Paint quality
- Thread starter DaFoot
- Start date
Don't get me started on those piggin' things!! Our council in their infinite wisdom send their sweeper up the main road out of our town at peak rush hour every time, and I usually encounter it near to a turning to a local school. It's bedlam with no way of getting past the thing, and despite complaining to the eejits, got the stock answer of "we have a duty to keep the roads clean" - bollocks, the gutters that clown is usually sweeping are clean!!
Rant over (for now at least...)
Rant over (for now at least...)
Just spent half an hour with my Dremel-type device and a bottle of Autoglym polish working on the rubbish job I did touching up the chips last weekend (brush too fat, tooth pick advice too late sadly).
Used a tiny soft pad thing that came with the gizmo and plenty of polish and it's improved the ones I've worked on massively. Will now go back and try the tooth pick trick to finish them off (I used a match paint from Halfords, using the code in the boot, but match isn't as good as I was led to believe it would be - any others found something better?)
This is a good point. The road I live on was resurfaced last year, and I haven't seen a sweeper since. Consequently there are lots of loose stones and gravel all the way up the road. I don't put my Leon on the driveway as there isn't room for it, so all those stones are constantly kicked up over it when others drive past.
Trying to keep it looking nice is a losing battle! It's hard enough trying to avoid it when driving, let alone while parked!
Have a look at these guys
http://www.chipex.co.uk/
Their approach is interesting as you can remove any excess paint with a special solvent. They also do little foam pads on the end of a tiny stick - like the toothpick approach, but of course, more expensive.
http://www.chipex.co.uk/
Their approach is interesting as you can remove any excess paint with a special solvent. They also do little foam pads on the end of a tiny stick - like the toothpick approach, but of course, more expensive.
Put a wax on it. If you buff it you'll need to remove paint until you remove the scratch. Basically, you are doing more damage to the paint! I'm happy enough doing that once or twice in a car's life, when you're about to sell it for instance, but not as a regular thing.
Putting wax on it fills in the scratches and adds protection. Yes, you need to do it again but you are not removing paint.
It's not just Seat, modern paint is not as good as some of the older paints. It's water-based for a start and they put less on than they used to. Which saves them money but doesn't do much for the durability of the paint.
Use auto glym super resin polish as this is full of fillers that simply fill in the scratches but does not remove them. As stated above then apply a sealant followed by a wax, these will help keep the polish in place for longer. After a few months it will be time to do the above all over again to cover up the reappearance of the scratches.
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For anyone that uses an automatic car wash, the £5 hand wash outfits or the old traditional bucket and sponge method, scratching and swirling of the paintwork is pretty much inevitable. Also, letting the dealer wash your car if it’s in for servicing or repairs is a definite ‘no-no’ in my opinion, unless you want heavily swirled paintwork!
A careful two or three bucket washing method minimises the risk of scratches and swirls and the need to use heavy ‘cutting’ compounds to correct badly scratched or swirled paintwork or filler polishes to hide the scratches / swirls. The key to scratch-free and swirl-free paint is to minimise the amount of contact with the paintwork while the car is dirty by using a safe wash method. My car wash routine consists of;
- Pre-wash snow foam with snow foam lance attached to pressure washer to remove most of the dirt before the washing stage. Leave snow foam to dwell for 10 minutes or so.
- Fill wash buckets; one ‘rinse’ bucket filled with clear water and two ‘wash’ buckets filled with a ph neutral shampoo and water mix.
- With one of the wash buckets, wash wheels with a dedicated microfibre wheel mitt. Rinse mitt in the rinse bucket before reloading the mitt each time with soapy water. Wash the wheel barrels (I have a set of Wheel Woolies to wash the barrels), and with a detailing brush, clean the brake callipers, grilles, inside fuel filler flap, door shuts and other intricate bits.
- Pressure wash rinse off any remaining snow foam. There should now be very little dirt left on the car to be washed off. If necessary, empty and refill the rinse bucket of the water’s dirty.
- With the second wash bucket and lambs wool wash mitt wash car body, starting at the top and working down. Rinse mitt in the rinse bucket each time before re-loading the wash mitt with fresh soapy water.
- Rinse car with an open ended hose to ‘sheet’ the water off the bodywork. If the car is well protected with a good wax or sealant, very little water will be left to dry off. Dry bodywork and wheels (I use a warm air dryer to minimise contact with the paintwork), including blowing water out of water traps - grille, around window rubbers, door mirrors, wheel bolt holes etc. Dry around door openings, under bonnet edges / edge of front wings under bonnet and rear hatch opening, inside fuel filler flap with dedicated drying towel Pat dry any remaining water that’s on the car bodywork with a dedicated drying towel.
- Clean glass, dress tyres and other black plastic trim.
- Move on to the interior.............
Nice write up. But I know how to clean my car. Most of my scratches was caused by other people's negligence, like moving around the car in tight parking places with bags. Etc.
Still I think my 15 years old toyota had better paint
my current car i have had ceramic coated, the effect has been definite reduction in paint blemishes having owned for around 9 months now
previous car was also coated i had that for 2 years had very minor blemishes and had done 25k miles and plenty of motorway driving
previous car was also coated i had that for 2 years had very minor blemishes and had done 25k miles and plenty of motorway driving
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