cleaning the wheel arch protector.....

[bruh_la]

Sounds like an interesting thread eh?

Seriously, the clear protection film fwd of the rear arch. How do i clean it, get marks off it and stop stuff from sticking in the first place?

Can i use regular polish on it and then wax it?

[james33]

no do some work.

[jeffers_EliseS1]

Dependant on the colour of the car you might be better putting something on top of it. I have a Silver S1 with black wheels so put a bit of black fablon (the sticky backed sheets) over the top of the protectors. My originals turned a bit yellowy after a while and it looks way better with the black on top. Cheap aswell, big roll of fablon is about £5 from B&Q.

[S Works]

Clean with regular car cleaning stuff - not sure about polish, wax etc. I'm sure Tony or Janitor will be able to offer advice from their car-detailing website links... perhaps have a search and find the link they posted to the detailing forum, then ask on there?

[bobcorb]

Put new ones on. My 10,000 early S2 Exige ones were a bit second hand so I bought new ones. The new (05 on) ones are much bigger and actually more discrete. You could make your own using the kits available from Halfords (Ventureshield sheet in Halfords boxes) £20 for a 60cm square, although I'm investigating buying 3M paint protection film in bulk off the roll just now.

[evolutionvalet]

Theoretically, you should just wash and wax the protection film areas like the rest of the car.
Unfortunately, some films have no UV properties like the 3M film so will yellow with age. Once the yellowing has happened, there is nothing you can do.
Removal is an option and replace with 3M film from Paintshield or others or covering with the black film is also another good option if it blends with the car.

3M film can and should be washed and waxed as regualrly as the paintwork.

Hope this helps.

Kev

[TonyHetherington]

oops sorry only just seen this thread!

Simply put, there's not alot you can do. To be honest, I hate the things! It's a case of washing them like you do the rest of the body work. I have tried some halfords colour polish (i.e. in my case, black) on them and it stops it looking quite so bad but, simply put, renewing is the only way. And then, because the area where they were not looks bad. It's a catch 22.

It's the one thing I'm really frustrated about on my car - the stone chips, both at the front and up the side. I'm tempted to get it all resprayed but I'm doing about 7k miles in Euro-trips this year and so it will just look bad again (I'll probably do it before I sell though).

In my case (particularly sad) car cleaning fetish, I just clean them as well as I can, polish over with appropriately coloured polish, then wax, and it's as good as they're going to get.

Hope that helps!
Tony