High gloss black plastic trim swirl removal

perry · 05-21-05, 04:31

Was working on mom's 99 Buick Century today, and while I had my little spotlight dealio out inspecting the windows, I noticed that the high gloss plastic on the B-pillars between the windows looked awfully swirled. It's not textured or painted, just really glossy. I got out a yellow foam disc and some Meguiar's Swirl Free Polish (82) and that did some good, but there's still some scratching in it. Could definitely tell a difference when I put the light back on it; the pieces even looked glossier.

I thought about taping all around the pieces and going to town with the PC and maybe the blue Sonus (light polishing) pad, but I don't wanna damage the pieces. Any recommendations?

Only plastic specific product I have is Plexus. Haven't taken pictures of the pieces myself yet, but here is a side view of a Century I found on Google.. rough idea of what I'm talking about at least.

Of course, it's nothing she'd ever notice, and I rarely notice except in the right light, but....

Mizzuri · 05-22-05, 01:02

Ive been having great success lately with the same high gloss plastic pannels in between door by using

1. Menzerna FP and White Edge pad on Rotary
2. Klasse AIO and white pad on Rotary (can use pc)

The klasse by itself makes a huge difference, you might have to go over it a few times

regards
tony

perry · 05-22-05, 09:41

Didn't see your post in time, but I went ahead and tried the PC on one side anyways.

Left side is after my initial work of polishing one of the pillars by hand, right side hasn't been touched:

And here is after polishing both sides with a green Sonus pad and Meguiar's Swirl Free Polish and protected with Autoglym SRP applied by hand.

Nice improvement, IMHO.

I'll have to go back and do the other side later.. maybe someone else will pop in with a different procedure to try

Accumulator · 05-23-05, 09:13

Nice improvement. I'd just try using the SRP by PC and see if that works even better (I almost always use that stuff by machine).

toml · 05-23-05, 12:37

Quote:

Originally posted by perry
Didn't see your post in time, but I went ahead and tried the PC on one side anyways.

... here is after polishing both sides with a green Sonus pad and Meguiar's Swirl Free Polish and protected with Autoglym SRP applied by hand.

Was there any staining you needed to take care of? I'm thinking of doing something similar but with #80 (which does stain trim).

perry · 05-23-05, 03:56

Well, I taped off around the trim pieces that I was polishing just so there wouldn't be such a big mess on the windows. I put little strips of tape down the middle between the two glossy pieces as well. Any other splatter I got wiped right off.. Fortunately, the trim on mom's car is pretty forgiving. Here is a better picture showing the side I worked on so you can see what kinds of trim I had to deal with.

I'd say just tape over anything you're worried about staining just to avoid any possible problems.

Bence · 05-24-05, 02:15

Perry, Accumulator is on the spot! If you have AutoGlym products, you must try the PR and SRP combo! Awesome on plastics! If you have deeper scratches, you can wetsand the trim and then use the AG twins.

BenP · 05-25-05, 02:07

I'm glad somebody bought this topic up as a friend of mine has a Mini Cooper S with this type of "trim" over the entire roof. I went at it with SRP on the PC to begin with but that wasn't strong enough. I might dig out the #80 and see if that makes it any better. Thing is, I don't want to go too aggressive at it as I don't know how thick these high gloss trims are - I'd hate to go straight through it!

Ben