I was in a minor accident the other day, which is resulting in getting my front bumper replaced. So that means prime, paint, blend, all the crapola. Now ive had work done at this shop before, and they are quite good when compared to other shops in town, although their wash technique isnt up to par. I come out of there with some crazy swirling. My question is, since i have a VW and the paint is very hard. Im going to assume the paint they use wont be quite as hard. Am i going to run into paint on blended panels of differing hardness?. Im going to do my test spots of course, but is this going to take me a week or am i over-thinking this?
I'll try to keep this as short and as simple as possible: It all depends on what type of clearcoat the shop will be spraying on your car. Most shops just use what is cheap/effective, some use high end.. Some clears are soft, some are rock hard, but THIS IS NOT BASED UPON THE QUALITY OF CLEAR, it is based upon the properties of each individual clear by itself. Just because it's rock hard doesn't mean it's good, just because it's soft doesn't mean its cheap junk. If you want a more accurate answer, talk to the shop and ask what they will be spraying on the car. If they want your business, they can spare 5 minutes to answer some questions. Talk to the painter and ask if it is a hard/soft clear. He "should" know.. if he doesn't, good luck to you. As far as the swirls go, just ask them politely not to give the car a courtesy wash after the work is complete, tell them you would rather detail the car yourself. As far as swirls on the fresh paint.. hard to avoid that. Almost all shops will wetsand/buff areas of the fresh paint to remove defects. These jobs are buffed to remove the sand scratches only, then given a quick polish.. no shop is willing to pay someone to sit there and make the car swirl free/perfect. Most body shops will tell you that there job is to return the car to "pre-accident condition"... most cars aren't swirl free, most cars aren't perfect.. So they do the job to "good enough" standards. My advice would be to re-polish out the fresh paint within 2 weeks or so of getting it back. The longer the paint has to cure and harden, the harder it will be to remove the mess that the shop creates. Just don't wax/seal for a good 90 days.
thanks for the tip/advice. I would love to polish it out sooner rather than later, but its quite snowy here and i dont have access to a garage. It would have to wait until the spring.
