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Bringing back faded gel coat


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Looked at a 2001 Wakesetter yesterday. The gel coat was a little faded. It was not pastey whit and flakey but you could tell that the sun had done some damage. I thought I heard of a magic gel coat restoration product that could really bring faded ge coat back to life.

Am I dreaming of unicorns or does such a product really exist?

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I had pretty good luck with 3m Fiberglass Restorer & a buffing wheel on a black boat. The black gelcoat had faded a bit & was super obvious when I removed the old decals from the boat. Hitting it with the 3M product made the two shades of black come together so well I couldn't see where the decals had been. After a summer in the sun, the two blacks faded together & you could see a very faint shadow where the old decals had been. I owned that boat for about 7 yrs & used this stuff 3 or 4 times till you couldn't tell the decals had ever been there.

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+1 on the 3M fiberglass restorer.

When I bought this stuff I got home and did a little test patch to see how well it would work on my boat. It was my intention to do the whole boat when I had time over the weekend, but, it worked so well I ended up doing all the oxidized spots that night.

I only spent about 2 hours with a rag and it made a drastic difference!

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There are lots of cutting compounds out there that will help bring gel back to life. If it is really bad you'll need to wetsand the boat and then use cutting compound. Here's a good gel restoration thread.

Here's another thread on a "magical" compound that looks like it cleaned up a pretty oxidized Bu with no wetsanding.

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  • 2 weeks later...

My 2000 23 LSV was just starting to get a little chauky when I bought it last spring. My Dad polished it with Buff Magic (change the pads frequently) and followed it up with Pro Polish. It still looks great (starting to show that the transom sits in the sun...).

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