bazz54

It was an HB and I owned it from 1976 to 2018 (42 years). It shows up as SORN and I've tried to find out who has it; I have loads of spares for it. I now have my Gen7 and my Rover 620, both get through MoTs without advisories and I plan to keep both of them.

I sold a much-cherished car about 10 years ago, and lived to deeply regret it. It was a 1970 Vauxhall Viva, my very first car. This idea of selling cars on to people who will "look after them" doesn't always work 🙁.

I doubt these waxes will help much if it's already started; you could ring Meguiars and see if any of their products might help?

I think that what they claim is that these so called ceramic waxes retain a water-repellant surface for longer than the old styles waxes. Additionally they claim they are much easier/faster to apply, so you are probably be going to be more inclined to re-apply them more often. If all that turns out to be true, I guess they should do good job wrt maintaining all aspects of your paintwork. Maybe some guy on You Tube has attempted a real-life comparison? Have you had any evidence of your clearcoat is lifting? I've had nothing of that kind, and only one tiny spec of rust on the upper body was on a sharp edge of the pretrol filler cap (suitably killed off with a dab of zinc phosphate paint). I should admit the my 7 lives under car port, especially during winter conditions when my old Rover 600 (which has some winter tires) goes out in to the salty filth!

So, I've made my first use of this product on my Gen7, and it behaved pretty much as per the YouTube video. That is to say, it went on, got flushed off then dried with very little effort on my part. It looks good, maybe not as good as several hours of Carnauba waxing/polishing might have achieved and now it's all down to how long it holds a shine and repels water. As it it's a Meguiars products, and it has been on the market some time, I'm reasonably optimistic 🙂.

Ah, I've just bought the Meguiars! Something I have been wondering about with these "ceramic" waxes is that they refer to SiO2, which is silica, but they must actually be based on silicones. I seem to vaguely recall there being silicone polishes on the market many years ago and the big problem with those was removing all trace of them if you needed to do any painting?

Yes, I think many of us have old waxes sitting in the shed. I started to clean and wax my Rover 620 yesterday, spent 6 hours on and still have a lot to do. If the new ceramic waxes are as easy to apply as in the video, and their water repellancy lasts much longer than the old products, then I think they are worth a try.

Sometime ago, a friend was singing the praises of these "ceramic waxes", but I tried one and was not impressed. Since then, I keep seeing good reports on Google about this Meguiars stuff https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVOFlynVxco. I've reached an age where spending hours using old style cream waxes is hard to do on my two cars, and this looks all together easier. Note the emphasis in the video that your first application needs to be done differently from subsequent applications. Anyone tried this particular product?

Brake pads seem to be very high on the probability scale for conterfiet stuff. I remember buying Lockheed pads from a local shop back in the mid-1980's (long before eBay) which were clearly wrong uns. I've got a soft spot for all things Mintex; not bought anything else for a long time.

I need to fettle both my G7 and my Rover; do we have any favourite people for the supply of oil these days? Are Opie still good? B

The difference between the most zealous tester and a reasonable one can be enormous! Some will create an advisory out of surface rust on heavy-section metal which would be good for another decade... or two.

Can you give some me background on using those sites to trace a car? I only use Facebook a little bit. I want to track down a car I owned for 40 years.... then sold it then really regretted it. The guy I sold it to sold it on and and hasn't been helpful. It's listed as SORN. I've posted pictures on the Owners Club Facebook page but no response. Whereabouts on isnta and X would you place a post looking for a particular car? Thanks B

The question for me is whether or not "conformal" coatings are intended for use on steels and I suspect the answer is no. The sort of corrosion you get on circuit boards is usually on tin, zinc and aluminium. Problems in electronics can be caused by corrosion which is truly microscopic ( the growth of whiskers which are much finer that a human hair). Conformal coatings are just thin coatings to minimise access of moisture on to electronic hardware where there probably is not going to be much moisture anyway, a bit like thin varnish. I'm not a fan of what I call "gooey black stuff", typically, the tar-like stuff that's been flogged as "underseal" since the 1960's. I'm not a fan of Waxoyl. I prefer paints which include corrosion inhibitors in them; I'm thinking mainly of zinc phosphate, though there are others. It's the complicated electrochemical reactions of the inhibitors that do the business in helping prevent corrosion. Preventing corrosion is a huge multi-billion dollar business and there's some tremendous science that has gone in to it over the last 70-80 years.

I appreciate that you are trying to protect the car, but that being the case, I think it is very early to take if off the road prior to winter. Cars like to be used and non-use leads to failure, like brakes rusting and seizing. If you leave the battery connected, it will discharge and eventually damage the battery. Re-charging a fully discharged battery never recovers the original capacity and reduces the life of the battery a lot. I think my view is that if you cannot get it inside a building, you are best keeping it running; just don't take it out when there is snow/ice/salt around, and in recent winters, that has been a very few days. Apart from my Gen7, my other car has a set of winter tyres and so that is the workhorse in winter, but I never actually take the 7 off the road for more than a week or two as I have don't have a dry place to store it.

I've not previously heard that you can clean a cat with soap and water. Of course there are very many kinds of soap, some of which have all kind of additives in and you want to be sure that nothing gets left of the catalyst that could affect the performance. I think a really simple basic soap would be best. I'd make a point of doing the washing then immediately rinse so nothing ever dries out. I wonder if the final rinse might be best done with deionised water. I don't think you'd want to leave and calcium on the cat. For cleaning a cat on car, somebody once told me that there's an American product made by "Justice Bros" which is very good , but never needed to use it. B