W164 foot rail

[Ant Brit]

any suggestions for a decent product to use that may clean up my foot rail? Looks pretty grubby. Tried basic soap and water but hasn’t really touched it.
Some sort of chrome polish I assume would do the trick?

 

[kid-jensen]

The marks are corriosion showing that the anodised finish is breaking down.

It's not the end of the world, but will need more cleaning in the future because the protection of the aluminium rails is no longer effective.

Start with a traditional polish/wax like Triplewax (or chose from literally hundreds of competitors) but you need the type that has mild abrasives in it, because the corrosion will need to be rubbed away.

If you can't remove the marks with a good rub, try chrome cleaner, but go easy, it's very abrasive.

If it still looks bad and won't clean-up, remove them (or mask up) and re-spray them in bright silver. Then don't let anybody stand on them......