I parked my wife's black Panda under a fig tree for a month whilst we were away. I now notice that the tip of a branch of the tree has been in contact with the bonnet and lightly scratched it, as the tree branch moved in the breeze presumably.
The scratch marks are negligible, but the entire paint area around the scratch has turned a milky white. Some kind of bleaching of the paint in the sun I guess? Needless to say water has made no difference.
Any idea what to do?
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Without having it "professionally" rubbed down and "blown-in" I can only make the suggestion that you give it a good T-Cutting and then a few coats of that coloured polish ?.
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Is it metallic - it might just be the clear-coat that's damaged?
Try AutoGlym paint restorer (Halfords sell it) - but it's a bit scary to use as it's a fair bit more aggresive than T-Cut. It did, however, completely remove a large bird splodge fade mark from my daughter metallic black Ibiza, where T-Cut di nothing.
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Yep it's metallic :-( I'll try T-Cut tonight when the sun's gone down, and if it doesn't work then I'll try the stronger stuff!
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You can get gentler forms of T-Cut, cant remember the exact name, but is smells of oranges. Try normal car polish first, then gentle version of T cut then move up to T cut or equivalents.
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Do not use T-Cut, its dreadful stuff and stains trim if you're not careful. No professional would use it.
Go to a bodyshop supplier and get some Farecla G3 - its a pro-quality hand cutting compound. Flick a little water on the the panel and use some of the G3 on a soft cloth to cut the panel back, then polish it up. If you are near a Brown Brothers (national motor factor chain) then get some of their 'Concept' branded resin polish. Its what a lot of the traders use. Its cheap for a big can and does an excellent job at masking minor scratching and swirling.
Do not be tempted to use one of these rotary polishing machines that are getting popular. They're causing lots of problems in the hands of inexperienced users (burning paint, swirl marks, stripping paint off panel edges etc etc).
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I totally agree with Aprilia about the G3, its great stuff. Do if possible use it with water though, and dont use a rotary polisher and G3 without it as the paint will burn.
Personally, id call out a decent valeter just to clean the panel in question - anything more than a tenner would be over priced but he can use professional kit such as the polisher and get a good result ( assuming he is competant! ).
Its about a 10-15 min job if like me, you know what your doing. The potential for someone who doesnt know what he/she is doing to use too harsher compound and cause damage beyond that already done is very real, take it from someone who has to pick up the pieces when his customers think they can have a go :-) still more work for me eh.
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