Rust/Swirl help

[05rs]

Hello all

First of all I would like to say this is by far the best online resource available for the car enthusiast wanting to keep their vehicle in showroom condition. Even the most simple questions are answered quickly and treated with the utmost importance.

I just purchased a brand new 05 subaru and of course 2 weeks in, I hit a blown tire on the road . $1500 later I get the car back, but with swirl marks covering the whole vehicle. I actually saw one of the shop's employees prepping/washing a car with what looked to be a push broom . I didn't really think too much of it because I knew I could always turn to everyone here to get the car back to a swirl-free shine.

Once I got home and upon closer inspection I noticed hundreds of tiny rust spots all over the vehicle. I tried to polish them out, this usually worked for me before, but to no avail. After doing some research I used a clay bar.

One of my questions is:

Is the clay supposed to pick up this contamination with only a couple of passes? I had to go over these spots many, many times in order for it to get picked up. I also noticed that when I had a lot of QD on the surface it took even more time to pick up the spots, but when there was less QD on the surface the clay picked up the rust a lot quicker. Did I not have enough QD on there and possible ruin my paint?

My camera is really old so hopefully I can get some pics up of the swirls to get your recommendations on fixing this mess. I will definately be getting a DA machine in the near future.

Thanks for taking the time to read this and thanks in advance for any future recommedations/advice.

[Mike Phillips]

Re: Rust/Swirl help

Originally posted by 05rs
Hello all

First of all I would like to say this is by far the best online resource available for the car enthusiast wanting to keep their vehicle in showroom condition. Even the most simple questions are answered quickly and treated with the utmost importance.

Hi 05rs,

As this is your first post here, Welcome to Meguiar's Online!

Thank you for your kind words about our online forum. While there may be larger forums on the Internet, it's pretty hard to beat the quality of information offered here as well as the high caliber of people always willing to help with their knowledge and experience. We know we have a lot of lurkers from other forums who come here for the quality of information even though they may never join in the action and that's okay as it's all about helping people to get the best results from their time, money and efforts and that's our primary goal.

Plus the great thing about this forum is everyone knows Meguiar's offers awesome products for all your car care needs and for this reason we can help you solve all your car care problems while keeping you inside a single line of well thought-out products that work together in a synergistic method. Pretty hard to beat that in my book.

I just purchased a brand new 05 Subaru and of course 2 weeks in, I hit a blown tire on the road. $1500 later I get the car back, but with swirl marks covering the whole vehicle. I actually saw one of the shop's employees prepping/washing a car with what looked to be a push broom . I didn't really think too much of it because I knew I could always turn to everyone here to get the car back to a swirl-free shine.

It's always sad when a car's finish comes out of a repair shop worse than when it went in. You should consider bringing what happened to the owner of the shop and even print this thread out and hand deliver it to him. I could be the owner doesn't know what the employees are doing to his business.

Once I got home and upon closer inspection I noticed hundreds of tiny rust spots all over the vehicle. I tried to polish them out, this usually worked for me before, but to no avail. After doing some research I used a clay bar.

One of my questions is:

Is the clay supposed to pick up this contamination with only a couple of passes? I had to go over these spots many, many times in order for it to get picked up.

Depends on the contaminant. It sound like whatever this rust spots are, it's requiring quite a bit of work to remove them and that could just be the case for this incident. I'm curious and I'm sure everyone else on the forum is curios to understand what could have caused this problem?

I'm not sure what clay you're using, but there are different grades of aggressiveness in clay technology available. The thing to remember is that a more aggressive clay may remove the defects faster, but it can also leave behind clay hazing or clay marring whereupon the clay itself because it's so aggressive is actually instilling it's own defect. While at first glance this can seem to be counterproductive, you have to remember that aggressive clay bars a used by professionals that are going to machine buff the paint after claying and thus remove any clay haze or marring.

Again, you should consider photographing this damage and showing the owner of the shop you took the car to, see if he can explain it and if he can't, then he should be worried as this isn't the kind of thing any business owner wants taking place when a customers car comes into his shop.

I also noticed that when I had a lot of QD on the surface it took even more time to pick up the spots, but when there was less QD on the surface the clay picked up the rust a lot quicker. Did I not have enough QD on there and possible ruin my paint?

Mist & Wipe products like Meguiar's Quik Detailer provide lubricity to the surface to enable the clay to slide and glide over the paint. There is a balance to be achieved between to little lubricity and too much lubricity as too much will interfere with the abrading action of the clay and too little will hinder the clay from gliding over the finish so that it can work.

My camera is really old so hopefully I can get some pics up of the swirls to get your recommendations on fixing this mess. I will definitely be getting a DA machine in the near future.

Thanks for taking the time to read this and thanks in advance for any future recommendations/advice.

Try to get some good photos of the swirls with the car washed completely clean and then pull the car into bright sun and use the sun to highlight the swirls.

Like this...

Before



After



We removed the swirls in the above Mercedes-Benz hood by hand, you can get even better results by machine will doing it faster and taking a most of the work out of the process.

By the way, the above swirled out mess was courtesy of a SoCal body shop in San Diego. Nice work huh?

[05rs]

Thanks for the quick response Mike. Even with my short time here I am amazed at how you are able to answer a lot of the questions posted on the different forums on this site so quickly.

I think the rust spots may have come from tiny metal shavings that have landed on my car. Probably due to all the body work going on at the shop.

I'll let them know, unfortunately they're all gone now, because of the claying that I did all weekend .

What exactly is clay marring/hazing? I think my car may have this know because I may have worked the clay too hard .

I just hoped this can all be fixed, preferably by myself so at least I know that I did it right (With your help of course )

Thanks again

Terence

[Murr1525]

If you used the Quick Clay, then any marring should not be too bad. Possibly just smearing at the most, assuming you folded in the clay often enough. A good paint cleaner could be all you need, Possibly DC#1 for smearing, or a bit of ScratchX for smearing/swirls.

If you are going to be buying a PC for sure in the near future, it may not be worth going over the whole car to remove all swirls with Scratch X. It will really kill the arms, and the machine with some #80/#83 would just be easier a couple weeks later. You can probably use the ScratchX to remove the clay marring/smudges, etc so that you can still polish and wax a clean surface in the meantime.

[Mike Phillips]

Originally posted by 05rs


What exactly is clay marring/hazing? I think my car may have this know because I may have worked the clay too hard .

Clay haze or marring is where the clay itself instills very shallow scratching, because its so shallow, it's not called a scratch but a mar or haze.

Neither Meguiar's Quik Clay System or our Mild Clay in the Professional Line will mar the finish, the Aggressive may however depending on how hard the paint is and how the clay is used.

Remember, our Aggressive clay is marketed towards professionals who in most cases are going to machine buff the paint after claying, thus any marring by the aggressive clay is inconsequential as the machine buffing will remove it.