restoring faded Gel Coat

Before you put any sandpaper to it, try buffing compound with a power buffer first. Depending on condition, the compound may do wonders by itself.

I just compounded my 86 last weekend. Somebody had vandalized it with green spray paint.




before....




after compounding only.....



Turned out nice...


If you do wet sand. START with the finest first 1500, 1200, 1,000, etc. , until you find the grit that works best. You may only need to go to 1,000. If you start at 400, you will need to resand thru the finer grits to remove the previous sandpaper scratches.

BTW, if you have scrapes,etc, you can start with coarser paper in those areas only.

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Wow, that is amazing. What year is that ?

wsavini wrote: will that bring back the luster or will it be dull when finished? I tried to put a picture but it wont let me copy and paste.

Wayne,
It will absolutely bring the boat back to the original luster and in fact, maybe even better than the factory. There are some great threads on site covering the process. Try using the search feature as it's a fantastic tool.

As far as picture posting goes, there are also some great threads on it. Moat including myself use a photo hosting site like photobucket.com. It's pretty easy especially since I have my profile on photobucket set up to automatically resize any upload to 800 X 600. Then once uploaded, it's simply a copy of the IMG and a paste on the site.

Wetsand, depending on the condition start at 400 grit, then 800, 1200, 1500, then 2000 on a DA sander. Then polishing compound, and finally wax. Reinstall the decals before waxing. Go easy around any of the lifting strakes and sharp edges on the hull you don;t want to cut thru the gel on the shart edges.