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Those "reflections" you see is the product that you used to polish or wax your car.They were not removed properly.Did you polish or wax the car undercover? If you polish or wax the car in the sun or out in the open the product can be really hard to remove.Did you polish or wax your car in sections? You should never do the whole car in one hit,again the product will set too much onto the panel resulting in swirling or funny coloured "reflections".

What steps did you take to detail your car?

If you go through the run down on what you did im sure someone on here with detailing experience will know exactly what went wrong.

Having a black car is a pain to detail to start with,and to answer your question about the removal of the "reflections" is to do a cut and polish,but make sure the car is undercover.Again black cars a more prone to drying quicker out in the open due to its colour.

on black cars, all the small surface scratches will show up. usually swirls from buffing, or general washing/waxing. when the sun hits them at the right angle they look like spider webs shining all over the place.

my car is black, and had pretty bad swirl marks when i got it. someone did a crap buff job on it. i got it buffed out at a panel shop that i trust to do good work, but no one could remove them entirely. although the strange reflections are just about gone now.

Edited by Munkyb0y
  Munkyb0y said:
on black cars, all the small surface scratches will show up. usually swirls from buffing, or general washing/waxing. when the sun hits them at the right angle they look like spider webs shining all over the place.

my car is black, and had pretty bad swirl marks when i got it. someone did a crap buff job on it. i got it buffed out at a panel shop that i trust to do good work, but no one could remove them entirely. although the strange reflections are just about gone now.

How much more cut & buff did you have to do to get rid of those weird reflections from crappy previous buff job? and HOw long did it take to go away?

Is it worth buffing the car again?

  R33Turbo said:
How much more cut & buff did you have to do to get rid of those weird reflections from crappy previous buff job? and HOw long did it take to go away?

Is it worth buffing the car again?

i just took it to a guy i trust, and he went over it. took his time. probably spent about 8 hrs doing it, by hand, and buffer. using different grades of compound etc. he explained it all to me at the time.

it doesnt remove all scratches, but it reduces them greatly.

Edited by Munkyb0y

You may be talking about holograms (below).. these are usually put into the paint by someone not using a rotary buffer correctly. The car may look great in the shade but put it out in the sun and if you move your head around slightly you will see holograms and probably swirls too.

post-13456-1198733484_thumb.jpg

Getting your paint looking good (like almost any job) is all in the preperation work.

This is what I did with my paint and it improved it heaps.

- Wash (not with a sponge, use a microfiber cloth or mit)

- Clay the car, this makes your cleans contaminants off your paint and smoothes it like glass which improves reflections. Some people wash it again after this but I didn't feel it was necessary.

- I taped off the rubber trims, badges, handles, and edges of the lights.

- buffed the car using an orbital buffer (oscillates up and down and round and round) - this helps prevent the holograms as a rotary buffer just spins and it is easy to leave impressions in the paint as it heats the surface up. I used two passes of meguiars M83 followed by one of M80, there's plenty of products out there which are good and this is just what I tried. This step removes the swirls and hopefully the holograms too. Do a test spot and then put your car in the sun and see what it looks like. If you can't get one small section of the car right there's no point in doing the rest of it the same way.

post-13456-1198733918_thumb.jpg

You could do this step by hand with meguiar's SratchX or similar, it will just take a bit of elbow grease.

- Wax the car, again there's plenty of brands out there, I chose meguiar's Next Gen Tech Wax.

- use plastic cleaner/polish like Plastx to clean your headlights if needed.. toothpaste or similar may work also.

Every time you wash the car, use a microfiber and never a sponge. Dry your car with a microfiber afterwards too. Last thing you want to do is put scratches back in your paint bay washing it.

I went from this..

post-13456-1198734560_thumb.jpg

post-13456-1198734649_thumb.jpg

to this..

post-13456-1198734781_thumb.jpg

post-13456-1198734813_thumb.jpg

It's not perfect but is a big improvement.

You have the worst case scenario as it is black paint which shows up imperfectionsworse than other colours. just take your time and search around for what other people do for their black paint.

Good Luck

  • 2 weeks later...

i just fin respraying my car blue pearl and they r had to try and get rid of but u nerver will i spent about half a day and i had minor swirl marks though it black and blue r the worst for keeping clean and scratch free

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