So I gave "Clown" the royal 11 hour long Zaino treatment last weekend. I washed the car with the Zaino show car wash, then I used the Zaino claybar, then I washed it again with the Zaino show car wash. Then I parked Clown in a garage where I used Zaino swirl removing polish Z-5 mixed with ZFX (which allows for multiple layers of polish). I put two coats of this on, then for the final 3rd coat of polish I used Z-2 Polish mixed with ZFX.

After all of this the painfully annoying swirl marks on the "A Pillers" remain. They got there in the first place because I thought it was a hard ridged surface like the windows and I treated them like windows with Windex and hard paper towels. Now I'm cursed with these ugly a** swirl marks.

Please help me out here.

Someone on the NEMINI board mentioned that these A Pillers are actually plastic. This person mentioned I might want to look into buying new A Piller covers which would likely be very costly as all BMW parts are.

Also if anyone has any hints for getting swirl marks out of a chrome exhaust pipe let me know about that too or that will be something else that I will have to replace (thank you paper towels again).

Lesson learned, do not use paper towels to clean anything but windows on a car.

 

Use a polish. If you don't have access to a PC try meg's scratch x. If you do then Prima Swirl and white pad should work (or similar product). Since you are using Zaino, do you have Z-PC? That is the similar product in their line IIANM.

 

i would 2nd that use a polish it should do the trick.

as for the exhaust get a good metal polish that should clean up the exhaust tips.

 

Meguire's Swirl-X, a PC, and an orange pad did a good job for me. It is a little less abrasive than the Scratch-X. I also have some Plastic-X, but never tried it on the pillars, just the lights.

 

I used Plastic-X on the pillars a few years ago, it worked to get some light swirls out.

Mark

 

now i knoew.. thxs everyone

 

I don't have Z-PC but I was thinking about getting that. I'm going to a British car show near town tomorrow so hopefully some new MINIs will be there and I can get further detailing advice. Failing that I'll email Sal Zaino and ask if Z-PC could work on plastic and if its recomended.

Lotsie posted about Plast-X.... I never thought of Plast-X either but if it only gets _some_ of the swirls then thats no better then Zaino Z-5 but I'll keep that thought in the back of my mind.

 

What do you mean by PC other then what we are communicating with?

 

Porter Cable, a random orbital polisher.

 

I used the Zaino Swirl & scratch remover on a scuff the other day and was amazed how well it worked. It is abrasive, however.

 

Random Orbital polisher and Prima Swirl does the job with a white pad.

As has been mentioned, these are just soft plastic and polish easily and swirl just as easily. So you will need to polish frequently. Use of Prima Hydro or Amigo can help minimize the severity of them. Banana Gloss also works well to conceal the extent of the swirling.

 

I just hit them with Swirl & the white pad with the PC once in awhile. In between, Banana Gloss does a great quick job of concealing them til I'm ready to break out the PC again.

 

Would amigo be a good thing to hit it with occasionally too to conceal and clean?

 

Plan "B": http://new.minimania.com/web/item/NMX1110/InvDetail.cfm

 

You can give the man a fish and feed him for the night or you can teach him how to fish and feed him for life.
These are not hard to polish out, @ $50 bucks a pop it is an expensive replacement. You can almost buy a new PC for the cost of two plastic pillars.
Steve

 

Well said

Mark

 

This is interesting. I just came back from a British car show which featured Minis and I spoke to a man who just bought a brand new British Racing Green Mini. His 2 week old car had the swirl marks in the pillers already!

So I'm thinking these cars come like this and maybe I'm over obsessing over this?

Also worth mentioning. I used my new bottle of Zaino Grand Final detail spray on the A Pillers and the swirl marks seemed to nearly vanish. It might have been the light I was looking at them in but it looked quite promissing.

Then after that I went on a joy ride through Warren County NJ and got dead bugs all over the car... yeah.. :/

 

Yes, those swirls marks were probably installed by a kid, called the shop detailer at the dealer.

The Zaino Grand Finale will only mask the swirls, for maybe a wash or 2, then they will be back. You need to polish them out if you want them to go away.

My BRG/W 03 Cooper, with 105k miles has no swirls in the pillars, regardless of what kind of light is on them. Now they have a few rock chips in them, but that just makes the old guy look tough

Mark