My late father's '87 528e is just a great car with about 91K on the clock. I starting some work on her and getting a fresh engine from tacm off this board; M20b25 ecu and all the goodies and 3.46 rear diff.
Anyway, the car is silver and has been garaged a good bit of it's life. But the paint looks like it went through a car wash with the roller type brushes a million times. Swirl marks are just terrible. Griots Garage has a really nice random orbital and I'm wondering, will the paint come back? The silver grey color is still there but seems washed out. I've tried hand polishing but to no avail. Suggestions anyone.
And what the heck can I do with these terrible dull bumpers? I've tried hand polishing those too and NO luck. I'd rather cover them up with a Euro bumper and dam.
I've asked a ton of questions here lately and everyone has been so kind to guide me along in bringing back a very sentimental car to me.
^ ^ Give him a call. The results and expertise will be better than what you get from Griots. A good random orbital will be very helpful, but you don't need to get it from Griots. The Porter Cable units are very nice.
If a silver car looks terribly swirled up in the sun I'm thinking you might be seeing clear coat failure, not simply swirl marks. Especially if 20+ year old original paint. The pattern of the visual defects gives clues to the observer. If the damage is more apparent on the horizontal surfaces and appear more like parallel strings of spider thread blanketing all over, that is more than likely early signs of clear coat failure. Not much you can do if that is the case. On the other hand, scratches that create swirled paint are more random and will lack any particular pattern under direct lighting. Just make sure you know the difference before spending a bunch of money buying tools and products, thinking the paint can be fixed.
Not much can be easily done to the bumpers. They are aluminum and anodized. That sacrificial coating is what becomes cloudy and discolored. The best way would be to polish the bumpers-- which means sanding through the anodizing and then spending much time working up to very fine grades of sand paper before polishing. I've done it before and the amount of time involved to achieve a mirror-like bumper this way is not insignificant, plus constant maintenance is a requirement. Raw aluminum won't stay shiny for long when exposed to the elements...
