What could have gone wrong???

[Lostsoulal2]

I just sold my car and the night before it was to be collected thought I would give it a final waxing in the garage. Oh dear - Nice idea - Fatal mistake.

I knew that the car had had a small "smart repair" on the front wheelarch and examining it really closely I thought that the surface did not feel as silkily smooth as the rest of the wing, thinking that there was bit of clearcoat overspray that needed to be blended in.

So I got out the PC - and started to buff the car and in particular spent a little bit more time on this area - - I used a Sonus Orange pad with a Meguiars DACP on setting nos 3 to spread and then 5-6 to work in. I only spent 30 secs to a minute on the affected area.

I then moved to a green pad and used a Meguiars cleaner paste wax, followed by a Blue pad using Souveran Pinnacle Wax. I did this all over the car by the way.

Well the clear coat surface felt silkily smooth, but when I looked at the car in the daylight the next morning I was horrified to see that the Smart Repair had slightly darkened in colour (the car is a metallic silver colour) and it was obvious to see the repair whereas before you could not see any shading difference.

Luckily it did not frustrate the sale - as I said I would pay for the repair, but I am puzzled as to what happenned. I had washed - polished and waxed the car several times before and had used Scratch X manually to improve the feel of the repaired area.

I have not got any pictures to show the before / after as the car has now been sold, but you could clearly see a 2 inch by 10 inch area where the smart repair had been made to cover a small set of scratches/parking knock.

Has any one had a similar experience or got any thoughts as to what could have happenend??

I am thinking along the lines that I must have got very near to the bottom of the clear coat and by polishing / buffing it reactivated the paint / softened it and allowed the oils in the polish or the wax to penetrate the surface.

Or was the "Smart" repair not so smart, and it just was a bad paint spray job?

Thanking you in anticipation - I know I will be ever so careful in the future around previous repairs.