I thought it would be a good idea to clean up my filthy bug covered driving light and headlight protectors yesterday so filled up the sink with hot soapy water and set to them with the scrubbing cloth.

"Great idea" I thought, "they will come out lovely and shiny"

DOH! How wrong was I.

The scrubbing cloth I used was too corse for them and now I have swirly scratch marks ALL over every one of them, bugger.

Has anyone got any ideas of how to buff/polish these out to make them look as new?

Tried Mr Sheen and window cleaner so far with no luck, any suggestions?

I know, I am a d1ck.

Help me please!!!

 

When making models, I often have to polish up the plastic screens etc, not to mention rubbing down the laquer coats on the paint.

What I do is to use a metal polish. You can use either a watered down brasso type thing, or something out of a tube. The best one is a Bettaware one as it doesn't contain any grinding compounds. Alternatively, if you have any Autoglym chrome polish, you could try that on a small area before doing the whole lot.

It will require a degree of elbow grease, but it's not impossible.

Josh

 

Search around aviation supplies websites. What you need is plexiglass cleaner or similar, that is used for restoring plexiglass airplane windshields.

 

You can use a 6 or 1 micron diamond spray compound used for preparing metallurgical samples for examination on a microscope. These work, I've used them.
The sprays can be purchased form www.metprep.co.uk.
250ml costs about £30.00. It may therefore be cheaper to replace your scratched ones!

 

Halfords sell plastic polish for the rear screens of convertables.
Comes in a squeezy tube and is around £3.50.
Excellent for small scratches but can take a lot of elbow grease.
As for the aircraft screen polish - I had a bottle hanging around in the garage (wonder where that came from ) but its a lot finer than the halfords stuff and therefore takes a lot more effort for similar results.

 

I bought some STi red/clear tail lights off here a while back that were a bit worse for wear. I used the contents of a metal polishing kit. I just used the finishing soaps with a power drill accessory to bring them up a treat

 

Thanks for all the suggestions guys, I shall have to give it a go and see how they come out.

Thanks again,


STeye.

 

Because i'm Idle, i buy a new set every year My last set were well worth the money because 3 of them ended up cracked

Mikey Skint