Car Care Advice

These covers take a lot of punishment. As you dive along they are being hit by flies and dust, and by dirty water… the faster you drive, the faster and harder this stuff hits them. It has an abrasive effect that can cause light scratches over time.

These scratches can polish out — first try a normal polish, and if this doesn’t work, then use a proper plastic polish such as that made by Renovo. That should do the trick, but it doesn’t it may mean the plastic has perished, in which case it’s probably best to replace the covers which should be fairly inexpensive.
You often hear about these plastic covers going yellow, although I have never seen this in the UK. I put this down to us having less pollution than countries like America that suffer from smog. I believe that there are solutions to this problem but it’s probably just as well to replace the lenses as you would likely have to take them off anyway to properly clean them.

It’s worth keeping in mind what these plastic covers are for. Lights are usually sealed units these days and of they get broken they are expensive to replace. The clear plastic shield is there to take any punishment such as stone chips that might otherwise hit them. So don’t be tempted to remove them without replacing them. You might be surprised just how much a sealed lamp unit can cost!

This particular entry applies to dressing for both exterior plastic and vinyl trim, and tyre dressings.

Even though I say elsewhere that I’m not over-struck by plastic dressings on the whole they do sometimes have their uses, (but I really would stick to water based dressings).

What I suggest you do is apply your dressings before waxing and polishing your car. This way, if you accidentally flick any onto the paintwork, they will get wiped off when you wax or polish the car. But even better than this, if you plastics are coated with dressing, if you accidentally get wax/polish on the plastics, they won’t stick and cause stains. Of course, of you polish right over the plastic it will polish right through the dressing, so always try and avoid getting polish on the plastic and vinyl.

So, you have applied your plastic dressing, and applied your wax/polish. Now is the best time to apply the tyre dressing before removing the wax/polish. This will have given your tyres time to dry so that they are no longer wet from washing, and if any tyre dressing goes astray as it often does, especially if you are using an aerosol, it will land on top of your wax/polish. So it will get removed when you remove the wax/polish. Otherwise, what often happens is that you get your car all nicely waxed and looking the way you like it, and the tyre dressing splatters all down the side of the car.

Before answering this question, you really have to ask yourself why they are no longer black.

One reason may be that they have become stained by wax and polish, and maybe other things such as silicone plastic dressings, so the first thing to do is try cleaning them up. This subject is covered here. more »

Although black plastic trim is not as common now as it was back in the 80s and 90s, there is still enough plastic and rubber (wich is actually plastic) on a car to cause you trouble. Wax can build up on these areas leaving white or cloudy stains. more »