Jared88

Hi , so are all car polish safe for bike frames? What is the diff between a car and a bike polish? Thanks.

EricDJ

Works fine. I have used Meguiars metal polish and car wax on bikes before. Its all paint. Its all good

Autokat

^^^same

supcom

To be technical about it, you are polishing the paint. There's no difference between bike paint and car paint.

However, many auto polishes have a light abrasive to smooth out scratches and remove oxidized paint. Unless your finish is fading, look for a polish that is just a wax.

DannoXYZ 

It's the same paint for the most part, some use enamel, most use polyurethane. However, bike paint is thinner than what's applied to cars, so you really should be careful. Most bikes will have 2-stage paint with clearcoat (especially if it's metallic). This clearcoat will most likely be thinner than what's applied to cars, so you don't want to rub it all away.

Polishes have fine abrasives that grind away the top layer of oxidized or scratched paint and gives a smooth finish. You can get polishes as an abrasive-only product, like TurtleWax rubbing or polishing compound. This is preferable because you can control the grit and volume of polish applied. Other polishes are combination abrasive and wax, it initially does some grinding, then it dries up and you have a waxy layer. It does remove some paint, so only use it where absolutely necessary. Otherwise, go with wax only.

Same thing with metal polishes. The Simichrome product has an abrasive, which works good for getting corrosion and rust off hard metal parts like steel and chrome. But it's a little too rough for bare aluminium. For those, I'd prefer a chemical ammonia-based polish only like Mother's.

shoerhino

What if decals are applied on top of the clear coat? Is a car polish still ok?

DannoXYZ 

There's a difference between decals and stickers. Decals are typically very thin and applied with water on top of the color-coat (they're not adhesive). Then the clearcoat is sprayed on top to seal it in.

Stickers are thicker solid-color vinyl with adhesive on the back. They may also have images/logos printed on the top side as well. Be careful using abrasive polishes on these as you can actually rub off the image from the sticker, leaving you just the blank vinyl underneath. Polishes should be fine with solid-color vinyl stickers though.

One good product is the TurtleWax ColorBack polish/wax. It has a very mild abrasive along with some solvents to remove road-tar and blemishes from the surface. Then the wax gives a nice shine. But only use once initially to clean up the surface, then go with wax-only compounds later. The NuFinish stuff seems to last a long time.

colna-joe

I completely agree with what everyone is saying here... I use Mother's chrome/mag wheel polish on my components and the chrome parts of the frame and Maguiar's Gold for the paint... I've had zero problems. The only downside is it's kinda hard to hold on to the frame when you pick it up .