# whats the worst **** up you`ve ever made?



## drnh (Jun 2, 2006)

Just reminissing about when i first started this polishing malarky.

My very first experience was about 10yrs ago when i had a week off work. I`d just sold my car and decided i wanted and MR2 MK1 - i`d always wanted one and thought i`d buy one and keep it a few months.

Anyway ended up with a pretty much mint 1986 Red (well pink) one. Didnt want to get it re-sprayed so got hold of an Autoglym rep who came round with a bottle of cutting polish and a rotary that i bought. It was a single speed unit.

well after about an hour of him showing me i went home and decided i`d give it a blast...cant even remember what type of pad it was but i think it was pretty agressive.

So plonked it on the bonnet which was the pinkest area......started to move it and down the wing when it grabbed the indicator light and dragged me off down the side taking the wing mirror off in one foul swoop!! burned the paint aswell.....

Learned a lesson from that especially when tried to buy a second hand mirror....knightmare.... ahh well after a load of practise it came up mint!!

Daz


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## Epoch (Jul 30, 2006)

My first nightmare was using AG paint renovator by hand in about 1997 after not shaking the bottle. Managed to inflict some lovely straight scratches all accross the bonnet.

Was a happy man at this stage!


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## walkmad (Dec 19, 2006)

When I was 17 Cleaning bird sh*t off with a dry cloth and scratching the paint very badly the got the T cut out to sort it rubbed to hard near windscreen and went through the clear coat, other than that not to bad used AG products for years with good results but then I used to use the swirlomatic in the winter.


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## barber (May 8, 2006)

the classic is using cheap polish/wax's

like halfords show room, or anything thats basically a white cream in a bottle - you cake it on all over the car with a cloth, as thick as you can. Leave it to fully dry out - preferably in direct sunlight. Then make your way around the car with an old tshirt - cursing at how difficult it is to chip off all the baked on polish/wax - after a good few hours of chipping away at small bits at a time - you stand back and remember why you hadnt polished it for over a year!

thankgod for knowledge


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## paddy328 (Mar 4, 2007)

I see a pattern here involving ag products. Mine does too. This time involving the flexy blade. I was using it to wipe off the excess water on my old 325 and i wiped across the lower half of the drivers side and there must have been a bit of grit or something there because i was left with the most god awful scratch running from end to end.

I only use it for windows now.


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## Lespaul (May 23, 2006)

Lets just say it was a very cold day and I was wearing a coat with a big zip to keep warm while washing a Black XR3i, I was young at the time and had quite a stretch to reach the roof, there were a couple of nasty scratch's on the pasenger door   

Darren


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## TangoMan (Jul 28, 2006)

Turning up to the customer without my rotary 

Oh and flinging a door across the workshop when I was experimenting with a rotary to see how hard it was to damage the paint.

Sh!t did I move quickly.


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## releaseyourself (Mar 22, 2007)

An old friend decided to polish up his new metallic brown allegro.


The thing is he used T-cut on the brown cloth interior and dash :wall: :lol: 
The whole interior was covered in white powder and had that nasty T-cut smell.

He soon scrapped the car :thumb:


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## releaseyourself (Mar 22, 2007)

Also an old school friend decided to wash his dads new car...................with a brillo pad  
Then spent the next few weeks hologramming the paintwork with T-cut to remove the swirls, and scratches.


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## ukimportz (Mar 23, 2007)

using tfr on an oxidised red fiesta, the boss's sisters, after washing and rinsing it off you could see a stain where the tfr was, had to t-cut it by hand took 6 hours and my arms almost dropped off. never gonna make that mistake again


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## winrya (Aug 4, 2006)

Cant think of any particular problems with products or technique (well fairy liquid, sponge, old tshirts etc-but never annoyed or worried me at the time) but a week after i picked up the gti i was cleaning it in the cold, wrapped up with jeans and jumper when i pressed against the side of the car when reaching the roof. Thought nothing of it until a day later, there staring at me in the sun was a nice big dink in my new car. Never admitted it to the mrs, but that 80 quid i forked out was, i think, to rectify contact from my belt buckle:devil: 

I never wear a belt or watch now, i just struggle with my jeans falling down


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## drnh (Jun 2, 2006)

HA HA we`ve got some great stories here!!!!

seems AG was pretty much everyones first experience with any type of polish!!

Keep em comin`

Daz


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## 306chris (Jan 27, 2007)

I once used the biggest industrial PW i could find at the yard and ended taking a load of paint off with it. It was an old 1990 escort and the paint was in poor condition anyway. That was back in the old days when i used to think the pressure did the work. :wall:


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## tonybeno (Mar 29, 2007)

I used to do welding on MOT failures and such. Just finished patching up a Jag and decided to light up the BBQ with my torch. My halfwit brother thought it would be funny to squirt petrol onto it. Needless to say it went all over the BBQ and the floor, right where he'd been cleaning the carbs on his bike it flowed under the Jag and BOOM!!!! ended up calling out the firebrigade and making up a story to a very irate customer. It was in all the local papers and ended my short career as a welder.


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## winrya (Aug 4, 2006)

tonybeno said:


> I used to do welding on MOT failures and such. Just finished patching up a Jag and decided to light up the BBQ with my torch. My halfwit brother thought it would be funny to squirt petrol onto it. Needless to say it went all over the BBQ and the floor, right where he'd been cleaning the carbs on his bike it flowed under the Jag and BOOM!!!! ended up calling out the firebrigade and making up a story to a very irate customer. It was in all the local papers and ended my short career as a welder.


I'm sorry but thats really funny


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## tonybeno (Mar 29, 2007)

winrya said:


> I'm sorry but thats really funny


I can Laugh Now but god I was pissed then!!!!


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## P.M.V.Gavin (Feb 21, 2007)

well when i first started out i ran out of AGP on a Ferrari 550 and decided to use a cheapo polish omg i poo'd myself it was bad so had to TFR the whole car and go and get some AGP ended up ok in the end learned a lesson dont use cheap polishes


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## deej (Jun 18, 2006)

Washing the car with those bristly brushes you get with Karchers (hangs head in shame).


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## GAZA62 (Jan 23, 2007)

Posted by DRNH.



> So plonked it on the bonnet which was the pinkest area......started to move it and down the wing when it grabbed the indicator light and dragged me off down the side taking the wing mirror off in one foul swoop!! burned the paint aswell.....


 :lol: Sorry mate but that made me LOL can just see you flying along the side of the MR2 like when i tried out a floor buffer.

Not had any horror stories with cleaning but when i first got my car i was so exited i kept going in and out looking at the car and getting in and out locking unlocking not noticing that the nice big key fob they gave me was leaving nice little chips on the drivers door


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## d3m0n (Feb 19, 2007)

barber said:


> the classic is using cheap polish/wax's
> 
> like halfords show room, or anything thats basically a white cream in a bottle - you cake it on all over the car with a cloth, as thick as you can. Leave it to fully dry out - preferably in direct sunlight. Then make your way around the car with an old tshirt - cursing at how difficult it is to chip off all the baked on polish/wax - after a good few hours of chipping away at small bits at a time - you stand back and remember why you hadnt polished it for over a year!
> 
> thankgod for knowledge


Glad it wasnt just me:lol:


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## wannabe painter (Mar 6, 2007)

think my worst ever has to be when I was polishing the roof on a Porsche Cayenne. 2 week old at that, and the stand I was standing on slipped, and ended up scratching the door and rear wheel.... 

Trying to explain myself to one very angry customer was interesting put it that way.. Now my stand has rubber wrapped around it!


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## drnh (Jun 2, 2006)

GAZA62 said:


> Posted by DRNH.
> 
> :lol: Sorry mate but that made me LOL can just see you flying along the side of the MR2 like when i tried out a floor buffer.
> 
> Not had any horror stories with cleaning but when i first got my car i was so exited i kept going in and out looking at the car and getting in and out locking unlocking not noticing that the nice big key fob they gave me was leaving nice little chips on the drivers door


:lol: a FLOOR BUFFER??!!!! not on the car?!:lol: :doublesho you didnt LOL tell me you didnt ha ha ha:lol:

daz


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## Brazo (Oct 27, 2005)

Polishing an old car with a halfords 10 inch twin handled buffer, the foam pad came off (technically unable to happen) and I was left polishing the paint with a metal thread ring :lol:


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## Avanti (Jan 17, 2006)

believing my Ex when she said she was too old to bear children !


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## GAZA62 (Jan 23, 2007)

> FLOOR BUFFER??!!!! not on the car?! you didnt LOL tell me you didnt ha ha ha


Now that would be a sight trying a floor buffer on my bonnet happened at work it was one of the cleaners and a few us had a go was hillarious i ended up hitting the wall and leaving a nice scortch mark on the floor.


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## drnh (Jun 2, 2006)

Avanti said:


> believing my Ex when she said she was too old to bear children !


:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :wall:


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## Liverpool-Lad (Jun 27, 2006)

releaseyourself said:


> An old friend decided to polish up his new metallic brown allegro.
> 
> The thing is he used T-cut on the brown cloth interior and dash :wall: :lol:
> The whole interior was covered in white powder and had that nasty T-cut smell.
> ...


:doublesho :lol:


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## BenW (Jan 14, 2007)

I respraed my wheelarch in primer then single stage paint, left it about 6 weeks then went to it with the rotary and some megs #83.  The rotary actually ripped the paint off the surface, big chunks of paint on the ground. Reaslied that more polishing was not going to help this so i started sanding it back down, now i realised that the primer hadn't stuck the the original paint at all, quite clearly there was something on the surface i hadn't removed.


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## Guest (May 4, 2007)

Tryed that new Colour coded T-cut stuff on the Mondie before I got into detailing. Didnt see them before but when I joined up on a forum i realiesed what they are.


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## paultoke (Mar 5, 2007)

Brazo said:


> Polishing an old car with a halfords 10 inch twin handled buffer, the foam pad came off (technically unable to happen) and I was left polishing the paint with a metal thread ring :lol:


Same here, pad fell off and i put a nice dent in the bonnet of my 3 week old BMW 320 :doublesho


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## stargazer (Aug 9, 2006)

*Eastern Block hand car wash. Beware!*

One time I remember taking my car to one of those Eastern Block hand Car washes. :detailer: 
The guy was leaning over to dry the roof of my car when all I could hear was his metal buttons clattering all over the passenger door!


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## prelude_stan (Mar 30, 2007)

I touched up a stone chip once, and tried to T-cut it back to smooth it into the surrounding paint, only to press a bit too hard and go down to the metal :devil: 

I also polished over some filler cos I thought that would be easier than using P38 (dunno why, probably just being lazy) then spray painted over the polish that was left in the pinholes to try and get a smooth finish..... needless to say most of the paint fell out and it didn't look very good.

Apart from that, the worst was probably buying a Argos buffer and trying to polish a friends car, the woollen bonnet flew off and not much else happened really when I tried to use it, bit of a waste of money


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## Sjdickso (Nov 8, 2005)

Worst thing i have done apart from using old t-shirts as buffing cloths and and cacking mer on as thick as possible. 

Was to use clay for the frist time, -2c and the clay picked up a bit of grit looked like i had wet sanded the wing of my girlfriends clio!.


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## sixsr (Jan 6, 2007)

I was using a hot pressure washer in the bodyshop I worked in, a long time ago, and took half the paint of the side of a freshly painted car.


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## Paulm31 (Jul 27, 2006)

funnily enough, mine was today. doing some paint correction with the rotary on a tight spot. that went fine excepot i didnt realise it was resting on another part of bodywork and ive taken it back to primer  (now that original primer, not after the rubbish respray it had on top of the original paint) so thats 3 layers gone!


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## Auto Finesse (Jan 10, 2007)

at my first ever job (part time) reversed a pajero in to the bosses skiline bumper bonnet and lights spanked i was only 17. latest was droped the positector in the wheel bucket, im still p!ssed about that, its [email protected]


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## martyp (Oct 24, 2006)

Some great stories on this tread!

Not really had many major problems with paint etc, other than staining a black car from letting some TFR dry into it - that took a while to polish back...  

My main one is using AG Car Glass Polish on my tinted windows, total lapse of concentration got a few fine scratches all over them now. Gonna try PlasticX on them tho... :speechles


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## Wozza (Mar 3, 2007)

Polished a white Sierra a few years back (with some cheapo stuff), got distracted and it baked on it red hot sun, took hours to get off.
Also tried to polish out a scratch once and got a bit carried away and went through the clear coat.


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## Forbez (Feb 8, 2006)

Helped a mate polish up his Black Fiat punto, he wanted it TCut'd so thats what we did. 

T'Cut the whole car in baking hot sun, and then tried to buff it off! 

There was still tcut on the car 2 years later, when it was nicked.


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## Padtwo (Apr 11, 2007)

I worked for a car hire firm over the summer in the early 90's. Go to clean up the cars, mostly inside then go out and thra... sorry, DELIVER them carefully to customers 

Boss had his brand new Scorpio delivered 1st August so needed a clean about 3 weeks later. It wasn't actually me that did it, but there was some "wax" stuff that you needed to leave on for an hour and some general cleaner that we used to use on mats etc, both in similar looking bottles....needless to say it wasn't the "wax" that got used on the mats....:wall: but the general cleaner that was sprayed all over the paint and then parked in the sun to dry for an hour


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## dominic84 (Jan 27, 2007)

I had the same problem with TFR staining but on a brown car - live and learn ay!


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## vpricey (May 8, 2006)

Padtwo said:


> I worked for a car hire firm over the summer in the early 90's. Go to clean up the cars, mostly inside then go out and thra... sorry, DELIVER them carefully to customers
> 
> Boss had his brand new Scorpio delivered 1st August so needed a clean about 3 weeks later. It wasn't actually me that did it, but there was some "wax" stuff that you needed to leave on for an hour and some general cleaner that we used to use on mats etc, both in similar looking bottles....needless to say it wasn't the "wax" that got used on the mats....:wall: but the general cleaner that was sprayed all over the paint and then parked in the sun to dry for an hour


Lovin it!!!

There's some crackers ere like!!

I had one o those Halfrauds buffers too, got the cheapo 12V one for a tenner or some thin. Needless to say after a whole day of polishing the car I did wonder what happened to the radio that was on in the car earlier......Also wondered why the car didn't start!!lol.

tried to fix a wee rust bubble on my old 306 1.9td, rubbed it back, a bit of primer and paint, tried to polish it in an wondered why a couldn't get rid of the extra sanding marks in the paint?! ......soon realised it was like 240 grit sand paper I'd used not 1200.............oops!!


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## Ste_1 (May 8, 2007)

On my first car (Astra 96) i decided to jetwash it, and then polish it after. I sprayed the whole car down and leathered it off. Got the polish out and fired away..... by the time i realised the rust from the arches had been wiped around the side of the car i just stopped altogether.

It left some pretty deep scratches over the side of the car, so i decided to sand it all off and respray it.. didnt do too go of a job on that either really. Poor Car hated me!

Lesson learnt......


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## Spirit Detailing (Mar 29, 2007)

Worst thing I ever did was catch the head of my extractor in the cloth on the back seat of a Mondeo. I didn't even notice it until I had the full seat done, but there was a very straight tear, about 4 inches long in the fabric. To this day I'm still not sure that it was me, but I didn't notice it there before I started so I paid for a new seat. 

Funniest one I ever saw though, was at a Jap import dealer that I used to work for from time to time. The owners 16 yr old son did a bit of work on a white EVO II for some pocket money. He sprayed the entire car with a solvent and left it to dry in the sun. Completely destroyed the paint and glass. Everything looked like it had water marks on it, but worse damage than I had ever seen from a chemical. Couldn't be repaired... I think the son was cut out of the Will !!! Or worse, coz I never saw him around the lot again!!


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