Rear Spoiler Cleaning Advice
From my experience with the car being outdoors 100% of the time and driven daily, the rear spoiler cleaning has been something I'd been missing for some time. I thought I was cleaning it OK but it turns out I was not.
There is a lot of advice suggesting that using WD40 and a cloth or kitchen scouring pad is the way to go. And this is likely true if done regularly and where the car is kept generally dry and/or indoors. For me however this was obviously not really cutting it. Check out the blog post to see the whole story, but i'll just summarise what I did in the end here.
This is what mine looked like BEFORE I started my first ever proper clean. At this stage, I genuinely thought the lighter patches were damage/wear and that the rest of it was how it should be looking. I was wrong. The lighter patches are how it originally looked when new - after checking my original photos of the day I collected it, I confirmed it was indeed a very very light grey - and not the deep black that mine was mostly now.
My steps
1. Tape up the adjacent (painted) panels
This is best to ensure that you don't accidentally rub agressively onto the painted (or exposed carbon, if you are lucky) adjacent spoiler sections.
2. Wash the whole section and de-grease it with panel cleaner
I did this to ensure there wasn't anything unexpected on there and to minimise the amount of grease and road dirt i'd be dealing with.
3. Using water, medium abrasive car polish, and a souring pad - go for it (with like 50% force)
For me, the level of dirt and carbon/soot I had on mine, this step took me over an hour. Albeit it's the first time I'd done it this way in 4 years and 20,000 miles. So if I do it more regularly then it will probably require a lot less time and effort. Don't be scared of going at it quite hard. Just keep switching out the water and watch for any debris that might be hard enough to actually mark the metal itself. It's much harder than paintwork, but it's not indestructible.
4. Wash, panel wipe and re-seal it with whatever you were previously using on it.
For me, that was a Gtechnic product - although this time I've tried for the first time their Ceramic Wheel armour (C5) as this is 500'C rated and suitable for ceramics/metals.
Before and After :)
