houstonnw

I'm old school, but I thought you waited about 3 months before waxing the paint on a new car, or any new paint for that matter.

I've had my LS for about a month, and the local detail shop said that's not right and you can wax a new car right away. He said they have lots of one week old cars getting waxed. Well just 'cause they wax one week old cars doesn't make it "right", IMO.

So can you really wax modern paint this early, or is this guy just trying to close the deal early?

Guitarman

Oem paint and body shop paint are not quite the same, in both how it's sprayed and how it's cured. The Lexus paint crosslinks and cures via high heat whereas body shop paint cures chemically through hardeners/activators. The reason they can do it that way and a shop can't is due to the fact they can heat the paint to ~325 degrees and send the empty car shell (metal only) down the booth, where a shop can only bake at low temps since those high temps would ruin a car's fabric, rubber, plastic etc. So they must use a different approach and different chemistry.

In short, by the time your car hit the showroom, it was fully cured, and you're good to go now.

When you get a car back from a body shop, it's slightly different; it's a good idea to ask them how long because it will depend on if they use an oven (quite a bit lower temp then oem process) to speed up the chemical crosslinking, or just rely on the hardeners to do their work. Usually a month is safe , but I've been told as little as a week for baked urethanes. To err on the longer side is safest with body shop work.

You can wax yours whenever you get the time though, you're more than ready.

You can find all this and more over ; http://www.autopia.org/forums/forumd...php?forumid=11

houstonnw

Thanks for the reply and explaining the difference in paint. The dealer did have to fix a paint chip on the trunk from their car wash, so my car actually has both.

I'll give it another month or so. Regards.