Revive! Aftercare – Top Tips for Maintaining your SMART Repair

Following a Revive! repair it’s always nice to take the time to appreciate the condition of your newly pristine vehicle, just the way you like it. However, there are a number of aftercare dos and don’ts following a repair that must be adhered to, just to ensure your paintwork or alloy wheel repair remains immaculate for as long as possible.

Bodywork Repairs

Revive! recommends that following a bodywork repair you don’t wash or polish your car for a minimum of five to seven days. This is to allow the paint/body filler to fully cure and adhere to the vehicle. Washing the car with a with a heavy jet wash too soon after a repair will cause the paint and lacquer to peel off, leaving behind the damage our technician so carefully repaired. If the repair required body filler to smooth out a dent the filler would also be damaged, this would require all the product that the tech has put on to be removed and the vehicle will need to be repaired and painted again.

It is also important to take note if your repair has been carried out during the cold conditions, due to the additional moisture in the air the paint would require longer to cure, up to ten days in some cases.

Past the initial five to seven days, please be aware that the misuse of high-power jet washers or automated car washes can have an aggressive effect on refurbished finishes and can potentially remove the paint surface from wheels, especially around small chips. If it does not take the paint and lacquer entirely it could get under the paint lacquer, which would then start to lift later down the line. Revive! recommends using an ordinary garden hose and hand washing your car for increased longevity of the repair.

Revive! advises customers to avoid applying any form of overly abrasive contact on the repaired area, such as a clay bar, compound solution or polish. This also includes the use of chemical cleaning products, these will cause damage to the repair site and reduce the quality of the overall aesthetics.

Alloy wheel repairs

In the instance of an alloy wheel repair, Revive! urges customers to avoid washing the repaired wheel with a powerful jet washer, or changing tyres for at least seven days following the repair to ensure complete adhesion of the paint. Not doing so could cause the paint to flake off, in the case of some jet washers the stream of water is so powerful that the repair could be blasted off entirely, unveiling the prior damaged area.

If your vehicle had to have its wheel removed to complete the repair, final wheel nut tightening should be applied following 20 miles of driving, as recommended by the vehicle manufacturer. Following the seven day wait period we recommend that refurbished alloy wheels should be cleaned using warm water and a non-abrasive cloth or brush.

Following the above aftercare advice, Revive! also urges that all vehicle paintwork should be cared for in accordance with the guidelines provided in the vehicle manufacturer’s aftercare handbook if it is available.

Following the above guidelines will ensure that your repair remains in optimum condition for as long as possible. While these issues may appear scary to someone contemplating a SMART repair we stress that in 2023 alone Revive! technicians completed over 315,000 repairs with minimal issues occurring following the repair. With our Lifetime Ownership Guarantee if for any reason you are unhappy with the work provided by your local Revive! technician, you can rest assured that our team will be on hand to fix it.

For more information about our aftercare services or to get your car revived get in touch with our team, please visit: revive-uk.com/request-a-quote/

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