Restore Original paint finish on Your Alienware :)

My beloved M17xR2 became a victim of massive power surge and departed to Alien heavens. My Insurance took there sweet (replace with a word of your choice, you use in anger) time to assess it and came with a conclusion to replace it with a M18xR2 Right now I am awaiting approval from them to approve my choice of specs.

So in spirit of helping the community that has helped me quite a bit, here's how to restore original paint finish on M17xR2/M15x (not sure which others came with similar paint finish). This process will make much more difference on shiny paints, since M17xr2 has matte finish, it will not make as much difference but how much difference, we will see. I am only doing it on the half of the lid, as to show what difference it can make, however with only a crappy P&S with me, pictures don't do justice to the final result.

First things first, I do not take any responsibility if this damages your system/hurts you/or anyone else in the world, or if aliens come and take your laptop with them. All I can suggest is, raise hands in the air shake your head, yell "thanks obama" and blame it on Obama.

So that's out of the way, we will need following items to clean and make it look super sexy again.

- Gaffer tape or masking tape
- Kitten Liquid Car Cut and Polish
- Armoralll paint protector/cleaner
- Super dense microfibre clothes (make sure you get good kind)
- Few small pieces of foam
- Cotton/rubber gloves
- Roughly 60 minutes of free time

Step1. First of all mask out the parts you do not want polished/cleaned, I would suggest only polish lid and sides of the base but its your choice. Take your time while taping, don`t rush. i am only doing this on half of the lid to show how much difference it makes.


Step2. Use small piece of foam to apply an even thin layer of Kitten Liquid Car Cut and Polish on the unmasked areas, make sure you apply it in circles and rub it gently, no need to put any pressure on the compound, finally leave a thing layer from going one side to another.


Step3. Let it dry in shade and and don't use hot air or anything else to accelerate the drying time. Drying time will vary on humidity/temp/air flow in your workspace. Let it semi-dry and not 100% dry.

Step4. It took approximately 25 minutes for mine to semi-dry, At this point, use one of the microfibre clothes to gently wipe away the dried compound. Again no need to put any pressure on the cloth, just let it do it gently. As you can see in the image, its quite hazy and doesn't look clean at all, also there is still polish in the plastic bits. Do not worry about it at this stage.


Step5. Now grab a new, clean microfibre cloth and start buffing the areas you applied Kitten Liquid Car Cut and Polish to. Again, don't worry about the plastic parts, as it will be impossible to remove 100% of the Kitten Liquid Car Cut and Polish from pastic pieces (especially plastic bit on the bottom of the lid), at this point.

Step6. Spray a small bit of Armorall protector cleaner on clean microfibre cloth and use the cloth to wipe all of the surfaces where Kitten Liquid Car Cut and Polish was applied. This will also remove rest of the Kitten Liquid Car Cut and Polish in plastic bits and pieces and whatever is left (even the super small amount) of Kitten Liquid Car Cut and Polish. Also if there is any haze left on the surfaces, it will clean it.


Step7. Take another microfibre cloth and start buffing on the surfaces where Kitten Liquid Car Cut and Polish was applied. Remove the gaffer tape and continue buffing. Sometimes a tiny bit of polish/cleaner can get under gaffers tape, if gaffers tape is of cheap quality, this will definitely happen. Just wipe it off an keep on buffing.


Step8. Grab a chilled beer/cup of tea/coffee/your choice of beverage and admire you shiny baby. In the final image you can see this does make huge difference to how clean and good it makes the paint look, looks like the laptop came from factory, rather than 3yrs of abuse it has copped at my hands.


NOTE: This process is not my secret and was not developed by me, this is what was advised (step by step) by a paint manufacturer/expert to me after checking out the paint on the dead M17xR2.

Thanks for reading, hope this helps anyone out there looking to restore there Alien ship to its former glory

 

Thanks for sharing! +1 Rep for the effort.

 

Looks pretty good, bud... nice tutorial.

 

Just gave m15x the same treatment and its turned out very good. Much much shinier than m17xr2 and I dare say few scratches went invisible as well

 

Dang, well done.

 

I wonder if this would work with my old M11x.

 

M11xr1 yea, r2/r3 not as they had rubber finish (I could be wrong about r2 though). Rubber finish can actually get damaged by cut and polish.

With cut and polish as the name suggests, we are taking very fine layer of paint off from top and then buffing to polish it.