mankool

'Technician' has said it all. It is highly likely that the person polishing your car didn't check the paint thickness and he went through your clear coat and/or the paint. Sunlight, specifically UV rays, is another strong reason why the clear coat may fail. The main point that I want to get across is that polishing a car itself is not a bad thing, as long as you do it right. By that, I mean you have the right tools/gauge to assess how much clear coat you are removing and in case of single coat cars, how much of the actual paint that you are shaving off. Secondly, you can significantly delay the appearance of scratches on your car by washing your car using the right methods, one of them being the two bucket method as suggested by 'Technician'. And one should really limit 'paint correction' jobs to once a year in order to avoid losing too much clear coat/paint. You didn't mention which make of car you have? Usually the Japanese makes suffer from this problem as they have very soft paint.

If you are planning to do paint correction yourself then you have to invest a lot of time in learning how this whole process works. I don't know what level of experience you have in this field but paint correction, when done by a professional, can take anywhere between 6-12 hours for your car depending upon the condition of the paint and also upon the type of result you are looking for. The process involves you using a buffing machine (rotary or orbital etc) and using some chemicals in order to 'skim' some of the clear coat around the scratches in order to level it with the paint around it. A Makita buffer costs like AED900 and an orbital buffer like the FLEX VRG3401 costs AED1500. Chemicals, such as the compound, polish and finishing polish can cost around AED1000 or less if you are lucky to find them in small 250ml bottles. But there is a lot of science (and marketing) behind the chemicals as each of them is different in the amount of 'cut' it provides and the type of finish it leaves on the paint. Additionally, you have to be mindful and knowledgeable about the type of paint that you are working on because some paints, like most Japanese cars, is soft so you have to do a test spot and test which chemical works best. 'Least aggressive' is the approach that you have to use in order to do a test spot. Man, there is so much more on this that I can go on and on But I will leave you with a good resource to do all your reading etc .... autogeek.net ... that is where I learned how to correct paint and then I tried it out on my cars. Let me know if you need additional pointers ...

Yes amitaj, ^ that is what I am talking about .... and my guess is that a 2006 LC with 150k mileage or so will sell in today's market for some where between 46-50k. But back to the original question - Which is a good place to post car adverts? I don't like spending AED199 every time I want to sell a car.

Hi guys, I would like to share the flip side of the story. I am a n Engineer by profession but I buy and sell cars as a hobby. I mostly look for luxury sedans and sports cars so once in two months I buy my 'weekend' car. The reality is that your best bet is to sell to end users and you will hardly find a dealer paying decent money. Their margin is some where like 10% for a car below 50k and 15-20k for a car touching the 100k mark and above. But the important thing that I wanted to get across is that some time our expectation is too high and when we get a quote from a dealer we feel they are paying half the value, which may be true in some cases as some people highlighted. For example, recently a friend's buddy was selling his BMW 530, 2013 with 45,000km for 141k and Iif I were to buy this car in order to resell it then I would pay him just 100k because i have to resell thr car back in the market and grt my money rolling. This also means my price should be attractive or else i woll be stuxk with the car. So thats how things work at our end The second point is that today's car market, like any other business, is doing real bad .. Things are hardly moving so the dealers try to play it safe by offering such ridiculous prices.

If it is paint that u want to restore, then we can talk. I am not a business but a car enthusiast. I will attach a pic of one of my cars on which I performed paint correction and you can judge for yourself if this is the type of work you are looking for.

you need loads ... and i'll repeat that for emphasis .. **LOADS** of elbow grease to get those headlights shining again if you rely on the scratch out + hand application. Using some 1500 and 2000 grit wet sand paper, a rotary buffer and a good compound like 3M Fast cut ... it will take you max 1 hour to get those light look like new again. I'm no pro but venturing into the car detailing scene so I have experimented on my Clio 182 .. did the head lights and even on the hood (which has very hard paint). Again, this comes with the infamous disclaimer 'Don't try this at home' .... just j/k