How to make a laser deck white again!

ebay100

New Member
Hi out there:)

Does anyone know how to restore a slightly yellowed laser deck to its former glory of bright white?


:) Thanks
 
Hi:)

I just tried Auto Glym Caravan and Motorhome cleaner on the decks of my Laser and that removed all the dirt from the textured bits with a stiff brush.


All lasers start bright white on the decks - they yellow with age and exposure to the sun but a lot of yellowing is dirt in the textured part of the deck which is very hard to remove.

Any more solutions:confused:
 
The Autoglym Caravan and Motorhome cleaner you can get from most UK car shops - might not be available in the US.
 
ebay100 said:
All lasers start bright white on the decks - they yellow with age and exposure to the sun but a lot of yellowing is dirt in the textured part of the deck which is very hard to remove.

Actually, my 2003 Laser deck is Pelican Gray. Another even newer boat is a darker gray. Some of the older boats had cream decks, I believe, but maybe that is just yellowing.
 
straight bleach in a spray bottle works wonders. (wear old clothes, unless you want those white spots associated with bleach on dyed cotton)

spray on in small doses, scrub with a bristle brush & rinse.

i believe you will be surprised.

alternately... there are some pre-made bleach clean up sprays out there... just more expensive for the same outcome.

best of luck
 
ebay100 said:
Hi:)

I just tried Auto Glym Caravan and Motorhome cleaner on the decks of my Laser and that removed all the dirt from the textured bits with a stiff brush.


All lasers start bright white on the decks - they yellow with age and exposure to the sun but a lot of yellowing is dirt in the textured part of the deck which is very hard to remove.

Any more solutions:confused:

All Lasers made recently start out with a Bright White deck but up until 80 or so they all came with a cream coloured deck.
 
roshambo said:
straight bleach in a spray bottle works wonders. (wear old clothes, unless you want those white spots associated with bleach on dyed cotton)

spray on in small doses, scrub with a bristle brush & rinse.

i believe you will be surprised.

alternately... there are some pre-made bleach clean up sprays out there... just more expensive for the same outcome.

best of luck

Tanks for that roshambo! will try this tomorrow:)
 
Laser76489 said:
All Lasers made recently start out with a Bright White deck but up until 80 or so they all came with a cream coloured deck.

This just isn't true. My 2003 has a gray deck, which I was startled to discover when I put white gel coat on it. It is distinctively gray.
 
I have three lasers

81 - cream deck
91 - grey deck
2006 - lighter grey deck

None of them started as white decks. I use softscub with bleach and a soft brush to clean my decks. Then I rinse well. It works great.

Jimmy
 
Merrily said:
This just isn't true. My 2003 has a gray deck, which I was startled to discover when I put white gel coat on it. It is distinctively gray.

OK so It appears that I need to be a liitle more specific...if its not "obviously "a diffent colour than white the intent was that it is a white deck...ie the cream colour decks didnot start out white as was sort of inferred to in the initial posts of the thread

my oldest 1488 has a cream deck my 1980 has a white (dirty white)deck and my 82 has a cream deck
 
for cleaning non skid and the decks you can use Klean and Shine, its a great janitorial product, for stains you should carefully use muriotic acid diluted with water ( sorry for the spelling on those two products)
 
Laser76489 said:
All Lasers made recently start out with a Bright White deck but up until 80 or so they all came with a cream coloured deck.
Yeah, as I said, if he has an old boat it might very well be suposed to be that way.
 
Here in the UK we have Muc-Off (I also use it on my motorbike but they now do a version for boats) and thats really effective, specially if you use a stiff brush. Comes in a hand spray, spray a section, work in with the brush, then hose off after a few minutes, there's no acid in it and it words well.

PS I think you'd need to be careful with bleach, dont think the ropes/lines like it.
 
I'd definitely be careful with the bleach. I once used a cleanser with bleach on my "big boat" decks and apparently didn't get it all off in the rinse. It left some areas lighter than others.
 
1. Some stains bleach out in the sun. Around here, live oak leaves stain horribly but the stains just go away in a few months.
2. Boatyard Boss works well to remove lots of stains. You can use it full strength on the worst stains and expect great success.
3. Barkeepers Friend does a pretty good job on rust stains.
4. Oxthalic ( spelling?) Acid does a great job on lots of metal stains.
5. A slurry of Bleach, Sof scrub and Comet spread over a patch and then brushed off usually emoves stains well.
6. Acetone rinses off lots of things but it also is very thin. Somewtimes it thins the nasty staining substance and then helps it penetrate deeper into the porous gelcoat. Test a small area before going nuts with acetone.
7. Starbrite Non Skid Cleaner with Teflon does wonders on non skid. It is not more effective than Comet ot Ajax but, it is clear and you can see how you are doing without rinsing off and starting over. One $5 bottle cleans an entire J-24 with some left over to give to a friend to try on his boat.


orgin of the stain?? A few years ago I had a recurring stain on my deck. It was caused by the life jacket I stored under my cover. I left the lifejacket under the cover rather than taking it home because it was wet and I didn't want to drag extra wet stuff in the car.


Deck colors: Certainly the majority of the NA Lasers from 101 to 90,000 were cream colored. However, there were lots of special boats with colored decks striped decks and even white decks. More recently NA decks have been mostly gray but production runs of white have been made.
We have a few Irish boats in the Austin fleet, those decks are white. Doug Peckover sails a light blue deck Austrailian built boat.
 
I've had good success with SoftScrub for minor staining or oxalic acid for more serious stuff. The best oxalic acid product I've found for this purpose is called "Dekswood" (it's for cleaning/bleaching wood decks, hence the name). It's a light blue thick liquid, almost a gel that stays put pretty well and can really brighten up a dingy dinghy deck and is especially good at removing some rust stains. Davis makes a product that looks similar but I haven't found that it works as well (probably not as much oxalic acid in the Davis version?). Anyways the Dekswood works better than mixing your own out of the powder because it doesn't run all over the place and leave streaks and it doesn't dry out as quickly. I just 'paint' it on liberally with an old brush. Doing it on a sunny day seems to help too.
 
Has anyone tried Greased Lightning? I've had good luck with that on other boats. I haven't allowed my fairly new Laser to get much of a chance to get dirty yet.
 
[sorry for bumping an old thread] I had some rust stains on the cream-coloured front deck of my 1980 Laser. After checking out this thread, I got rid of them when I used a simple solution - Methalayted Spirits and a hand-held medium bristle brush - a bit of elbow grease, and it came up 98% great! The rest of the deck was fine... a quick scrub using washing detergent did the trick for me there. But I didn't have any major stains on my deck anywhere else tho. I was a bit wary of using bleach on a cream-coloured deck, that's all. Didn't want a big white patch on my front deck! heh heh :)

At the moment I can't really 'get' to the hull bottom to spend some fine cleaning time on it where I live and where its stored, but the hull is in pretty good nick, for a 27-year-old boat! heh heh ... that might be a winter project for me [along with repainting my trailer as well. heh heh] :)
 

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