I've just bought a Golf 1.8T in dia black!!!!! and already I have noticed swirl marks on paint work, I usually use Auto Glym!!!!! can anyone help or give me tips on how to get rid of swirl marks without damaging the paint work and are there anyways to prevent them!!
Thanks,
Andy
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Polish in straight lines, rather than in a circular motion.
Andy
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Oky i'll try that!!! the thing is i havn't poilished it yet. Is there a way to get rid of them on new cars without harming the paint???
thanks
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Volkswagens latest paint seems to be very soft, some of the recent Golfs which I have helped buy already had swirlmarks from where the dealer had polished them. I suspect that T Cut etc might just result in more.
Andrew
www.hispecgolfs.co.uk
>
> I've just bought a Golf 1.8T in dia black!!!!! and already I
> have noticed swirl marks on paint work, I usually use Auto
> Glym!!!!! can anyone help or give me tips on how to get rid
> of swirl marks without damaging the paint work and are there
> anyways to prevent them!!
>
> Thanks,
>
> Andy
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I've found that the paint on my Golf is suspiciously prone to scratches as well. Two weeks after taking delivery just before Christmas I decided to wash it as very dirty and to my surprise upon rinsing, I found loads of swirls marks in the paint work.
Admittedly I didn't hose the car down before washing it to get rid of all the loose stuff but I would've thought it would have stood up better than it did- I never had any problems like this with my previous car. Could it be that because the car is so new that the paint is still 'soft'?
Anyhow, I've decided to wait until the car is at least a couple of months old until I decide to wash it again and then will put a layer of hard wax on it.
BTW, have you noticed any strange (and intermittent) Beep noises coming from your dash whilst driving? I still haven't found out what they are on mine..... :(
Cheers
Chi
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Thanks for the info m8,
I might take it to the jet wash first then bucket and spounge it, then wax it!!!!
Anyway I havnt heard any beeping noises but what i have noticed is the dash lights flick off for a split second, i've only noticed it twice though!!!!!
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Chi
The main dealer will be able to plug their diagnostics computer into your car and check if there are any error codes stored due to faults, they will do this under warranty.
Cheers
Andrew
>
> I\'ve found that the paint on my Golf is suspiciously prone to
> scratches as well. Two weeks after taking delivery just
> before Christmas I decided to wash it as very dirty and to my
> surprise upon rinsing, I found loads of swirls marks in the
> paint work.
>
> Admittedly I didn\'t hose the car down before washing it to
> get rid of all the loose stuff but I would\'ve thought it
> would have stood up better than it did- I never had any
> problems like this with my previous car. Could it be that
> because the car is so new that the paint is still \'soft\'?
>
> Anyhow, I\'ve decided to wait until the car is at least a
> couple of months old until I decide to wash it again and then
> will put a layer of hard wax on it.
>
> BTW, have you noticed any strange (and intermittent) Beep
> noises coming from your dash whilst driving? I still haven\'t
> found out what they are on mine..... :(
>
> Cheers
>
> Chi
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Did you rule out a warning you're going too fast? (my post on earlier thread)
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My BMW is also Diamond Black and appeared to have ingrained swirl marks after I polished it with Simoniz Max Wax liquid car polish, yet I know that I hadn't been harsh enough to actually damage the paint. In fact, though black paint is rather soft, I was actually polishing the hard lacquer coating, not the paint.
The same thing happened a few days later with the Saffron Yellow cellulose paint of my old Triumph. I polished the Triumph again using a straight rather than circular motion but the swirl marks were still there and the shine was nothing to get excited about either, in fact it looked quite grubby.
I had already come to the conclusion Max Wax does not give a very long protection (days rather than weeks in my experience) but I was sure it had given a better shine in the past. Then I realised that I had gone over both cars last time with Turtle Wax Gloss Guard on top of the Max Wax and I think this must have been at the root of the 'swirl' and 'grubby' problems.
Looking through my junk, I found a little bit of polish left in an old tin of Simoniz GT-Wax, a paste-type wax that takes a bit of polishing off. I tried this on the Triumph to see what would happen. The result was perfection! I have tried to buy a new tin but have found that it has been discontinued. I also e-mailed Simoniz for their advice but got no response. So I now have a two-toned Triumph, upper half with a deep glossy shine and lower half that looks a bit jaded.
Andy, perhaps the seller of your VW had used something like Gloss Guard on it to give it that extra pre-sale shine? If so, it might pay to try removing it with a paste-type polish. I have used AutoGlym, and Mer, in the past and think they are a bit over-rated but this type of polish shouldn't have caused the problem on its own, especially if the paintwork has a clear lacquer coating.
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I think sponges can collect grit which might cause this problem. I reckon using a soft brush that is rinsed out frequently in clean water is the best way to avoid scratching
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Aren't all cars today prone to scratching very easily. I believe its down to the water based paints they all use nowadays for supposedly enviromental reasons. I only have to look at my vectra for a new scratch to appear.
An old Nova we got rid of three years ago never got a scratch on it and the paint was far superior.
Alvin
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I have a similar problem with my 6-year old Corsa; about 3 years ago I noticed that the Flame Red paint on all the upper panels was starting to look rather faded and blotchy, despite regular washing and periodic polishing. A thorough polish with Autoglym Resin Polish made it look lovely and shiny but still a bit blotchy. Within a couple of months it had faded badly. The next time I tried Autoglym Paint Renovator, this brought back the colour, then I used the Autoglym Resin Polish as normal. Within a few weeks the paint was blotchy again (as well as covered in swirl marks despite my best efforts to polish in straight lines). It seems that any water droplets lying on the paintwork somehow react with the polish/paint, because for the first few weeks after polishing, the fading starts as droplet marks. I had hoped that the Autoglym would protect the paint much better than this. I've since tried Vauxhall's own recommended polishes (Sonax), with little improvement. I know red is an unstable colour, but compare this to my mother's 19-year-old Metro whose bright red paint always polishes up a real treat with little effort, no swirl marks, and it stays shiny and doesn't fade for months, even years! Presumably this is the difference between older cellulose and newer water-based paints?
Does anyone have any ideas how to restore the depth of colour and keep it that way? I wondered about trying Mer polish but I'm a bit reluctant to spend another £10 or whatever on something else that doesn't work, and I'm worried about actually removing too much paint with all this polishing!
Meanwhile I'm left with a faded-red-covered-in-swirl-marks Corsa which I suppose I'll just have to put up with... never mind, at least it's not rusty. Yet.
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As you obviously know, red-paint bleaching used to be a real problem. It was particularly bad with cellulose enamels (which were discontinued on new cars some years ago) and seemed to be much improved with later types of solvent-based paints and especially two-pack paint. It does look as though the industry move to water-based paints may have resurrected the problem.
The fading is caused by sunlight attacking certain pigments found mostly in red paint. I would guess that the action of the sunlight is magnified by the water droplets and this is why these areas show up first.
I suspect that there is no long term cure for this bleaching other than a respray and this is probably not worth doing. Cutting back with T-Cut or similar may get rid of the swirl marks and should restore the colour and this could be followed by regular use of a polish containing a mild abrasive to stop or at least slow down the fading. All hard work!
I appreciate that there will come a time when too much paint has been removed but I don't see any other answer. You could just accept the fading but, if it is left unchecked, the paint is likely to degrade further to the point where the proper finish cannot be restored.
Used car dealers in the past sometimes gave the paint a coat of lacquer to keep the colour and shine in place whilst they retailed the car but I doubt if this was a lasting cure since sunlight would still penetrate.
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Many thanks for this, David. What I don't understand is, I've seen very few other Vauxhalls of this colour affected as badly as mine. Until my car was about 4 years old the paint looked great - deep glossy red - and it stayed that way after I'd polished it thoroughly each spring and autumn. All it needed otherwise was washing which it got on a regular basis. The deterioration seems to have happened quite quickly in the last couple of years, now it seems that after just a few weeks the paint starts to look blotchy. My uncle also has a Corsa, exactly the same colour as mine, but two years younger, and so far the paint looks OK. I'll be interested to see if it goes the same way as mine...
On my car, the vertical panels (i.e. lower sides of the car) are largely unaffected, indeed I don't think I've actually needed to polish the bottom couple of feet as the paint is still looking good. Presumably because any water will run off and the panels are less susceptible to all the atmospheric grot landing on them. You can see a real contrast in the faded and original paint where the doors close. Your (sun)light bleaching theory makes perfect sense, especially as my car is always parked outside. As you say, I could leave polishing it for fear of wearing through the paint, but at the risk of the finish becoming irreversibly faded.
I'll say this though; Austin-Rover may not have had the best record for the quality and reliabilty of their cars, but they know a thing or two about getting a high quality and durable paint finish - my dad's Rover is nearly 7 years old, has always been parked outside, and has never been polished - the paint is still unblemished, deep and glossy; and as I said earlier, mother's Metro's bright red paint has needed very little polishing and is still looking really good after 19 years!
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The fading almost always affects the 'horizontal' panels because it is these which get the strength of the sun rays full on, and fairly continuously, during daylight hours and especially in mid-summer. I have noticed that it usually takes a few years for the paint to start to visibly fade -- I assume that it is deteriorating from new but doesn't actually break down for a while.
Another reason for the lacquer 'bodge' that I mentioned was to even out the slight difference in colour between original-colour side panels and faded/restored upper panels. I describe it as a 'bodge' because I'm sure it wasn't long before the lacquer peeled and flaked and thus exacerbated the problem.
My old Triumph used to have a similar problem in that its Saffron Yellow cellulose paint (which contains some of the same pigment as red paint) would darken, rather than fade, over time. I resprayed parts of the car but Saffron Yellow is a terrible colour to match up so it never looked right. It has been fine since I fully resprayed it about five years ago, but it is kept in a garage when not in use and I always try to find a shady spot to park when we are out.
One reason for the difference between your mum's Metro and your Corsa could be that the Metro may have been finished in a solvent-borne paint. The car manufacturers did not all change over to water-borne paints at the same time; for example, I don't think the Peugeot 206 was being finished in water-borne paint when I visited the factory at Ryton only two or three years ago.
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