Bad News Spider Webbing

[Hawk]

I had to bring the van home from storage so that my wife can use it Sunday. I decided to take a look at the paint and it was a mess. The left side of the quarter has most, but no where close to all, of the spider webbing removed. I worked over four hours to get the hood (about 2 and a half by six feet) to what I felt was acceptable. Not good, but acceptable. I washed, clayed, and then started with #83 on the PC, which this webbing laughed at. After the first fifteen minutes on an area about 18 x 18 inches with very little improvement, I switched to #4 Heavy Cut Cleaner. This seemed to work a little better. I then followed the #4 with #83, and then #80. Even after that, there were still many webbing lines. All products were purchased within the last month and each was applied on a new pad and the PC set on 5. I did take my time and let the product be worked into the finish by the PC.

With all of that as history. 1. Where does webbing come from? (The van has never been in a car wash.) 2. Could some of the webbing be in the color coat and not in the clear coat? Could this explain why it didn’t all get polished out? 3. The webbing is worse on the fiberglass hood than the rest of the body. Could it be the fiberglass that is causing the problem? 4. I had never really looked at the finish on the van, but it is by far the worst paint job of any of my four vehicles.

Thanks for looking,

Hawk

[Mike Phillips]

Go grab your bottle of #4 and read the back label, find the part where it tells you how to apply it. You're never going to get away from the cobweb swirls using this product with a dual action polisher.

Perhaps try replolishing the #4 area with M83, and then M80

[Accumulator]

Re: Bad News Spider Webbing

Originally posted by Hawk
1. Where does webbing come from? (The van has never been in a car wash.) 2. Could some of the webbing be in the color coat and not in the clear coat? Could this explain why it didn’t all get polished out? 3. The webbing is worse on the fiberglass hood than the rest of the body. Could it be the fiberglass that is causing the problem? 4. I had never really looked at the finish on the van, but it is by far the worst paint job of any of my four vehicles.

Expanding on Mike's reply:

1) From washing/drying and/or using #4 without a rotary. As Mike implied the #4 won't break down properly when used by PC/hand so its diminishing abrasives don't diminish- they keep right on abrading in an aggressive manner.

Even washing by hand is likely to cause marring unless you're *very* careful about how you do it. But the uniformly circular nature of this marring makes me think it's from using #4 with the PC.

2) No, it's all in the clear.

3) Paint sometimes behaves differently depending on what it's applied over. If the fiberglass hood is aftermarket (and/or the paint on the hood thus not applied at the factory like the rest of the paint) there's a good chance it's softer than the paint on the rest of the vehicle. And softer paint means you have to be more careful about using aggressive products.