Factory Paint vs. Repaint

[duquephart]

I hit a deer which, among many other things, took out the hood and L front fender of the car. So ----- I have two non-factory painted panels on a one year old car. Do these need to be treated any differently when it comes to machine (7424xp) polishing?

[tdekany]

Treat it as the rest of your car. Due to the body shop you may need to put some effort to "correct". How does the repaint looking? When was it painted?

[The Guz]

I hit a deer which, among many other things, took out the hood and L front fender of the car. So ----- I have two non-factory painted panels on a one year old car. Do these need to be treated any differently when it comes to machine (7424xp) polishing?

treat them like the rest of the car. It is recommended to allow the paint outgas and cure for at least 30 days.

[tdekany]

treat them like the rest of the car. It is recommended to allow the paint outgas and cure for at least 30 days.

But you can polish it right away. In fact if you want to protect it, you can do so after a week. 90% of the curing is done in the first week. I have sealed one of our cars door that was repainted I believe even sooner with an fk1 sealant well over 10 years ago and everything is fine to this day. Just as an FYI

[The Guz]

But you can polish it right away. In fact if you want to protect it, you can do so after a week. 90% of the curing is done in the first week. I have sealed one of our cars door that was repainted I believe even sooner with an fk1 sealant well over 10 years ago and everything is fine to this day. Just as an FYI

Better to be safe than sorry. Not all body shops are the same just like the paint that is used. Sure it can be polished but there is no rush.

If anything I would use Meguiars M305 Ultra Finishing Durable Glaze 16 oz. (http://www.autogeek.net/megiuars-m305-16.html)

Designed for fresh paint.

[LSNAutoDetailing]

The real question is what happened with the deer?

[OCDetails]

Most body shops will tell you not to do anything to the paint for 90 days. It may be safe to do things to it sooner, but if they painted it badly and you go back for warranty work, they will deny you based on the fact that you polished it or waxed it. Find out from the body shop how long you can wait before waxing it and stick to that. It is their warranty you are dealing with, so regardless of how long it actually takes paint to cure, you don't want to get blamed for their shoddy work.

That being said, I always polish body work more carefully than OEM paint. Who knows what kind of paint they used or how hard it is? Be careful along edges and body lines where the paint will be thinner, but generally it is pretty much the same process as the rest of the car. At least 60 percent of my Odyssey has been repainted at some point in the past and at this point I treat it all the same. Most of it was quality work though, so not much worry was needed. The hood was another story though... The clear coat failed on that after about 5 years and there wasn't anything I could do to stop it. My polishing it didn't have any impact on that. It was just a poor paint job I guess.

So bottom line is that you should wait for as long as the paint shop tells you to wait. Inpsect it closely before you wax it so you can take it back if you notice paint lifting or anything wrong. Then just polish it and wax it like any other part of the car. It shouldn't need anything heavy to cut it with since it should be fairly pristine even if you have to wait 90 days to wax it.