Paint coming off....

[JOCKTHEGLIDE]

I have a friend who has finally started to take care of the paint on his car after seeing my charger and using meguiars products. I told him what I bought it and he went out and bought some ultimate rubbing compount after claying it. AFter applying the rubbing compound he said the paint was coming off his car.

I asked has he ever taken care of his paint. His response was NO I just apply wax once per year and he hardly drives it since its a 72 mustang. He has had the car now for 20 years and drives it occasiaonly and then parks it in the garage.

Has his car paint failed? Or should he keep applying the rubbing compount until the paint stops coming off?

[vrodri16]

Seeing the age of the vehicle it could be possible that his paint job is a single stage paint job. It would explain the "paint" that is coming off on the applicator he is using. Wild shot in the dark

[JOCKTHEGLIDE]

Re: Paint coming off....

doh, I forgot about that....thx for that info. I just googled the single stage and Mike phillips and found an article and video on single stage paint. i will suggest to him to clay again (he clayed first time in his life the other day), the tell him to polish and get the no 7 meguiars and ultimate wax like Mike did.

[C8N]

Re: Paint coming off....

As already said, it is probably a single stage paint.
What is the condition of the paint? Are there swirls, scratches, etching and etc that needs to be taken care of?
Working by hand or machine?
The condition of the paint, type of paint and the owner's expectations should lead to what products and methods should be applied.

Always do a test spot going from the least aggressive as you do not want to take off too much paint than necessary.

[Michael Stoops]

Re: Paint coming off....

If this is original paint on a '72 Mustang, and since he is NOT the original owner, he needs to be very careful about how aggressively he works on that paint. He's had the car for 20 years, and it was already 20 years old when he got it. That is potentially an awful lot of rubbing on the paint, even if just with a cleaner wax let alone something more aggressive.

When he says the paint is coming off, that could mean two different things: 1) simple color transfer which will happen with single stage paint no matter how old or new it is, or 2) that 40+ year old paint is soooo thin that he's finally rubbed right through it. #1 is totally normal and nothing to worry about, but #2 is bad. Very bad. Do you know which is the case here?

[JOCKTHEGLIDE]

Re: Paint coming off....

all he told me was the paint was on the towel he was using after using the product. Its a red vehicle so the towel was red after using the rubbing compounds.

[Michael Stoops]

Re: Paint coming off....

That's a classic indicator of single stage paint and it's totally normal. The more aggressive the liquid and the applicator, the more color transfer you'll get. I still have a yellow W8207 Soft Buff 2.0 pad at home that is totally black on the face but yellow on the sides. If you look at just the face of it you'd swear it's a black W9207 finishing pad. I kept it this way as a souvenir because this happened while polishing one of my all time favorite cars: a 1982 Ferrari 512BBi in original factory single stage black.