LS400_96

I have a quick question. I bought a Maxima a couple of years ago and seems the paint was getting dull. So I decided to get a cleaner wax and started waxing the front of the car. As I was rubbing off some of the wax, the color of the car (dark red) starting to rub onto the cotton rag. I took a look at the area I waxed and saw the color of the car became lighter than the other areas. I found that the car has been repainted with no clearcoat. What would be a good, inexpensive product that I could find at a local auto parts store that can restore the shine on the car?

LS400_96

Come on guys, I see 20 people read this post and nobodies given me a reply yet. Maybe, I should restate my question.

Is it safe to use a cleaner wax like Meguiar's cleaner wax on a paint with no clearcoat? Cuz after applying the wax and buffing it out with hand, the red paint gets on the towel and the paint becomes dull.

bravo261

iTrader: (1)

you can wax and do just about everything on paint without a clearcoat as you can with a clearcoat. of course, the use of abrasives isn't something you want to use all the time, since you're taking paint and not clear. but the paint coming off a bit isn't unheard of

LS400_96

Thanks for your reply. So using some wax and taking some of the paint off will not do too much damage. Is this what you are saying? Should I use a surface prep first and then polish and wax the car or will this do too much damage to the car. Could you give me some advice. This is my first time waxing a car, and I do not want to mess up the paint on the car.

RON430

LS400_96 - I think you might not have gotten too much response because I don't think your problem is the clear coat, it is that paint job, and I hope I am wrong. To the pro detailers, there are things you use to cut the paint, sanpaper and polishes, and things you use to protect the finish, waxes and polymer protectants. The all in one products combine both and do neither job very well. When you use the cutting products, you are doing a very fine removal of the top layer of the paint. You do this to even out the hills and valleys from previous sanding and swirl marks from coarser polishing as well as scratches that just happen over time. Once you even things out, you protect the finish. Because you are actually cutting a bit of the paint off, it is not at all unusual to see some of the color wind up on the cloth. There shouldn't be much of a color change but there should be a change in the "hue" of the paint because you have remove things like oxidation, which cause the surface to dull, and the light scattering scratches. If you look carefully, you will see in the auto parts stores that there are waxes, usually the more expensive ones, that will always say they have no abrasives in them. The wax will not remove any paint. But if you have a combo product or use a straight polish, it will remove paint and provide no protection. You might want to look for one of the surface prep products, like Zymol Heavy Duty Cleanse which is a very, very fine polish and will remove surface oxidation but you don't have to worry about going through the paint, which will ruin your whole day. Then follow up with a good protectant of your choice and you should be good to go. If you have clear coat and get scratches that are down in the paint and polish to remove them, you have removed the clear coat anyway so it is not too much of a deal as far as product you use either way, and one of the reasons that the Langka chip smoothing product gives less than perfect results.

Hope this helps and I hope you are not really seeing a difference in color but just a difference in a polished surface versus the weathered finish.

Ron

Guitarman

Polishes that are intended for clearcoat are actually gentler than polishes formulated for single stage (S/S)paint, meaning that anything you can use on a clearcoat won't hurt S/S, it just may not be aggressive enough to obtain the same results in some cases.But there's more...

When SS paint gets very old and thin (acrylic enamel and lacquer esp.), the UV is gone in the upper part of the paint, and oxidation gets to it fast.
There is actually a part of the single stage paint that has a clear resin that produces the gloss, and it migrates up to the surface when drying/curing. All your gloss and UV is there. When you wet sand, or buff the car, you remove some or all of this layer and the car dulls down quickly and repeatedly. Cars that have S/S paint and have been buffed many times will dull down not long after you buff them out for this reason, and you'll be continually working to keep a shine on it, even if you wax regularly. You simply get to the point of no return, and a repaint is your only alternative.
This is why pros will tell you never to wetsand single stage paints if you don't have to generally, because you remove the best part of the finish, and it creates more maintenance and oxidation issues due to the UV inhibitor loss. The rule on S/S is; What you spray is what you get. That's why basecoat-clearcoat is the best option for the DIY car painter; he can wet sand the clear and get the bugs and dirt out without worrying so much. On S/S, better spray it right the first time, and in a booth, because sanding is not advised.

I had a girl bring me an '88 Tempo recently, that was S/S red, only it looked a milky gray-pink. It was totally oxidized. I told her I could buff it up to a brilliant shine and stave off a repaint for her, ONLY if she used a cleaner wax on it every 2 months or less, because it would only be a short term fix otherwise.
The car looked like it was repainted after I was done,(it really did) she couldn't believe it. But 5 weeks later , even though she garaged it, it started to dull down again as I warned. She used Meguiar's Cleaner Wax on it and brought it back up. She'll have to do this regualrly until she can afford a repaint unfortunately, it's the way it is.

Sorry for the technical novel, but not everyone knows or understands how S/S paint works. Hope this helps.

RON430

Still not sure if LS400_96 just has an oxidation problem (invariably in the aluminum) and not a problem with the repaint. In any event, sounds like the first stage is to polish that puppy up and see if the color is the same all over.

LS400_96

Thanks for the replies guys. I think the paint is kind of oxidized and has water marks and bird droppings. You can see a little haze on the paint. As I was reading through the www.autopia.org website, I found a car that looked very similar too mine. Here is the link:

http://www.autopia.org/forums/showth...le+stage+paint

and was wondering if I should use this product on my car. From the website, the Einszett Ultra Paint Polish is a very harsh polish and says that it should be used on cars that has been damaged due to weather. Do you guys think I should use this product on my car? Or will there be a chance of damage to the paint.

Guitarman

It'll work fine. No worries.

You MAY need to follow it with a finer polish (swirl remover type polish) if you still see some dulling from the abrasives in it. Let us know how you do.

meZoom!

guitarman,
your bodyshop stories never cease to amaze me.


anyway, i wanted to say:
i think the guy w/ the maxima can tell if its oxidized paint or a bad paint job by comparing the horizontal surfaces to vertical panels. the hood, roof and trunk seems to oxidize so much faster than say, the door panels. either way, sounds like he could benefit from a nice polish job.