Not a scooby but the family have a red 2002 Astra 5 door. Its not been looked after that well in the last 7 years and has likely not been washed too often.

Anyway, the paintwork is severely faded over all of it. I spent a happy hour with some t-cut and a rag and some of it looks a lot better (where I did) but it still looks slightly patchy. There are also a lot of little spots that even on a test area I spent 10 minutes polishing hard, don't go away, so when you rub off the t-cut they are still noticeable.

I don't want concours but what is the best way and order of application to get the colour back as best as possible? What should I use? I could rub away for a couple of hours with the t-cut but what would achieve the best result?

Car drives lovely and is mechanically really good, so its worth tidying it up a bit.

 

use a machine polisher

 

OK

With what? T-cut, some other form of polish? Then what?

 

Cutting compound. Something like megs cutting with a medium pad works well on vauxhall red.

 

A decent compound and a machine will bring it up like new. It can be done by hand, but it'll take forever.

 

That looks an awesome job

On exactly the model

 

It's an easy job, even for a weekend warrior like myself. Unfortunately I only got half the car done that weekend, and the owner sold it before I could finish it. Can't beat a good pink to red transformation.

 

G3 an machine polish and lots of water while youre doing it

 

Machine polisher, Menzerna FG400 and a Hex Logic Orange pad and you'll be good to go.

Don't attempt to use T cut via a machine polisher as It's far too aggressive. You could quite easily do more harm than good