Car Polish

[Chrissy Boy]

I have been through a car wash and I have noticed it has fine scratches which have dulled the paint work slightly.  I doubt I will have any comback on the car wash company, so what is the best way to bring it back up to look as close as possible to new. For info its a 6 month old red Alfa

Thanking you in anticipation

[Impret-Sir]

Sadly you are right, the car wash company will always claim that you use their infernal machines "at your own risk", I never use the things for exactly the reason you have found, the brushes are never cleaned year after year and must be full of dirt and fine grit particles. I would suggest the best way to deal with this is to take the car to a body shop and ask them to polish the whole car. I tdid this, for a slightly diferent reason, (to remove the "bloom" in a red painted car) and afterwards the surface was like new, a coat of good quality polish (I will only use McGuires) and my four year old Corrado looked like it had just left the showroom. You could try buffing the scratches out yourself, perhaps using a cutting compound like T-cut for the deeper ones, but on a newish car like yours I would be loath to take the risk of messing it up, doing a whole car evenly is not as easy as it looks!

[dodgyshirt]

Do not use T-cut if it is metallic paint as this will destroy the outer protective coating. Once this is destroyed the sub-surface of metallic paint which is much softer than solid colours will rapidly deteriorate.

[Disco Fever]

You used a car wash on a six month old car, why? Wash it yourself with some decent stuff then you cant say its got light scratches from a car wash. Ask an Alfa dealer what they use and try that.

[KebabMeister]

Car washer brushes are often made of a plastic/nylon type material.  If the brushes hasn't scratched your car (with grit left over from other cars) then the chances are that it's left nylon residue over your car.

 

What you need is a special car polish with compound.  This means the polish has a fine grit inside it.  It will take off the top layer of paint revealing a perfect layer underneath.  Beware though, although you can do this yourself I would enquire at a proper car valetting business and ask for a quote.  They may charge up to or above �50 but it should return your paint to almost new.  There are risks involved though, if they are using buffers then they could take too much paint off.  Ensure you're covered for this in case they have an accident.