Be careful who you have take care of scratches on your vehicle as the results can turn out like this car. 2003 VW Passat came to us with heavy buffer swirls from a less experienced auto detailer and the funny thing is they didn’t even remedy the isolated deep scratch at the top of the door. Here are a few more photos which speak for themselves, followed by a video of the steps it takes to correct the paint.
The heavy buffer swirls were caused by an inexperienced buffer whos buffer “trails” or holograms leave behind evidence of the erratic method to his madness.
Luckily the entire car wasn’t as swirled as the passenger rear door (Where the original scratch was, which was supposedly removed, although still visible) and rear quarter panel
Buffing compound left in the seal of the rear door
Before touching the vehicle I gathered some paint depth’s using a special gauge to read the paint thicknesses around the entire vehicle and on average we saw a reading of 2.7-3.1Mils of Paint/Clearcoat available. Most vehicles come from the factory with 1-2 Mils of clearcoat:
These two panels of which had been buffed heavily before, read between 2.3 and 2.5Mils of paint. I estimated that this particular vehicle had 1Mil of clearcoat available so wet-sanding buffing and polishing had to be done with extreme caution as to not fully remove the clearcoat as the previous person had gone WAY too aggressive to remove that much paint (The clearcoat is what provides the gloss you see on the vehicle as well as a UV protection from the paint or color underneath from fading)
The following video shows a method of machine wet-sanding to remedy said scratch, as well as the removal of the buffer swirls installed by the previous detail, using proper paint correction techniques. Hope you enjoy.
Here is a 50/50 Comparison on the rear quarter panel:
Heres the corrected panels:
Finals of the entire car:
Click here for the full res shots on our Flikr Album:
Seattle’s NWAS Does Isolated Scratch Removal and Paint Correction to Remedy Heavy Buffer Swirls on a Blue Volkswagen Passat Wagon
Blake
NorthWest Auto Salon
Seattle’s Premier Auto Detailing Facility
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