all, the plastic trim pieces (with the wood beneath them) CAN be brought back to like-new conditions. Here's how, but first a bit of history.

I purchased the Headlight Refinishing Kit (item 52267) from Eastwood. Included in the kit is a tube of Autosol and a 3” cotton buff wheel (sewn for some rigidity). While this did a decent job of taking out some of the haze and scratches on my headlight, it did an AMAZING job on all the chrome on the ar. The roof cargo rails, door panel markers and window chrome ALL were brightened up very nicely.

So, I am kinda torqued that my previous hand-buffing job on the wood plastic only produced decent results, but now that I had this polishing wheel in my hand, I figured I'd try it on the plastic. Using my Rigid 1800 RPM electric drill, I put a bit of the Autosol on a fairly deep series of scratches (left by my Audi dealer!) and went to work. In short order, the scratches were gone! The I put Autosol on the entire piece of plastic (a thin coating) and buffed the entire piece. Then, I cleaned the buffing pad and went over the plastic with just the cotton and nothing else. The piece looks brand new and I am very pleased.

So, the nastiest pieces of wood trim were under the arm rest- the one on the e-brake and the pieces to its left and right. I removed the tray piece and did it outside, repeating the process for the door piece. Looks brand new. Next, I covered the interior of the car with an old sheet and went to work on the other two pieces in the car. Not perfect, but a damn site better than what they were.

So, you can make the plastic look nice again.

Now, another irritant was scratches in my window glass, particularly the rear glass. The wiper haze just bugged me and I wanted it gone! Again, Eastwood seemed to provide a solution and I ordered their Glass Polishing Kit (Item 40011). After cleaning the rear glass, I went to work. A proper 90 degree porter cable buffer would have been very handy as using a drill is not easy. After TWO HOURS of work, there was a noticeable difference in the glass…I mean very clear.
I then marked ALL the scratches on all the glass, save the windshield which will eventually be replaced, and went to work. I was able to remove of significantly reduce most of the scratches and those I couldn't are going to face the professional scratch removal system (and I will also use this to polish the fog lights lenses).

So, in case you were wondering, here are a couple of tips on how you can keep your car in nice shape. Next I'll tell ya how I fixed my center cap after one of the fasteners broke off.

uber_ar

about $0.30. I learned that from a detailer and have been doing that for years... takes the hard water spots (wiper marks) right off. LEaves glass smooth

d4bjd0

Jewelry polish "paste". Works well also. I used to have the plastic faced "Swatch" watches back in the day. It's amazing what you can do with that stuff!!---I wish it took scratches out of "arms"---that would have fixed a lot of scratches "around" my watch!
...tooth-paste also works......Makes your AR "Minty Fresh"!

-B