Vent: Guy at a car show told me my wax job was leaving hazy swirls on black paint

I switched from a cheap microfiber towel to a dedicated buffing pad after he showed me the light hitting the hood at the right angle, and now I'm wondering how many of my Sunday afternoons I actually wasted polishing mistakes into the clear coat.

4 comments

4 Comments

nguyen.blake1mo ago

Looking at brianreed's comment about how "the small things always get ignored until they break something big" - I get the point but I think we're making too much out of some swirl marks here. It's a car, not a bridge about to collapse. You're not going to have a catastrophic failure because you used the wrong towel on your paint job. Sure, it's annoying to learn you've been doing it wrong, and I'd be frustrated too. But at the end of the day, you can fix it with a proper polish and move on. Sometimes I think we in the detailing world get a little too wrapped up in perfection, and we forget that these are just machines we drive to the grocery store.

brianreed1mo ago

Funny how the little tools we overlook end up being the whole problem.

sethfoster1mo ago

@brianreed nailed it. The small things always get ignored until they break something big. It's like how nobody thinks about their door hinges until the door won't close right and you're stuck in a drafty room.

murphy.tessa1mo ago

Is it possible the door hinge thing is actually a good thing though? Like maybe the small stuff staying quiet is what lets us focus on the big stuff without getting overwhelmed constantly.