Several "Doh!" moments in a short space of time...

[joshwa]

Been having an expensive time with cars recently:

£290 cambelt/waterpump change on the Passat
Serviced the Passat

Got the welding + mot done on the mini - £530
Only to find that I'd missed a few bits of rust and not asked them to do it!!! (so it still needs some more welding before a respray can be done)

And to top it all off on the way to pickup the mini and pay for the work on the mini, the Passat says "Engine Workshop!" and it's MOT is due this month

[Mblaster]

I feel your pain, managed to break both my door mirrors within a week Duct tape is holding them on for now...

[ctid]

im not having a great time either. came out to my car looking like this yesterday morning



had a quote of 200 to fix it. the knock sensor went on it yesterday afternoon as well. thats gonna be another 100

[jon bda]

I feel your pain, managed to brake both my door mirrors within a week Duct tape is holding them on for now...

Break...

[Mblaster]

Break...

Upon failure to come up with a witty reply, I just edited my post to fix the typo

[joshwa]

im not having a great time either. came out to my car looking like this yesterday morning



had a quote of 200 to fix it. the knock sensor went on it yesterday afternoon as well. thats gonna be another 100

I've got one of them as well! Still need to sort it out

[Zak33]

im not having a great time either. came out to my car looking like this yesterday morning



had a quote of 200 to fix it.

hold up buddy. Please dont spend £200 on that. You are wasting your money.

I shall be crude, but I'm doing it to be nice. That car is NOT worth spending £200 on paintwork on. I know the model, I sold enough of them, so I know how old it must be from the colour, and it's not wroth £200 of paint work.

You need to simply polish the scratches (NOT with TCut...just with car polish) Use a ream based polish, not a spray on one... you want one that's thick and creamy. Those sort are slightly abrasive and will take most of the ugly look out of it.

The LAQUER is cut through, hence the "white" effect. It's like scratching a highly varnished book case. The light ir refracting through the "cut" effect in the laquer.

it is highly unlikely that it's through to the bare metal, so shouldnt rust.

Use lots of polish, is good firm swirls, over and over again and then walk away from the issue.

I beg you.... I know you like a clean car, I can see it from the pic, but it's just not worth £200 imho

[Howard]

Would you say that about any car older than about 5 years old Zak?

That won't polish out, it's down to the primer.

So what if he wants to spend £200 so that his car doesn't look like it's owned by some pikey who doesn't care how it looks? Sure, it's a Vectra, but it's cheaper than buying a whole new car

[joshwa]

I've had some success with scratch X and touch up paint on mine. You can still see the bigger / deeper scratches but from a distance it's hardly noticable. I've got some other colour coded stuff (dr colorchip) that I've yet to try but it may be possible to fix this yourself?

[MadduckUK]

i dont believe for a second that dr colorchip is a real doctor

[Butcher]

I feel your pain, managed to break both my door mirrors within a week Duct tape is holding them on for now...

Broke both mine in the past month, one was just a new glass job, other I have epoxied back together (and new glass of course).

[kalniel]

I had my door mirror completely smashed not to long ago as well. But the part's only 30 quid so after being a bit annoyed I just replaced it.

The scratch would annoy me - not that I'm even fussed about how things look (I'd just t-cut/polish/wax/do a bad job with touchup) just that someone has so little respect for other peoples stuff.

That said, some people don't even respect other people's lives (see suicide incident in Derby, my home town). <insert society breakdown rant here>

[Nick]

Would you say that about any car older than about 5 years old Zak?

That won't polish out, it's down to the primer.

So what if he wants to spend £200 so that his car doesn't look like it's owned by some pikey who doesn't care how it looks? Sure, it's a Vectra, but it's cheaper than buying a whole new car

Aye, but then going an buying even a top of the range bottle of polish is still cheaper than spanking £200... ie, it's worth a shot first.

Get one of those soft mitts and a rubber drill pad and go for it... and if after that it's still there, then give ChipsAway a call, I hear they're pretty good.

[Howard]

Aye, but then going an buying even a top of the range bottle of polish is still cheaper than spanking £200... ie, it's worth a shot first.

Granted, but it's not as if someone's brushed their jacket/jeans up against it and created a hairline scratch, that's a deep old graunch. No amount of polishing will make that invisible, you need something that fills at least. Dr Colorchip is supposed to work wonders but I don't even think that could help much here

[Rave]

So what if he wants to spend £200 so that his car doesn't look like it's owned by some pikey who doesn't care how it looks?

So everyone who doesn't care what their car looks like is a pikey eh? Cheers.

[joshwa]

Well my car passed it's MOT So that's some good news... and the other problem should be a fairly cheap fix (replacing the brake sensor).