Mercedes Paint

[Monk]

My friend got a Black Mercedes 350CLK in December. I have not seen it since she bought it, until this weekend when I offered to wash and wax it. It is washed regularly, probably weekly, but ALWAYS at a car wash. I was anticipating swirls all over. It had almost NONE. I sweat my tail off trying to avoid swirls,using the two bucket method, etc., and this car gets washed at a public car wash weekly for six months and is damn near perfect. I am ticked off!

I know everybody hates the "Is _____ paint hard or soft" question, but, is Mercedes paint super hard, ceramiclear, or something like that?

However, FWIW, it was very orange-peeled.

[bullet1]

I worked on an SLK earlier this summer and it looked very good for being about 2 years old and not having too much done to it over that time. There were a few light swirls but nothing real noticable. I found this paint to be extremely hard. Being the perfectionist that I am I tried to get it perfect but with only having a PC at my disposal, I couldn't get the existing marks out at all. Using 83 w/ a 8006 pad did nothing. So I just used 80 all around it to get a good shine and called it a day with some Tech Wax. The customer was very happy with how it came out so it was all good.

[RDVT4ME]

I believe MB came out with a new paint on their cars in 2006 that is much more scratch resistant. Can't remember the name of the paint though.

[Mike Phillips]

We had a gentleman here with an MB with Ceramiclear paint that was all swirled out, we used our 80's series to remove the swirls, (kind of blows all the other claims on other forums about needing special products for these types of paints), a year later he comes back to a second class and as 30 or so of us are inspecting cars in the parking lot at around noon in bright sunlight, I commented on how nice and swirl-free his finish looked and it was the same car/same guy.

I asked him what he had been doing to take care of it and he said normal washing and waxing.

Looked good for normal washing and waxing.

[sneek]

mmm interesting, all the other fourms do say you need mezemera or something like that on a swirl buster pad

[Zet]

Originally posted by Mike Phillips
We had a gentleman here with an MB with Ceramiclear paint that was all swirled out, we used our 80's series to remove the swirls, (kind of blows all the other claims on other forums about needing special products for these types of paints), a year later he comes back to a second class and as 30 or so of us are inspecting cars in the parking lot at around noon in bright sunlight, I commented on how nice and swirl-free his finish looked and it was the same car/same guy.

I asked him what he had been doing to take care of it and he said normal washing and waxing.

Looked good for normal washing and waxing.

Would also be interesting to know what was done previously to cause all the swirls?

[the other pc]

Re: Mercedes Paint

Originally posted by Monk
...I sweat my tail off trying to avoid swirls,using the two bucket method, etc., and this car gets washed at a public car wash weekly for six months and is damn near perfect. I am ticked off!...

There’s no reason that a well designed, properly maintained and properly operated tunnel wash has to leave swirls, it’s just that so many aren’t and so the they do. It’s common practice to maximize throughput and minimize cost with little or no regard for quality. If your friend was lucky enough to find one that does it right they are indeed fortunate.

Another possibility is that it always went through a “no touch” wash, which won’t get it particularly clean but at least it won’t leave scratches.


PC.