The windscreen on my green Deluxe has always had a reasonably noticeable windscreen wiper scratch. I have tried at times to remove it but with no success. Recently, I came across this website (Australian), that sold a variety of polishing compounds & equipment. http://www.polish-up.com.au/
One of their products is a Glass & Perspex Polishing Kit, so I thought I might give it a go. It consists of a Cerium Oxide polishing compound, a polishing wheel & 2 polishing pads. It cost me $35 with postage. This is what it looks like.
There is a set of instruction that also comes with the package so I read it up carefully & started the process. I started by sticking masking tape on the inside of the windscreen to indicate the position of the scratch. This wasn't really very helpful & I replaced that with a black marking pen. It gave a more accurate marking of the scratch.
I mixed the cerium oxide as directed (into a milky slurry) & only needed 1 teaspoon for all that I did. The polishing pad attached easily to the drill & I used a small paint brush to apply the slurry to the screen. I then started the polishing with the drill. The instructions emphasise the importance of not heating up the screen. So I polished for about 25 seconds at a time & then sprayed a little water on the screen. I kept doing this process for about 30 minutes. This shows the polishing bit.
After doing this for this amount of time, I decided to see if the scratch was actually disappearing. So, I cleaned the outside & inside and to my surprise, the scratch was definitely disappearing. Some more polishing & some more slurry & the mark was hardly noticeable from the outside, yet a little more obvious from the inside. A few more times were necessary & then a good cleaning & I was pretty happy! Here are the before (left - note the mark just above the steering wheel) & after (right - no mark obvious) photos.
Is it completely gone? No. Am I happy with the result? Yes. It cannot be even noticed from outside the car. With some more polishing, maybe the scratch would completely disappear but I was happy with the result, enough to say that this little kit is a good addition to you restoration toolbox.
Thanks, Bob, from Perth for your comments. Good to hear that there are a few people out there who are Capri enthusiasts and read my ramblings.
I would welcome any feedback, corrections or additions so just click on the comments section at the bottom of the posts & I will get back to you.
I know that there are some readers in Russia, Alaska & the USA so I would love to hear from you.
Regards
Ian
For several months, my green Deluxe has been misfiring on a cold start. It seemed as if the engine was running on 3 cylinders for a brief time maybe 5 - 20 seconds & then it would just run as it should. Rarely did it start without some misfire. Nothing visibly seemed to be astray & I had checked the choke was OK & all the leads were firmly attached.
At last, time for some action & I was hoping it was nothing major. First step was to pull out the plugs. Undid No 1 plug, closest to the front, & there was all this discolouring & gunk on the metal body of the plug. Very interesting! Next plug out & similar discolouring but not quite as much. Plugs 3 & 4 were as per normal. The tips of the plugs were all very similar & with a normal type colouring.
With a torch, I looked very carefully in the spark plug wells of No 1 & 2 cylinder & they also had a bit of rubbish. To me ,it looked like fried radiator coolant. If the top radiator hose was leaking, coolant could run down a passage in the head into the plug wells. Very interesting! The hose looked very normal but I had experienced some spraying of coolant after a couple of long runs and assumed it was the radiator cap. So, off came the top radiator hose.
On first inspection, it looked fine. I then took it out in the sunlight & after probing & pushing discovered a very small split on the underside of the hose, very close to the clamp. I then formulated this theory that each time the car was garaged after a run, the build up radiator pressure caused the hose to discharge a small amount of coolant into the No 1 spark plug well.
So, let's put in a new set of plugs (NGK-BP6ES; $20) & a new radiator hose (Gates 05-0108; $16).
After several starts, no misfiring & it runs properly from start up. It is yet to go on a long run but I am confident the split hose was the problem.
