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Old 4th October 2017, 04:32 PM
HPsauce HPsauce is offline
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Join Date: Sep 2011
Location: Chilterns, almost over HS2!
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Originally Posted by HPsauce View Post
I think it's made from polished aluminium with a lacquer coating on top, and water is penetrating between. So any surface treatment is doomed to failure.
I had a little experiment today and now think there are two problems, one of which is sort of fixable.

I've seen comments about people polishing the trim with just WD40 and have tried that myself. It works in some areas but not others.

Thinking about it, where it works the damage must be mainly on the surface, so I tried a test area with a thin layer of lacquer topcoat, having cleaned it thoroughly first and it worked quite well. It's the small shiny area in front of the mirror pivot in the first picture below. That trim on the drivers door is only slightly milky.

I think a fair bit of the trim on my car is just affected by surface degradation, so I plan to treat all of it, in stages, with clear lacquer.
I know some bits (notably the trim under my offside headlight) will not be improved much by that, but I'll give it all a go eventually, I don't have enough lacquer on hand at present to do anything other than small tests.
The second picture shows that headlight trim, it was all milky but I treated the centre and right areas. The right improved a lot but the centre highlighted the deeper damage that is shown by the obvious milky streaks.
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2003 D2 FL S8. Irish Green Pearl/Beige. Solar sunroof, auto-dim mirrors, electric rear seat functions, ski hatch retrofit; extended leather. Aftermarket DVB-T, reversing camera and full XCarlink (Bluetooth etc.).
2016 Volvo V40 T5 Cross Country (4WD) with ALL the toys including adaptive cruise etc. etc. Osmium Grey with Blonde/Charcoal leather interior. Polestar performance "optimisation". (A much rarer model than a D2 S8 by the way!) Oh, and a brand new engine at just under 30,000 miles on the factory one!
Finally: gone, but not forgotten.....
1998 D2 PF S8. AgateGrey/Platinum. Every option (I think) except electric rear seats, tiptronic steering wheel, ski hatch, towbar & dimming door mirrors.
e.g. Cruise control, NavPlus/TV, Bose, GSM, Xenons, Solar roof, Parking sensors, Alcantara/leather everywhere of course. (internal dimming mirror added later)
1998 (very early) Ford Focus 1.8 Zetec; ABS/TCS, Heated screen/mirrors, Aircon, Auto-dim mirror, Leather, Trip computer, Cruise control, OEM Ford SatNav with CD changer.
And before that a lot of Rover 800s, a few oddities, a lovely Triumph Dolomite 1850HL with Overdrive and way back in my schooldays an Austin Seven aka Mini 850!

Last edited by HPsauce; 4th October 2017 at 04:42 PM.
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