[Accumulator]

Originally Posted by cp1

Well....the scratch is only in the clear coat... I did ..[normal spot-correction].. and topped with Z5. Unless I get at exactly the right angle down low in the right light you can't see it, and after a good foam pad/PC detail with some focus in that area it should be 90%+ gone...

Cool. That's pretty much it, huh? Certainly sounds like you've corrected it to the degree sensible and that it'll be easy enough to live with

What I'm not too sure of is how much you can work a plastic bumper??

I get the feeling the clear on plastic bumpers/etc. is often a little thinner than that on the rest of the vehicle (especially around the edges of the plastic pieces), but as my ETG won't measure on plastic and I've never worn through the clear on such pieces I don't know for sure. It's just a gut-feeling and I'd rathe err on the side of caution. I don't really let it concern me...not like I've found the clear on them to be *really* thin or anything like that.

Do you work on it as you would the rest of the car?

Other than being *very* careful around the edges (that fear of thin paint), and watching that I don't heat things up too much when using the rotary (plastic doesn't conduct heat the way metal does so it's easier to get the paint too hot), yeah- I treat the painted plastic parts just about the same as the rest of the vehicle....I'm just more careful not to do anything wrong, and I really shouldn't do anything wrong anyhow no matter which panel I'm working on

I've heard people say you shouldn't machine polish such panels and other weird stuff like that, but IME that's just not the case

On my '97 M3, I've used the rotary quite aggressively on the painted plastic...no problems at all.