Car care and aesthetical repairs

Restoring shine

The following sequence should do the trick: wash the car well. Apply a special finish restorer like T-Cut (Automotive Chemicals Ltd, Bury, United Kingdom; phone: +44 161 764 5981) or Farécla G3 (Broadmeads, Ware, Herts., United Kingdom; phone: +44 1920 485548). These special products used to remove oxidation are available from car paint specialists—don't confuse them with the average All-You-Need-Is-Our-Product Magic Color Restorer available at gas stations and advertised by infomercials. As they work by removing the top, oxidized layer of your paint, reading and sticking to the instructions carefully is of utmost importance. T-Cut has a special variant for metallic finishes, Farécla can handle both.

Wash the car again very well to get any remaining restorer off the finish, then polish it with a good quality color restorer (like the Turtle Wax Color Magic series) and finally wax it (eg. Turtle Wax Hard Wax With Teflon or Hard Shell Shine Car Wax). Waxing the polish thoroughly requires some elbow grease and is therefore neglected by most, however, no wonder product claiming easy application can beat the shine and protection of hard wax. The liquid version of Turtle Wax is much easier to apply.

Certainly, you cannot use T-Cut or Farécla regularly as they would remove all the paint from your car. For everyday protection use hard wax or liquid wax, the color restorer should be used once or twice a year.

Brian WEBBER

Repainting body parts

Do it yourself! Touch-up brushes are unusable but Holts (England), Multona (Italy) or Dupli-Color (Germany) sell the same acrylic paint in 400 ml spray cans, and those are excellent. You can find the matching paint in their catalog based on your car's paint reference number. You may have to check more than one of those, their color range is not exactly the same (for instance, I could find the exact match for my Red of the Long Valley only in Dupli-Color and the Anthracite Grey used on the upper frame of the doors only from Multona). These lacquers are enough for small scratches but to repair larger areas, especially if the plain metal can already be seen, you will need the primer of the same paint family, too. The primer is a thicker paint, acting as a filler as well; and being thicker, it is much less transparent than the lacquer, one layer of the primer covers the surface much better than two or three layers of the color lacquer. Thus, if you do use the primer to make the imperfections and color differences of the underlying surface disappear, you will be able to spare a few layers of the lacquer and to obtain a better finish.

These primers generally come in white, grey and brown, select white primer for white cars, grey for light and brown for the dark colored ones; otherwise you might need one or two additional layers of the lacquer to match perfectly. Metallic finishes also require a clear lacquer coating on the top.

Note that the original bumpers are different both in color and texture, the paint being in the plastic material itself and not a coating on the surface. Replacement bumpers, however, only come in grey and have to be painted to a matching color. The acrylic paints mentioned do not adhere to the polypropylene bumpers: you can try it on the inner, invisible side of the bumper: spray some paint onto it. Stick a piece of adhesive tape on the surface next day and see whether the paint peels off when you remove the tape. If it does (which will probably be the case, unless your replacement bumper is made of something different than polypropylene), you have to coat the surface with a plastic primer first. I used Holts Spraymatch Plastic Primer (it was excellent but it is transparent so it's not always easy to see which areas are already covered) but Sikkens and other professional paint manufacturers also have their own version. To be safe, repeat the adhesive tape test both with the plastic primer and then with the primer plus the acrylic color paint.

There are special bumper paints as well (Plasticote is one of the companies producing such paints) but you might not find the exact match for the color of the car. If you need white, grey, black or are satisfied with a close but not exact color match (if you paint all bumpers, this is not necessarily ugly), they might be useful.

Read and follow the instructions very carefully; the spraying distance is of utmost importance (if you go closer, the paint will not cover the surface evenly and may become too thick and run, if you are too far away, the paint will haze), and keep the 'several thin layers instead of a thick one' principle. I know from my own experience that, when you spray and the finish isn't yet perfect, it is very tempting to add a little bit more paint right then. But resist the temptation, never go over the same area twice in a row. If it doesn't cover correctly, then be it, you'll add another layer later. It can be repainted after only 10-15 minutes, so there's no need to solve everything with one layer. Rub the surface down with a rubbing compound (eg. Turtle Wax Rubbing Compound) or very fine wet abrasive paper before the last layer(s). Try out the whole process on the inner surface or bottom side of the body panel or bumper beforehand.

Paint color codes

Citroën shipped cars painted in the following body colors. Note that color samples on a computer monitor are only approximate, depending on many factors (like the quality of your monitor, its calibration, the settings of its controls, the color and intensity of the ambient light).

Don't forget to check the code once more in the paint manufacturer's catalog before you actually buy it.

Cleaning vynil trim

Avoid silicone spray. Many trim areas—especially parts of the dashboard exposed to direct sunlight—are constantly bombarded by ultraviolet rays which break down the molecules comprising the vynil skin, allowing raw vynil molecules to escape the panel.

Silicone based products do not usually contain UV-protectors. What is even worse, silicone may intensify the UV degradation by acting like a magnifying glass. Silicone oil can also dissolve the essential oils in the vinyl skin. All this leads to the formation of cracks in the vynil skin. Silicone also has very strong electrostatic attraction which may be considered beneficial in that it will tend to stay where it is placed, but will also attract every dust particle in your town.

To clean the trim parts, clean (or mildly soapy) water and a nailbrush or toothbrush is generally enough. To remove more stubborn stains I found computer cleaning products very useful (my products of choice are Foamclene antistatic foam cleaner and PC-Clene antistatic cleaning wipes from Automation Facilities but numerous other companies manufacture similar products). They are capable of removing the dark, dirty coloration from the veins of the trim surface. After cleaning, I use Turtle Wax Carisma, a petroleum-based spray.

To remove dust from recesses and hard-to-reach places like vent grilles, use an air duster spray can, also available in any office supply store (Automation Facilities has this, too, called Sprayduster).

Repairing vynil trim

Discolored or broken vinyl trim parts (even if some morsels are missing between the broken parts) can be perfectly repaired using Araldite (or similar) two component epoxy adhesive resins (choose the fast-setting version). The customary plastic packaging used in great volumes today (with paper background and the product shrink wrapped) can be used in the process. Cut out the bigger flat parts of such plastic wrappers. Araldite does not glue to them: even if it seems that it does, it can be easily snapped off once the resin is completely hardened. It is vital to wait until the complete hardening patiently because trying to remove the plastic from the resin before that will ruin your attempts at a clear and nice-looking surface. If in doubt, try first with a small piece of plastic if Araldite sets hard onto it or not. Common adhesive tapes like Scotch Magic Tape (especially the non-permanent version) can also be used as they can be peeled off the fully hardened epoxy resin. As a third alternative, you can use the non-sticky back paper used as the carrier of self-adhevise labels.

Remove the vinyl panel in question. Clean the area to be repaired thoroughly to remove any dirt, oily residue or the remnants of oily trim cleaning products. Cover the hole, crack, broken part of whatever you want to repair on the right side of the panel with adhesive tape (if smaller) or an adequately shaped part of the plastic wrapper mentioned (if the damaged area is bigger). In the second case, use adhesive tape to secure it in its place (Scotch Magic Tape is the best kind to use because it doesn't leave glue residues).

Mix the two components (resin and hardener) of the epoxy adhesive according to the instructions on the packaging. Observe the setting time specified and don't mix more than you can use during this period of time.

Using a small plastic spatula (it usually comes with the epoxy resin), fill the resin into the hole, crack or missing part from the wrong side of the panel. Unless you have to preserve the thickness of the vinyl panel (check beforehand to see if there is room behind the panel), add glue not only to the exact location of the spot to be repaired but a few centimeters around it. Fill it up so that the glue layer is 3-4 millimeters proud of the surface of the panel.

Cover the glue (and the repaired spot beneath it) with a larger piece of wrapper plastic, flat or warped, cut into the form the panel shape requires. Push it down so that the resin beneath it will distribute evenly, filling every hole and crack, forming a flat layer over the panel wrong side surface. Fix the covering plastic in this position with adhesive tape or small clamps. Let the resin harden fully (24 hours in general) then snap off the cover with your nail or a small screwdriver. Remove the adhesive tape or other covering plastic on the right side, too. Curved panels (for instance, A or C pillar interior trim panels) might require more than one session to form the whole surface. If you were careful, the right side is perfectly level with the panel and the wrong side has a very neatly looking, strong epoxy layer, glueing and fortifying the repair.

If the crack is larger or the panel in question must withstand physical stress (like a spoiler or bumper), use a fiberglass reinforcement sheet on the wrong side. Kits with such sheets and the necessary epoxy resin glue are available from Loctite and other manufacturers, generally under the name of Bumper repair kit.

Buy a can of acrylic paint spray (Holts, Multona, Dupli-Color, Sikkens or other makes) matching the color of the vinyl panel. To make the epoxy resin on the right side of the panel absolutely invisible, don't spray the paint onto the panel directly but onto a lint-free cloth instead and use this as a stamper to stamp the paint onto the surface. You can use the same stamping method to repaint parts which are discolored (for instance the top of the dashboard just behind the windshield in cars trimmed in light grey, which is often damaged by direct sunlight). I've already used this method for much more ambitious modifications than simply to combat some discolorations: also to completely change a beige colored trim part into a black one with stunning results.

Acrylic paints dry very quickly. The small amount you stamp on with a cloth becomes dry in one minute or so. They also change their color shade slightly during this time. So, there is no hurry: proceed in small steps. You can always add another thin layer if required but you can hardly remove a thick layer without leaving ugly traces.