Can Reg. no's etched on windows be ground/polished out.

[dtype38]

I bought an old car which has a nice enough registration, but originally it had one of those highly sought after "three letters and a single digit" plates. That was sold in the 90's but unfortunately not before someone had etched the reg into all the side windows (two windows and two quarter-lights per side). I investigated if the original reg could be bought back, and yes it was for sale! £8000!!! That's not far off the value of the car and way, way out of my pay grade. I can't even sell the one that's on the car to offset it because it's something called "non-transferable" for some reason. Anyway, that leaves me with trying to do something about the windows. Buying new or un-etched second hand ones is an option and I'm keeping an eye out for the latter on ebay, but has anyone had a go grinding/polishing them out? Any luck?

[MagnetON]

Etch the new numbers just above the first ones :P

[dtype38]

Hadn't thought of that.

Another I had considered was etching a rectangle over them to remove the reg. But thought it would look worse than having the wrong number. Would look ok if I used it as the background for the new number but couldn't think of how to apply the new number. Sadly they don't have any letters in common to give me a head start.

Obviously the whole point of these things is that they're hard to remove. But I have time and patience if someone knows a way.

[gt917]

Yes, it is perfectly feasible to polish out the old registration PROVIDING the etching is not too deep and you go to a good glass polisher or scratched screen / windscreen replacement service. You could maybe do it yourself with a glass polishing kit, but you will need to practice first on an old piece of laminated screen which you could scratchup suitably with a bit of grit or diamond. Always mask off the area so that your polishing is confined to a sensible area and then "floated out" afterwards. In your case also cover exposed cockpit areas as polishing is carried out "wet" and you do not want a white speckled interior.

Re-etching over the area should in theory virtually hide the slight depression.

Only you and the polisher can make the decision as it is very dependant on depth and finally how close the area is to bodywork for ease of accessability. If you don,t have any luck locally, i do know a man but he is up near Norwich!!

Good luck.

GT.

[dtype38]

Thanks for that Graham. I've had a good "feel" of my etchings (Ooo Vicar!) and sadly they are noticeably indented into the glass. I'd say they'd been done with a stencil and blaster using quite coarse grit. If I decide on the polishing route I'll probably take all the glass out to do as they are etched quite near the door line. I have quite a range of grinding/polishing/flatting equipment, so might have a look into what materials are needed to grind glass. :-)

[terence]

Jewelers Rouge ? Its used for polishing diamonds.

[bdwoody]

I have had to do this a couple of times in the past .i used a wooden dowl rod in a drill and a soft round pad stuck to the end of it , jewlers rouge powder and water . It took a while but it worked.