how shiney is your car?

That is interesting. BTW does that means polishing actually remove the nice paint work wear faster then?

I never polish my car. Life is too short for that. I think I try to wash my car a bit more then twice a year. (However, my hifi get a clean every week). Driving my second Honda. Both are secondhand cars. Present just past the 120K miles mark. The engine starts every morning without fail. The first major component required replacing is the distribution block at early this year.

What really bugs me is they seems to be preprogrammed to rust like mad after a certain years. The corners of the back wheel arches started to show signs of this now. From previous experience that is a sign the end is coming for this faithful little car. I was hoping to safe enough for another speakers upgrade but looks like it may not happen for a while. Ah...... Any suggestion what I should go for? Prefer it don't cost more then my Tag DVDP.

 

Skoda Octavia,lots for your money with great build

 

No. You are putting something onto the paintwork not taking it off (although you can use things like T-cut which will remove some of the paint to take out blemishes)

Some of us have cars whose secondhand value would be ruined if we never cleaned them and let the paintwork bloom and oxidise, so keeping them in excellent condition is a necessity, not a nice to do.

 

It seems Japs goes on and on and on....... and no I never factor in the resale value. The Skoda seems like a very nice concept. Quality of German engineering for lower price. How is the Skoda longivity track record so far? What about the modern Volvo. The older one seems to be well built. Do they last as long as the Japs?

Why do you guys buy new car every few months? I am looking at it from the point of view that cars are a necessity not as a hobby. Does it really make more economical sense? I try to do some mental sum before like get a new one every 3 years and sale it before they need MOT and repairs from normal wear and tear compare to buying a secondhand and drive it until they die. So far my estimate both seems to work out just the same.

 

Generally, yes. Most polishes contain mild, fine abrasive whose function it is to remove the dulled surface (degraded polymer and pigment) as well as apply a coating layer. As a result, you remove some paint every time. This is also true of more expenisve cars (Mercs, BMWs) that are finished in what's called "basecoat-clearcoat". In other words, the colour coat is applied, and while this is still wet a clear coat is applied on top of this. Polishing these removes part of the clearcoat that covers the pigmented surface. The amount removed is not significant over the lifetime of a car, so I wouldn't worry about suddenly arriving at the undecoat!

This should be distinguished from waxing. Waxes contain no abrasive and merely apply a layer to the paint. This gives the much-desired "water bead" effect. This is purely aesthetic - waxes actually offer very little protection. Paint is waterproof anyway and waxes don't stop Enemy No.1, light, from getting at it.

 

Robbo, if you polish, you invariably take something off, unless you can find a polish with no abrasive whatsoever. They may exist, but I've never come across one. However, the amount removed is not significant over the life of a car (unless it's a light coloured metallic in Australia! They're better now, but I've seen some disasters).

Paintwork does not oxidise - light breaks up the polymer binder and degrades the pigment, especially organic ones - and many of them are these days, since they eliminated the cadmium reds, etc. on toxicity grounds.

 

Tones is of course correct. I was referring to waxing.

Not me, I have owned my previous car for 10 years and its still going strong as a runabout. I suspect many of the guys get lease company cars and therefore get to change them frequently.

 

Tones

you might not have found one,but they do exist

you are correct,all Polishes are inherently abrasive,but pure carnauba wax isn't,its why Zymol and Swissol and the like cost a small fortune.This wax is also a far better protective cover for the paint than a polish

the Swissol kit i bought was £175

the price you have to pay for not having to use an abrasive polish

 

Some people automatically call anything that makes a car shiny "polish".

In the autoglym lineup that I, and other people here, use, there are two distinct products. The first, "Super Resin Polish" is an abrasive polish which also contains a resin polymer which is deposited on the paintwork. The second, "Extra Gloss Protection", is another resin polymer, with no abrasive in it. It performs a similar function to wax but the resultant coat is harder. If you apply the extra gloss, each time you wash the car it washes back to this layer of resin polymer. Eventually it wears off (you can tell by the behaviour of water on the bodywork), just as wax does. Wax isn't a polish.

 

correct,wax isn't a polish,its why I use it,not just the deep shine,but the protective coat which will last longer than a polish and "feed" the paint

ps all polishes are abrasive,the higher the wax content the less so,until you get to pure wax,ie pure carnauba Swissol/Zymol,which is non-abrasive.But then again,its a tenner for a good polish,and £120 for a tub of quality wax

 

Saab, take it from an old hand (20 years working for ICI's affiliate in Australia and the biggest supplier of automotive/refinish coatings in the country), the effect of wax is purely aesthetic. The idea that it protects is a total myth. It may have some protective qualities if it's stuffed with UV absorbers, but this is rarely the case.

 

Fair enough,I will always listen to an old hand.But I do believe wax protects by lasting longer than a polish,and you can also build up a thicker layer with wax than you can with polish,so in that respect it protects the paint from daily grime/pollution/bird poo etc

 

There will be some "protection" from those elements, but paint is pretty good at resisting those things all on its own - a tough, hard, crosslinked polymer film will outperform any relatively soft wax. Wax will give no protection from UV, car paint's (indeed any paint's) deadliest enemy. Less of a factor in the relatively dull and soggy UK than in Oz, I guess. Knowing that wax offers no protection at all and not really caring about the aesthetics, I never wax mine.

 

I will continue to wax nevertheless

 

I would not for one second dissuade you. If you like the appearance and/or believe that it does some good (as per bits of wire with magical properties ), that's what you do.

 

I am a believer at heart,although i tried some spike shrink and heard nothing,and got a bollocking from the missus when she saw the lovely floorboards ruined

 

You're a braver man than I, Saab. The Keilidhs came with spikes and there's no way I would use them on the parquet flooring! They now sit on basalt slabs, with holes drilled to accomodate the spikes.

 

Ah wonderful species these women. Could you imaging how would our living rooms look like if they do not keep us sensible.













Edit

Opps..... Sorry about that. I wrote that without finishing my coffee first. Thanks about your a explaination of the wonderful polymers. Now it is very clear expensive facial creams are not really that important for our cars paint work. Let talk about rust. I guess there is nothing we could do once the paint work, sorry polymer level are broken exposing the nice delicate iron under it to oxidation. Other that reapply a new level of polymer?

 

They are if you want to preserve its value and saleability!

Another useful side effect of polishing is that you get to closely inspect every inch of the paintwork so that damage such as stone chips can be spotted and repaired before turning into rust!

 

Modern automotive paints are so good, Wolfgang, that it's rare that the paint would break down to such an extent as to reveal the steel underneath. Penetration to the metal usually only happens as a result of physical damage, such as stone chipping. Even here, this is merely unsightly rather than dangerous for the car - such surface rust generally doesn't go any further than that. A bit of touch-up paint will fix things. For rust (the return of metallic iron to its preferred ferrous (Fe++) oxidation state) to happen, you need iron, water and oxygen - isolate the iron from one of the other two (preferably both) and you no longer have a rust problem.

The really dangerous rust is the stuff that comes from underneath, which people rarely polish or even look at. Once rust gets into door sills (which, in modern car construction are a fundamental structural member) and you get rust bubbles on the surface (indicating a far worse problem underneath), you are in big trouble.

Thankfully, most manufacturers now inject the sills with wax compounds to keep rust at bay. In addition, underbody paints have improved enormously, and the use of hot-dip galvanising for floor pans is increasing. For a long time, only expensive cars did this - hot-dip is not only expensive but the presence of zinc was also a major pain for the paint manufacturers (for various technical reasons, it is harder to get paint to stick to it). This has now been overcome.

Actually, one of the worst cars for corrosion was also one of the most expensive - Ferrari. In the old days of Enzo, they made road cars only to get money to do what Enzo really wanted to do - go racing. As a result, the cars were staggeringly badly made, but then they were sold to rich playboys who had sufficient money not to care. In some of the models, they bolted alloy panels directly to steel chassis, totally ignoring the electrochemical series. The result was a total catastrophe as one metal acted as the sacrificial electrode for the other. As a result, when they came to the refinishers for a repaint, the panels often had to be completely remade, by hand, as the originals were (none of them were ever quite the same). Since the old man passed on and Fiat took a firmer grip of the production side, they've improved out of sight (mainly on the grounds that they couldn't possibly get any worse).