New Car Paint, is it just me?

[SATracker]

A few months back I purchased a new 2010 black RAV4; nice car, the swirls were horrible. Maybe it was just me. So I go to my sister's house to wax her new Hundai Accent (few weeks old), washed w/ONR, clayed w/Pinnacle but the paint still had a rough feeling to it. I went ahead and put some wax on it but I told her to bring it to my house where I can do some work on it. Two cars, two not real great paint jobs. Is this typical? We just can't pick good cars? I'm too picky about what I expect?

[fairlady350z]

A few months back I purchased a new 2010 black RAV4; nice car, the swirls were horrible. Maybe it was just me. So I go to my sister's house to wax her new Hundai Accent (few weeks old), washed w/ONR, clayed w/Pinnacle but the paint still had a rough feeling to it. I went ahead and put some wax on it but I told her to bring it to my house where I can do some work on it. Two cars, two not real great paint jobs. Is this typical? We just can't pick good cars? I'm too picky about what I expect?

As far as the swirls go, I think the dealerships like to give 5 year olds wash mitts full of rocks and go to town on your new car. Seriously though, dealerships have a tendency to put swirls in new paint...just the nature of the beast I guess. As for the roughness of the paint, maybe you need a more aggressive clay bar? You shouldn't have to do anything too crazy since it's new paint, unless it picked up a lot of contaminants from sitting on the lot.

[blob]

I currently work at a Hyundai dealership. I can speak from firsthand experience that unfortunately more often than not, the cars come in with a lot of surface contamination. We do not know how exactly it happens (we have our theories). We also see some swirling from the factory. Dealership Detailers, we are not ALL bad. However, myself and the person that I work with ALWAYS cringe when a car is "detailed" at one of the other dealerships in our Auto Group.

[SATracker]

Thanks guys, I'm ordering some more clay and see where that takes me. It is new paint, I don't want to get stupid or crazy; and I may be real naive about things.

[fairlady350z]

did you try a light polish? If not, try something like m205 too.

[SATracker]

@fairlady350z: The brand new car came in crap condition and is outside all the time. Out of being really naive, I thought I'd give it a nice wash, good clay, and put some wax on for protection. After the claying things just didn't feel right. I went ahead and waxed it to put on some protection. I told her to bring it over to my garage where I have all my stuff available. I plan on testing a couple of options; Megs 205 on LC white pad, maybe Megs Scratch-X doing like a paint cleaning thing. But I am going to try a different clay first. All these things are why I need it at my place.

[C. Charles Hahn]

We do not know how exactly it happens (we have our theories).

That's fairly easy. They sit outside the factory, at boat/train/truck depots, and go down the road unprotected from contaminants and IFO on the way to the dealership. Brand new, they need to be gone over with clay or some type of IFO remover just as bad as a neglected vehicle that hasn't been detailed in a long time.