When our cars paint starts looking a bit tired - the majority of people go to their local Halfords store and purchase a bottle of something called T-Cut.

The original formula for T Cut was developed in the late 70's to remove oxidisation in single stage paint.
The way it does this is through micro abrasive particles loaded into the carrier fluid.
As you work the fluid in to the paint, these abrasives strip the top layer of paint off to reveal new paint underneath.. lookin good right?



no.

but why?

Look at your paint in direct sunlight... see those nasty swirls and the 'hazey' paint?

The problem with T Cut is the formula is now old, and not really suited to todays paint types, and is certainly not recommended for clear coats (tcut metallic is)
Todays modern paint cleaners and polishes also consist of micro abrasives in a carrier fluid, products such as Dodo Lime Prime or Meguiars Deep Crystal Stage 1 are 2 that spring to mind.
When you work these more modern products in to your paint, provided you work them in for long enough, the micro abrasives gradually break themselves down as they strip the oxidisation from your paint getting smaller and smaller, refining your finish until you are left with a 'pure' layer of paint.

The micro abrasives in T Cut do not do this, so as you work the carrier fluid in, the micro abrasives strip the oxidisation, then continue to work themselves in to your new paint, leaving swirls, micro scratches and will leave a haze on your paint which will require a finer cleaner polish to remove.

In theory, if you used enough T Cut, you could go through to the primer provided you worked it in long enough.

As with any 'cleaner' polish, you will need to follow up with a good few layers of wax to seal the paint and to stop it going bad again, which it would do within weeks should you decide to leave it.

So there it is in a nut shell, why I would rather stick hot needles in my eyeballs than use T Cut on my car!

edit: the above also applies to Autoglym Pain Renovator, basically liquid sandpaper

no work to do today then rich?

only joking, interesting read

WARNING T Cut will make you cry.

Thanks for the info....never really buffed up a car but I always hear T-cut being mentioned....now I know the facts! I shall never purchase a bottle of T-cut

thing is t-cut gets used as a general term in the same way people refer to vacuum cleaners as hoovers, when we all know hoover is a brand rather than the type of product.
i actually use t-cut a fair bit, just not on my cars! use it mostly to cut back fresh paint when hand painting alloy wheels, never had any probs using it to be honest.
with my cars i just use wax applied by hand and buffed off with a polishing buffer every so often and that seems to remove any oxidisation pretty well.
just a shame the previous owner over did the t-cut on my red car

Been there on the Jetta

I have a spare bottle of blue colour magic if you want it for free Rich - I know how much you love it

I got a free bottle when I bought the car, brand new.. it ended up in tescos hoover bin

What a waste.

I could have drunk that