Red gel coat

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Red gel coat

Postby billybob » Thu Jul 30, 2015 10:38 am

Hi all,

all the oil leaks have been fixed! (took some doing) now the drip is below the a-series average :) I also have a manual fan switch installed and will add a secondary fan with auto switch in the near future.

onto the next job....

so the red gel coat is faded and has some weird patches around that look like they have come from waxing somehow. Almost like lines of a cloth when polished too hard.
I don't have the funds for a re-spray right now so are there any alternatives?

No idea if t-cut is a good idea or not with a gel coat or if there is a way of buffing it up without damaging the gel coat???

I don't really want to go down the wrapping route either for the same reason as a re-spray...

Thanks!
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Re: Red gel coat

Postby streetsy » Thu Jul 30, 2015 10:48 am

My red Midas was very pink when I got it, I buffed it with compound then t-cut and I try to keep it topped up with wax to hopefully stop it going pink again. The patches may be gel coat, I believe it is painted into the mould then has the fibreglass laid into it, as it fades the marks become visible. A word of warning though, if you buff through the gel coat it is gone and costly to repair
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Re: Red gel coat

Postby billybob » Thu Jul 30, 2015 2:11 pm

Hi,

good tips. Did you buff it manually with the compound? Also what compound is best, as you say I don't want it so coarse that it causes damage.
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Re: Red gel coat

Postby Rich » Thu Jul 30, 2015 2:13 pm

I machine buffed mine back quite a few times before deciding to paint it.
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Re: Red gel coat

Postby streetsy » Thu Jul 30, 2015 4:44 pm

I used a machine with farecla g6
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Re: Red gel coat

Postby ACourtney » Fri Jul 31, 2015 9:03 am

Its worth investing in a power polisher and some foam pads. The Silverline sander polisher can be had for less than £40 if you shop around and will do the job fine - you will end up spending as much again on cutting compound and foam pads.
Farecla G6 in the paste compound is probably the best compound to go for. This is a medium grade that will work through the oxidized layer pretty quickly, but it also does a neat trick in that it breaks down into a finer grade - when you've removed all the variations in colour you keep going with the same paste on the pad, adding water to keep it flowing, but no new paste - so the same paste also gives you a reasonable shine at the end.

If that shine isn't good enough then you could also get one of the G3 finishing products. The standard G3 compound is a finer cutting compound and you shouldn't need it after G6, but they also do some finer finishing products in the G3 extra range to finish off the shine. The next problem is keeping that shine. If you garage your car then you can get away with waxing it just once, or twice, a year, but if your car has to live outside in all weathers then you will need to wax it much more often. You also need to know the difference between a wax and a polish - something confused by the vast range of products available these days - but a rough guide says that the quicker the wax goes on, the shorter the time it offers protection. A polish, as its name suggests, includes an abrasive to bring up the shine, but most of them also include some wax, or a liquid polymer, to give some degree of protection. However, that won't last long on a car kept outside. The Colour Magic waxes are popular with owners of gelcoat cars and have the benefit of filling any pinholes with the correct colour rather than showing up as a white dot, but they don't seem to protect the shine for very long so are best used in conjunction with another wax or a liquid polymer glaze. A good old fashioned solid car wax, such as a Carnuaba based wax, is usually best, though hardest to put on - use a lambswool bonnet on your power polisher to take some of the work out of getting the final shine. I've also tried Autoglym Extra Gloss protection, but not on a car that has been exposed to the elements so I can't really comment on how long its protection lasted.
Perhaps some other Midas owners can share their experiences

The weird patches and swirls that you see in the oxidized gel are actually the original brush strokes from when the gelcoat was first laid up in the mould. The pigment particles will lie in a certain direction depending on how they were applied and will thus oxidize at slightly different rates, revealing the brush stroke pattern. Of course when the gelcoat is fresh, or polished up, it is just a solid block of colour and the brush strokes disappear. The gelcoat finish on a Midas should be quite generous. They were originally double gelled (two coats) all over, with triple gel at the joints. So you can afford to be quite aggressive when buffing back. The only down side is that you have a red car and red is the worst colour when it comes to oxidizing, so you really will need to take steps to keep it shining.
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Re: Red gel coat

Postby Hans Efde » Fri Jul 31, 2015 1:34 pm

I had a red coupe and was fed up with polishing. Once a while or when there was a car show I would give it a good wash and rub it with sunflower oil. That would deepen the color and give a good shine, but only for a few days.
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Re: Red gel coat

Postby Jin » Fri Jul 31, 2015 8:52 pm

T cut is a no no on gelcoat / glassfibre ,the ammonia breaks it down (Google it) for a quick job If the color richens when the car is wet (most faded cars do) rather than taking the top layer off try putting a paint sealer on, I use armour all shield which is a synthetic sealer (no silicones ) is clear so wont white out on rubbers and is hydrophobic, to clean the car in future you just rinse it, and it puts a great shine on paint gel or plastic trim with no effort, lasts a good month too, there's some demo vids on youtube worth watching.
https://easywider.co.uk/ universal flexible wheel arch extensions
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