How to remove swirls from your car body

In the last article we’ve talked about the polishing pad’ choice. We’ve analysed the main differences between foam pads and wool pads, discovering the points of strength and the points of weakness.

Today we’ll talk about swirls and scratches on the car body. These imperfections can be very annoying, especially for the car aesthetics. They ruin the appearance, and this could be a problem also for the car market value, which could decrease.

To understand better, we will make a distinction between two cases:

Superficial damage. An imperfection is considered “superficial” if it hasn’t ruined the paint layer. It is a scratch that is limited on the superficial transparent layer. (To discover more about car body layers, look here). In this case, a polishing process will be sufficient to remove the damages.
Deep damage. In this case, the paint layer has been ruined. This means that it’s not enough to polish the car body. A repainting process will be necessary.

Usually, it’s easy to understand in which of the two situation you’re.

As already said, in case of paint layer damaged it will not be possible to give a complete solution through the surface’ polishing. Instead, if you are facing superficial damages, the polishing process will be effective for the definitive damage’s removal.

First, let’s start cleaning and decontaminating the car body (take a look at our article related to car body decontamination before polishing).

According to the damages level, Pai Cristal provides two possible combinations as a solution for the imperfections’ removal. These combinations are suitable for roto-orbital polishing machine.

Considerable damages PAICAR 01 & DA-01 + PAICAR 03 & DA-03
Light damages PAICAR02 & DA-02 + PAICAR04 & DA-04

In both cases, the procedure to follow is the same. PaiCar’ polishing compounds are water-based products. This means that the damages repair is a result of the scratches removal, unlike the solvent-based products, that work covering the damages.

What’s the difference? A covered damage will return visible after a short period of time because the fillers applied to cover the scratches will come off. On the contrary, an imperfection corrected using water based polishing compound will not return visible, because it has been removed! (to discover more, look at our article related to “what is the car body polishing”).