No Contact Swirls

[Jayfro]

Mike,

My daughters white BMW X3 was only washed one time in 8-9 months, a mobile detailer mistakenly washed her car instead of her roommates car...black Jag SUV, this was about 45 days ago +/-. Prior to that washing, the car was not washed at all!...I do not know how he washed the car but if i had to guess it was probably a rinseless or waterless wash based on what I saw with the paint.

Before she left for school, I repolished the car and applied Sonax PNS, I feel I had the car around 90+%, it looked great!!

When I got the car home a couple weeks ago, I reinspected the paint and it looked like she went through swirl-o-matic car wash once a month, every panel was swirled consistently. I do know that she did not run the car through the wash...100000000% positive of that because I even told her to since it was so dirty.

Needless to say I repolished the paint last weekend and it looks better then before, I was actually impressed with myself!!

Question...can one wash from a "mobile detailer" cause a ton of swirls....or just with the car being so dirty and accumulating so much dirt, road grime, snow (little), etc cause the swirls. Again, I do know she didn't touch the paint....except when she backed the corner of her car into the center of a door of an Genesis SUV but that's another story!!!

Thank you for your help.
Jay

 

[Mike Phillips]

Question...can one wash from a "mobile detailer" cause a ton of swirls....

or just with the car being so dirty and accumulating so much dirt, road grime, snow (little), etc cause the swirls.

Thank you for your help.
Jay

Great question Jay, sorry there's no easy answer. Below is a cropped out section of picture 4550

If the paint is soft, you could get this level of swirling from a single wash. I detailed a 1958 Chevy Impala Convertible about a year ago or so and I felt bad for the owner because the paint was so soft that just wiping it could scratch the paint. I think he pad somewhere around 1/4 million for the car it was magazine quality with every option.

Here's what I do know, the way most swirls and scratches get into our car's paint, especially if the appearance of the swirls and scratches is very uniform, is normally due to contaminated things that "touch" the paint.

Here's the 3 most common things that touch paint.

1: Wash mitts
2: Drying towels.
3: Wiping towels.

We just had a 3-day class and I can guarantee you, everyone that took this class will be purchasing a nice set of tweezers to pick contaminants out of their towels and everyone will be a LOT more pro-active at keeping these 3 categories of items clean before, during and after use.


One insight - if the paint corrected very easily - this could be a sign of soft paint. And even a hand wash can instill swirls and scratches if the wash mitt and/or drying towels are contaminated.


-Mike

 

[Jayfro]

Mike,

Thank you for the reply, I was really scratching my head on this one too.

The X3 paint I found to be on the harder side (tons softer than my acura), I've polished it a few times now, using BF One Step and/or 3D Speed using LC Orange Pads with a harbor freight polisher (full speed) and could never get it past about 90% regardless of what I did. My wife got me a Griots G9 this past Christmas, I used the same LC Orange Pads, 3D Speed, 8 section passes (4 up/down, 4 left to right at nominal arm speed), speed 6, and pretty good pressure...more than I've ever used and it came out amazing.

Again, thank you for your input.

JF

 

[Mike Phillips]

Good to hear and your daughter is lucky her dad knows how to show swirls the door.

-Mike

 

[OldandSlow]

I've learned to pick my battles with daily drivers. If it looks good from six feet away, I call it a day.

 

[Mike Phillips]

I've learned to pick my battles with daily drivers. If it looks good from six feet away, I call it a day.

Totally agree. I've probably died a couple of times on the Make it Perfect Battlefield - lucky to live another day to fight the next swirl battle.

One of the things I practice, preach and teach in our classes is match your services to your client, their budget and the way they use their car.



-Mike

 

[Strive]

Question...can one wash from a "mobile detailer" cause a ton of swirls....or just with the car being so dirty and accumulating so much dirt, road grime, snow (little), etc cause the swirls.

Maybe the swirls are just from things rubbing against the paint? (stuff like purse, backpack, pants).

Are there swirls on the roof?

(Although if there aren't swirls on the roof, it could also be because whoever washed it didn't bother to wash the roof... )

 

[Jayfro]

Maybe the swirls are just from things rubbing against the paint? (stuff like purse, backpack, pants).

Are there swirls on the roof?

(Although if there aren't swirls on the roof, it could also be because whoever washed it didn't bother to wash the roof... )

All the panels were consistent with the amount of swirls, I didnt check the roof but I went ahead and did a quick repolish on it anyway. The hood might've had more or maybe a little deeper swirls since I could never get it 95-100% in the past but I do know it did not leave our driveway like that last August!!

With the car being white, you can get away with a lot, but I wanted to give the new G9 a workout for the first time and to see if I could get any better than I did last August, I was pleasantly surprised at the outcome, scratch that, I was PUMPED with the outcome!!

I have no idea about the detailer who washed the car but based on what I saw and assuming it was close to what I left it like in August, I would not want him to touch our car again. Funny that my daughters roommate has her car washed every month by the same guy, I didn't bother to look at her car when I was up there, it was in the garage but I didn't put a critical eye on it since it was late and I might've just had two margaritas!

JF

 

[Bill G]

All the panels were consistent with the amount of swirls, I didnt check the roof but I went ahead and did a quick repolish on it anyway. The hood might've had more or maybe a little deeper swirls since I could never get it 95-100% in the past but I do know it did not leave our driveway like that last August!!

With the car being white, you can get away with a lot, but I wanted to give the new G9 a workout for the first time and to see if I could get any better than I did last August, I was pleasantly surprised at the outcome, scratch that, I was PUMPED with the outcome!!

I have no idea about the detailer who washed the car but based on what I saw and assuming it was close to what I left it like in August, I would not want him to touch our car again. Funny that my daughters roommate has her car washed every month by the same guy, I didn't bother to look at her car when I was up there, it was in the garage but I didn't put a critical eye on it since it was late and I might've just had two margaritas!

JF

I can tell you that a lot of damage can come from just one wash. My daughter's BMW is dark blue and I keep it looking amazing for her. Very little defects in the paint. Took it to BMW for a service and they washed it after servicing, and it came back looking like it went through an automated car wash 100 times. I was shocked they could do so much damage with one wash. The hood and deck lid were just massive spider webs; the car has never come close to looking like that. All the years they have serviced our cars and never an issue like this. Clearly someone had dirty towels when washing or drying ... probably drying stage as it was severe. The damage was so excessive it was obvious to my service guy what happened. He had their body shop polish it out he was so embarrassed. Hard to believe that much damage can come from one wash, especially at a high-end car dealership that washes cars all day long, but it's possible unfortunately.

 

[Mike Phillips]

Just to add...

While I don't like to link to the geek forum especially because it might disappear any day, here's an article I wrote in 2013 that led to the creation of the Don't Wash Car hang tag.

Here's the article,

DON'T WASH CAR! by Mike Phillips


The ENTIRE reason I wrote the article was because the weekend before I had just personally detailed the owner of Autogeek at that time, his brand new Mercedes-Benz. I forget the exact model but it was a Bi-turbo something fast, fancy and most important - expensive.

After detailing it, he took it to the Mercedes-Benz dealership for service and while it was there - THEY WASHED IT.

It was flawless when it arrived at the Mercedes-Benz dealership and came back filled with swirls and scratches from ONE WASH.

It was infuriating to me that the staff at the dealership couldn't look at the car and see that it looked pristine and did not NEED to be washed and went ahead and washed it anyways.

I thought about it and figure out that collectively, the human race can never change a car dealership or more specifically, change the people that work at a dealership and so instead of HOPING common sense would rule the day I wrote the above article.

In the article, (because the Don't Wash Car hang tag had not been invented yet), I suggested printing out sheets of paper that read,

Don't Wash Car

And then place them in all the windows of your car when you take it to the dealership for service because you simply cannot count on your fellow human being to have common sense.

Here's the original photos I took after printing out "Don't Wash Car" on some paper and taping to the inside of the car.

The above article written by yours truly in 2013 and then 5 years later, someone leveraged my original idea and created the Don't Wash Car hang tag for the rear view mirror.

And now days, I see there's a few other companies that now provide a similar hang tag with their brand on the tag but to my knowledge, I am the original source. I call this,

Car Wax History

But it also seems like no one remembers. Kind of like where the term Test Spot came from. Everyone uses it but no one knows the origin.

The term TEST SPOT and where it came from by Mike Phillips

Back on topic, yup a single car wash can scratch the heck out of a nice finish.


-Mike