Why my car paint is so faint and scratched

So, you’ve bought your car a few years ago. It’s a great car and you enjoy it every day, but somehow the color lost its luster. There are some scratches, lots of smaller ones, and countless swirl marks all over the car. In other words, the paint faded and there are hard water spots all over the place and the glass especially if you are in Washington state.

Or you’re buying a new car or trying to get rid of your current ride and want to raise its resale value. No matter what, there is a reasonably quick and cheap way to make the entire vehicle look like a new one or as close as possible to a newer car.

I am talking about polishing the paint and moving beyond the automatic traditional car wash.  Many detailing shops would like you to believe that you can’t do it at home, but trust me – you can polish your car at home, in your garage, and with just a few hundred or so dollars worth of tools and the right products.

Despite your best efforts to look after your car, it will lose some of its shine and reflectivity just after a few years even if you keep it in your garage every night. It’s completely normal for all cars that are driven daily or regularly.

The two main reasons why the finish of your paint loses its shine and brand-new look and grows dull over time are the scratches and contamination from the roads, Basically, any time you touch a car with anything other than a clean microfiber, you’re scratching the paint

• Flying sand, stones, sticks, leaves, and other debris on the road
• Bad detailing and incorrect techniques will scratch the finish
• Bad cleaning and incorrect cleaning techniques will scratch your finish
• Dragging stuff and other items from the hood or roof
• Mineral deposits from hard water when washing the car at home or even at automatic car washes
• Salts and other chemicals used in the winter to deice the roads
• Tree sap, bird poop, bug splatter,
• Iron shavings from your wheel’s brake system on every car on the road
• Road tar and cement, asphalt, and other chemicals like paint and oils

You can’t just wash these contaminants with chemicals or soapy water. We know that there are specialized chemicals that claim to remove all of this but they only work on the surface of the clear coat.

Many of the contaminants are small enough to get in the pores of the clear coat if you would be able to check it under a microscope. Once they settle in and solidify, they become a part of the clear coat and are called bonded contamination, and when you go and check with your hand you would fill them on the paint

You can wash as much as you want, but it will be impossible to remove the contamination completely… unless you do polish the paint – that is more complicated than it sounds.

Car polishing is an abrasive operation that scratches away and removes a fine layer of material to level out scratches and remove bonded contamination.

The polishing is similar to sanding but its orders of magnitude are more delicate, using much finer abrasive products and materials.

You can polish by hand or with any polishing machine, and there are plenty of chemicals and pads on the market. The most difficult part of the job is to pick out the correct equipment and compounds.

Using the incorrect tools, products and techniques will harm the finish of the paint, producing unsightly defects like holograms, haze, and even more, scratches – you’ve been warned!!!

Polishing is not the be-all and end-all of paint correction. Just by polishing the surface, you’ll not remove deep scratches and most stone chips, since they penetrate through the clear coat and affect the underlying color and primer coats. You’ll need more advanced paint correction techniques to repair these kinds of defects.

Polishing is performed as a finishing operation. Polishing will practically remove 100% of bonded contamination and the majority of light scratches, orange peel, swirl marks, and most surface defects.

Every car, even new ones rolling out of the factory, will look better after a polishing treatment.