badly oxidized

[Arizona240z]

My new 72 is badly oxidized and I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions on which compound would work best in trying to shine it up. It'll be a while before I can get it painted, but It like to clean her up for the time being.

Dwight

Zless no more!

[EScanlon]

Oxidized paint can be a challenge if you're not experienced with how to deal with it.

First of all, you need to determine if there is ANY good paint below the oxidized layer. The only way that I know of doing this is to take a section and polish it. Although there are rubbing compounds out there that require machine application in order to be effective, the problem is that I would definitely NOT recommend it to the novice user. You can very quickly burn through the paint down to the metal if you're not careful. Rubbing out a car by machine is something best left to the experts.

Go to your local well stocked automotive parts store. Find a small tub of Rubbing Compound, and a bag of cotton or terry cloth rags.

Wash the car, then apply the rubbing compound per the instructions to a small area. I would recommend you find the nastiest spot on the car. If, once you're finished with that area, you are left with a nice even color with some shine, then you're relatively safe in presuming the rest of the paint will buff out as nice.

This is a very VERY labor intensive job. Although you could use a low speed orbital polisher, in my experience, these will not remove very heavy oxidation without doing the job two or three times. Your arms will be SORE for a couple weeks, but once you've done this right you shouldn't have to do it again for a few years, or as long as the paint will hold out.

Unfortunately, the paint doesn't age evenly on the car. Where the hood, roof and upper portions of the car get oxidized very quickly, the sides don't. This can cause problems in that it may appear to discolor tops with regards to the bottom.

Most polishing waxes out there do a small amount of removing oxidation, but when the car is oxidized to the point where it looks like the paint job is a FLAT paint job, then you need to use the rubbing compound.

Even with machine compounding, there are times when the paint is too heavily oxidized to be polished out. You'll literally remove the paint and expose the primer beneath.

There is also a line of waxes out there that purport to fill the porousness of the oxidized areas with color. Although these will mask the oxidation, they do very little with respect to removing it.

Turtle Wax sells one called Polishing Compound. I've used it and have been quite pleased with the results, just remember that there is NO WAX in there. Once you've polished, you MUST wax, or the oxidation will return.

Meguiar's also sells a good product, don't recall the name right off hand, but it is part of their Detailer series. Just remember to follow it up with the rest of the product line.

Hope this helps.

Enrique