white streaks in clearcoat

[CARSGroup]

I can't help but wonder if these streaks were there all along... please don't take this the wrong way, I'm not saying you are making this up, I'm just wondering if the streaks you are seeing were there after the re-paint but up until now you were never given any reason to scrutinize the area, at different angles and such.. which would have allowed you to see them before. Try looking at other flat areas of the car in the same way - the roof, trunk, side panels... also, are the streaks in the clear layer - or is it in the flake pattern itself. Dark greens especially have a tendency to occasionally look streaky or blotchy sometimes after a repaint, although it is usually in the flake pattern of the color coat...
...Just food for thought.....

~Lenny

[Mike Phillips]

Originally posted by ProTouchNJ
I can't help but wonder if these streaks were there all along... please don't take this the wrong way, I'm not saying you are making this up, I'm just wondering if the streaks you are seeing were there after the re-paint but up until now you were never given any reason to scrutinize the area, at different angles and such.. which would have allowed you to see them before. Try looking at other flat areas of the car in the same way - the roof, trunk, side panels... also, are the streaks in the clear layer - or is it in the flake pattern itself. Dark greens especially have a tendency to occasionally look streaky or blotchy sometimes after a repaint, although it is usually in the flake pattern of the color coat...
...Just food for thought.....

~Lenny

That's some good insight Lenny,

I spoke with Mac over the phone about this and he's pretty confident that the streaks were not there before.

You're right about the flake pattern, if the painter doesn't hold the gun at just the right angle, at the right distance and keep every other variable as close to the same as possible, the results can be flakes that lay down at different angles and reflect light in different ways creating what could look like different shades of color, include whiteness, which could look like streaks.

Here's a true story.

I buffed out a garage paint job for a lady who paid some guys to paint her Mazda truck in a kind of billy-bob way, in other words a garage paint job. Nothing wrong with garage paint jobs as I've done them myself, but this wasn't a quality garage paint job, it was a botched garage paint job.

Anyway, the hood had dry spray on it from the day she brought it home and you could never really see the true color, let alone the metal flake in the paint.

I compounded the finish, then polished and waxed it and after everything was done, when looked at the hood, there was one big ugly spot where you could tell the painter brought the spray head very close to the hood and all the paint and metal-flake spread-out in a very noticeable pattern.

Kind of like if you were to place some paint on some paper in a small pool, and the using a straw, place the end of the straw near the middle of the pool of paint and blow forcing the paint to spread out in all directions.

No one knew it looked like this until the compounding and polishing results, cleared-up the clear coat revealing the mistake.

Sometimes restoring clarity to a clear coat reveals hidden defects previously unnoticeable.

I'm not even implying that this is the case with Mac's finish, I'm just adding to what Lenny pointed out.

[Tim Lingor]

Excellent point Lenny!!!

I too have noticed that dark green metallics in particular seem have the metallic flake distributed differently in some areas of the paint. This causes the light to shift off the metallic flake in different ways depending on how the light or the angle for which it is being viewed at. Usually I would blame it on the way the paint was sprayed or the way the metaillic flake settled in the paint. But for some reason with dark green metallics, I tend to notice this more than other colors. The majority of the time, you can not see it unless you know where to look and have the light at the exact angle to see it.

Tim

[CARSGroup]

Mac, where are you in PA? How far is Glenn Rock from the NJ border? If you want, if it is not to far, you can visit my shop and we will see if I can fix it for you for free - this is not a paint shop, it's a detail shop. You can check my references with Rod and/or Mike - we only do work for high end car dealers. I would look at you car myself.

~Lenny