Need help to clean swirl mark on car!

fm9610

I went for a fund raising car wash. Afterwards, I discovered a lot of swirl marks all over the clear coat of my car. Should I try to fix it myself or hire professional to do an expert fix-up?

If I hire professional, what kind of money am I looking at and how much time is needed?

Thanks for any suggestion in advance.

gn02156668

Hi, do you have a picture to show how bad the swirl is ? As pkphilip mentioned above , a dual action (DA) polisher will mostly eliminate some of the swirls depends how deep the damage is. Also I always stay away from fund raising car wash since the volunteer will always induce damage to the vehicle's paint. I will just donate the money and say no thanks =)

Some swirls can be eliminated by using hand tool while some deeper one will require power machine.

here are some before and after pictures







hope it helps.

fm9610

Looks amazing!

But I do not think I can do it myself, I worry I may get things worst.

pkphilip

That's why I stay away from car washes when I see them use sponges!!

I think most car washes will have swirl marks on the clear coat, which you can take it to a detailing shop and have them do a full detail ($200+) should get rid of most of the obvious ones.

If you must DIY, you probably need to use a product call Scratch-X and do it a small portion at a time. I would not use rubbing compound if you are inexperienced because it could do more harm than good. We use rubbing compound with 1600 grit water  sandpaper to polish it, so you can imagine why there's a risk there.

I use a commercial quality orbital polisher to speed things up and the result is amazing.
http://www.autogeek.net/griots-orbital-polisher.html

You can have a look at the car I worked on for 9 hours for a wedding. :-) It's a 2004, and it looks spanking new. (lot of swirls marks, but got them covered)

Philip

Quest

what colour is your car? How big/deep are the swirl marks?

Typically, if the swirl marks are very fine (small), I use 3M polishing compound and then hand-rub them off..one small section at a time. If large area: you may either pay a few hundred $$$ to get a detailer guy to machine -polish them off for you, or you may polish it off using machine (orbital polisher is my recommendation)

Q.