Patina - yeh right

This is my first visit to this forum and this question may have been asked already.
My XK140 has 48year old original British paint. More and more stress cracks in the form of crazing are showing up especially where the body panels flex (and the paint no longer does). My question is...Is there a way to polish the car to minimize the appearance of the crazing? The cracks go right through the thickness of the paint and tend to appear whitish and on that dark (Pacific) blue background.
Thanks for whatever advice you may have

Jim,

You *might* want to try using one of the color waxes that's out there.. IIRC TUrtle Wax makes em. They do make a Bolue Color wax that I have seen. It might help, but if it's actual cracking.. I dunno man.. that's tough.

OTOH, Owning an XK140 with its' original paint is a very special thing indeed and repainting it would be a crying shame as you seem to be well aware of

Sounds like a really cool car!

Bill

The first thing I would do is get a magnifying glass and look at the cracks closely to see what is causing them to stand out. Are they so wide that what you’re seeing is the substrate beneath or is there stuff like old wax residue in the cracks? The latter should be much easier to deal with.

The next thing I would do is contact Meguiar’s. Many manufacturers make fine products but Meguiar’s really stands out for customer service too. Either by email or by phone you tell them what kind of paint and problems you have and they’ll recommend specific ways to deal with them.

As a guess I think they’ll probably recommend the usual clean, polish and wax sequence. Which cleaner to use will depend on the paint’s overall condition. Good old #7 Show Car Glaze is a good polish for just about any paint and should help rejuvenate the finish and reduce further checking. Top it off with your favorite wax.

The paint on my Jensen also shows signs of checking. I follow their sequence now. Nobody seems to notice the checking unless I point it out. The car is black.


PC.

Meguiar’s USA: 1-800-347-5700
https://www.meguiars.com/

Meguiar’s Canada: 1-800-278-4559
https://www.meguiarscanada.com/

Consider yourself lucky. "Patina" on most British cars assumes the hue of iron oxide.

Like PC said, it's all down to how deep the cracking has gone. If its all the way down to primer or something, you may only have the option of repainting. Is it doing this in really large areas, or only in spots? A really top notch paint shop could probably touch it in, and a good polish would get it all matching.
Good luck-this sounds like a tricky one!
-William