After our April meeting at the Car Corral one of members, Jim, asked me to to take a look at his discolored, faded vinyl gray stripes on his 2007 Shelby.
These vinyl stripes have a problem with discoloring, fading, and looking like they have dried in water spots. This can be even more evident with lighter colored stripes.
Jim had tried cleaning the stripes with various cleaners and even used a clay bar but could not get that dirty water spot look out of the stripes. He and I had exchanged emails several months ago looking for other options to help make these stripes more appealing.
Today after our meeting Jim followed me home and we took on the challenge of restoring the gray stripes back to their original color. We were also in uncharted territory as I had researched a number of detailing websites and no one had a cure for this problem.
I started off using a aerosol paint solvent used in body shops to remove wax, silicone, grease, road tar, etc. to thoroughly clean the vinyl stripes. Then I used my Griot's Garage 3" Orbital Polisher with a multi-step approach to thoroughly clean and revitalize the vinyl stripes. First we used a yellow foam cleaning pad with machine polish to deep clean the vinyl. We followed up with a less aggressive machine polish with an orange foam polishing pad. This seemed to really deep clean the vinyl but the stripes still looked dull. The final step was to apply Griot's Paint Sealant with a red waxing pad. This last step really did the trick! The paint sealant has excellent fill capacity and it was able to nourish and restore the deep gray color back to the stripes.
After we finished with the hood, which took most of the abuse and wear over the years, we used the same procedure on the stripes on the roof and the trunk of the car.
Not knowing whether any of this was going to work out I forgot to take some before pictures of the heavily spotted front stripes. By the time we were ready to do the rear stripes I decided to take a few before and a number of after pictures. As a reference Jim drove his car in the Christmas Parade at White Marsh and the photos show how much lighter the stripes were at that time.
The stripes have definitely darkened and much of the dried water spotting is gone and the stripes now make for a better contrast to the white paint on the car.
Both Jim and I were delighted with the results and if I can download these pictures from my new computer I'd like to share them with you.
Midnight Blue
MCOM Historian
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