When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
About 2 days ago my car got keyed. Gonna get that fixed soon, but I have a question about washing my car.
Another issue I ran into was that either I ran over something or something splattered all over my car (some weird yellowy substance), but it's all over my front bumper, rear bumpers, and driver side front and rear doors. Anyways long story short, whatever it is, it is super hard to remove, I have washed my car 3 times (before it got keyed) and it still won't come off. I went to Autozone where the guy looked at it and recommended that I use a rubbing compound. I tried a bit on my car and it actually came off and much easier.
Now to the present, my car is keyed with a very deep scratch (down to the metal), is it safe to wash my car so I can clean off the weird yellow substance?
I'm taking my car in for an estimate early next week, and it should be in the shop starting next week. I wanna clean this off before I bring it into the shop, unless you think the body shop will clean it off for me?
clay bar will probably remove the yellow stuff. washing your car won't matter if you're getting the scratch fixed anyways. If it's down to the metal, they're going to be sanding a repainting a whole panel anyways.
clay bar will probably remove the yellow stuff. washing your car won't matter if you're getting the scratch fixed anyways. If it's down to the metal, they're going to be sanding a repainting a whole panel anyways.
This.
If you're taking it in, then just let the pros deal with it.
I should probably mention that the scratches are on the passenger side, but all the yellow stuff is on the driver side. The repainting will only happen on the passenger side I think.
Have you tried wet-sanding the deep scratch and buffing it with a strong compound?
If he doesn't know what he's doing this will make the issue much much worse. Not to mention that no amount of sanding a polishing will do anything to remove a scratch down to the metal.
I've been using rubbing compound to get it off and it seems to be getting off finally. Rubbing compound isn't bad for the paint right? That's what the autozone guy told me.
Heres some pictures of that yellow crap. Idk what it could be but it's super hard to remove. I was at it for like 2 hours and there's still hella more ground to cover.
You are fucking your paint up if you keep going at it with rubbing compound. Compound is basically fine grit sandpaper suspended in liquid. It's job is to take off a rather sizable layer of the clear coat in order to level the clear and take out larger scratches, swirls, and other such defects AFTER the car is cleaned up and the paint (or clear for that matter) is bare and without crud on it. It is most certainly is NOT supposed to be used to remove stuff from your paint, all you're doing is grinding all that stuff into your clear coat as you use it causing all kinds of swirls and defects along the way.
Did you just miss the posts telling you to clay bar it? Because that's what clay bars are for...removing stuff from the paint BEFORE you compound.
If this is too hard, please take the car to a good detailer (emphasis on good) and get it done. You are NOT doing it right and are definitely making things worse. I'd stop going on the advice of a random auto parts store guy who clearly has no idea what they are doing and go to someone who knows what to do. If you don't believe me, go see a detailer and find out what they say.
You are fucking your paint up if you keep going at it with rubbing compound. Compound is basically fine grit sandpaper suspended in liquid. It's job is to take off a rather sizable layer of the clear coat in order to level the clear and take out larger scratches, swirls, and other such defects AFTER the car is cleaned up and the paint (or clear for that matter) is bare and without crud on it. It is most certainly is NOT supposed to be used to remove stuff from your paint, all you're doing is grinding all that stuff into your clear coat as you use it causing all kinds of swirls and defects along the way.
Did you just miss the posts telling you to clay bar it? Because that's what clay bars are for...removing stuff from the paint BEFORE you compound.
If this is too hard, please take the car to a good detailer (emphasis on good) and get it done. You are NOT doing it right and are definitely making things worse. I'd stop going on the advice of a random auto parts store guy who clearly has no idea what they are doing and go to someone who knows what to do. If you don't believe me, go see a detailer and find out what they say.
Hey man,
I trust you. I didn't know rubbing compound was so abrasive. I don't know if it makes a difference, but on the bottle said clear coat safe on it. Are there different types of rubbing compound maybe? Sorry I'm a noob at this.
- Tar remover
- 50:50 isopropyl alcohol:water solution
- Clay bar
I tried, tar remover, but its was still not coming off. For some reason idk why I didn't think clay bar would work. Anyways I threw it into a detail shop for them to handle it, the guy said he'd clay bar it so hopefully that fixes everything.. Now i'm really worried about my paint cause I did use the a lot rubbing compound on it already. Maybe 1/3 of the bottle on various parts of the car?
Let's say I did strip the clear coat because of the rubbing compound, what are my options? Can I just reapply a clear coat? How much would that cost me?
If you applied compound by hand, there's no way you would have removed all or even a lot of the clear coat. There's a reason why detailers use buffing machines to remove swirls and scratches and not their hands.... hands don't have enough power and speed to cut the clear coat down. Your clear coat is probably just swirled up, hazy and dull looking which means that your car doesn't have that glossy wet looking paint. Nothing a light polishing can't fix (by a detailer who knows what s/he's doing).
That Meguiars rubbing compound isn't even that aggressive (abrasive) if I remember correctly.
If you applied compound by hand, there's no way you would have removed all or even a lot of the clear coat. There's a reason why detailers use buffing machines to remove swirls and scratches and not their hands.... hands don't have enough power and speed to cut the clear coat down. Your clear coat is probably just swirled up, hazy and dull looking which means that your car doesn't have that glossy wet looking paint. Nothing a light polishing can't fix (by a detailer who knows what s/he's doing).
That Meguiars rubbing compound isn't even that aggressive (abrasive) if I remember correctly.
Phew, that's good to hear. Also, the paint isn't dull looking, it's actually quite glossy.
Depending on your technique, and what you used to apply the rubbing compound, you very well could have compromised the clear coat by hand. If you spent a lot of time on one section, rubbing the paint hard, the compound can burn through clear coat. The benefit of a DA polisher is that it evenly applies pressure to make it almost fool proof. Clear coat is as thin as a single 3M sticky note, so it doesn't take much to burn through, especially by hand.
The easiest way to check if you've done irreparable damage is to take a dark cloth (or pad, if you have one) and use whatever polish or rubbing compound and just lightly rub the section(s) you did the most. If the pad has white paint transfer (not polish, but actual paint...), you know you burned through the clear coat and are removing base coat paint.
Otherwise, as mentioned above, take the car to a good, independent, reputable detailer local to your area to fix up whatever swirls you've introduced to the paint. Make sure whenever your car is repainted that you don't wax or seal the newly painted sections for at least 30 days while the paint is out gassing (polish is still safe).
If he doesn't know what he's doing this will make the issue much much worse. Not to mention that no amount of sanding a polishing will do anything to remove a scratch down to the metal.
I mean if he's going to get it repainted anyways why not try? It may not remove the scratch, but it may be less noticeable.
I trust you. I didn't know rubbing compound was so abrasive. I don't know if it makes a difference, but on the bottle said clear coat safe on it. Are there different types of rubbing compound maybe? Sorry I'm a noob at this.
If that's what you used, you should be ok. The red Megs bottles are basically their amateur line and as such are designed to be the most idiot proof you can get. If you used Megs M100 we'd be having a much different discussion. Compound by nature is not "clear coat safe" as it is designed to remove clear to level the surface to enhance gloss. Compound is the rough step that will introduce a ton of defects in the process. The next step is to use polish to work those defects out. I typically don't go for compound unless things are really bad, always start with polish first to see if it works before going to something more aggressive. If you're into woodworking think about compound as ~60 grit sand paper that you use to get most of the defects out but still introduce sanding marks. You then go over it with 150 grit and it gets better and then at 220 grit it looks flawless. Same process for compound and polish.
To answer your question, yes there are different grades of compound that are more or less aggressive depending on what's needed. If you don't know what you're doing, I wouldn't even try to mess with these and especially so if using a machine applied compound.
No need to be sorry, just don't want you ruining the paint job on your car due to the advice of some guy at an auto parts store.
If you want to learn more about this, and it's super interesting and rewarding to learn more about it, go buy a hood off of a car at a junk yard and start experimenting. Pretty cool what you can get out of something like that.
Originally Posted by AZuser
If you applied compound by hand, there's no way you would have removed all or even a lot of the clear coat. There's a reason why detailers use buffing machines to remove swirls and scratches and not their hands.... hands don't have enough power and speed to cut the clear coat down. Your clear coat is probably just swirled up, hazy and dull looking which means that your car doesn't have that glossy wet looking paint. Nothing a light polishing can't fix (by a detailer who knows what s/he's doing).
That Meguiars rubbing compound isn't even that aggressive (abrasive) if I remember correctly.
That's true if the paint was clean already but he didn't do that step first. So basically he turned the not as aggressive compound into a questionable level of abrasiveness due to whatever crap is being removed by the compound being ground into the clear. Probably ok but the detailer can measure the depth of the clear pretty easily if curious about it. Should be fine but could also be very not fine if the defects introduced require a ton of work to remove.
Originally Posted by BSG1
Depending on your technique, and what you used to apply the rubbing compound, you very well could have compromised the clear coat by hand. If you spent a lot of time on one section, rubbing the paint hard, the compound can burn through clear coat. The benefit of a DA polisher is that it evenly applies pressure to make it almost fool proof. Clear coat is as thin as a single 3M sticky note, so it doesn't take much to burn through, especially by hand.
The easiest way to check if you've done irreparable damage is to take a dark cloth (or pad, if you have one) and use whatever polish or rubbing compound and just lightly rub the section(s) you did the most. If the pad has white paint transfer (not polish, but actual paint...), you know you burned through the clear coat and are removing base coat paint.
Otherwise, as mentioned above, take the car to a good, independent, reputable detailer local to your area to fix up whatever swirls you've introduced to the paint. Make sure whenever your car is repainted that you don't wax or seal the newly painted sections for at least 30 days while the paint is out gassing (polish is still safe).
03-30-2017, 02:06 PM
Gonna get that fixed soon, but I have a question about washing my car.
