What did I do wrong? What should I try now?

[argetni]

Backstory - I picked up a 2010 Honda CR-V (Crystal black pearl) for my wife, at delivery in the sunlight the car looked great. That night I was walking the dog with a flashlight and happened to shine it on the paint, OMG it looked awful swirl s, haze, three BAD holograms.



The next day, not really thinking I took it to the local drive thru wash for a platinum wash and hand applied spray wax. Again it looked great in the sunlight, but when I did the flashlight test it looked awful.



Today I did a wash with ONR and Costco MFs and then applied Meguiars NXT 2.0with a MF applicator and buffed it off, I had to use some quick detailer to make the hood look good. The car looked sweet in the sun light but come nightfall it failed the flashlight test again, in fact it looked worse then after the car wash.



What did I do wrong? What should I try now?

 

[cptzippy]

Black paint is difficult to keep perfect. The swirls etc are from the dealer I would imagine. Need to polish to get the swirls, holograms, haze off. Can tackle it yourself if you get a PC (or similar) and do a lot of reading on here. Or pay to have a good detailer take care of it.

 

[dheath]

unfortunately for you both, the dealer probably did install those swirls free of charge. For sure, the dealer at least installed the holograms. As mentioned, a polish is what you will need to get rid of the swirls. Then proper washing/drying techniques to prevent swirls from being instilled.



Sometimes you just can't see defect in one light or another. If you look through a couple of Accumulators posts, you will find that he uses about 200 different light sources to find any kind of hidden defect.

 

[Accumulator]

unfortunately for you both, the dealer probably did install those swirls free of charge. For sure, the dealer at least installed the holograms. As mentioned, a polish is what you will need to get rid of the swirls. Then proper washing/drying techniques to prevent swirls from being instilled...

Yep.

Sometimes you just can't see defect in one light or another. If you look through a couple of Accumulators posts, you will find that he uses about 200 different light sources to find any kind of hidden defect.

Heh heh, that's probably not as much of an exaggeration as you might think!





argetni- Welcome to Autopia!



Yeah, different lighting shows different defects differently, but at least now you know what lighting brings out the defects that bother you.



You've just discovered the tip of the detailing iceberg, and the best thing to do is spend a little time educating yourself. No, this stuff isn't rocket science or voodoo, but it *is* a bit more involved than one might think.



All the defects you mentioned have *abrasion* as their root-cause; something harder-than-the-paint was pressed against the paint and then moved under pressure, creating cuts/valleys/scratches/etc...(i.e., marring) of varying severity, in the paint.



You'll need to abrasively polish the paint to level it, the same way you'd sand a scratched-up piece of wood. This is a topic that you'll need to study to understand properly. You might want to have a (good) pro do this job for you.



Once the paint is level again, some wax/sealant/"Last Step Product" ("LSP") will provide some protection and will help keep dirt from adhering tenaciously (thus making effective washing easier).



The drive through wash is almost certainly a bad idea and will make things worse instead of better. Washing without marring the paint is rather difficult and again, is a topic you'll need to study.



Keeping a black vehicle, let alone one with Honda-soft paint, looking decent can be quite a challenge, but I'm confident that you can get *and keep* things a lot better than they are right now.

 

[jrelh]

What exactly is a halogram... I've noticed that being thrown around lately, and I thought LSP ( last step product ) would be a sealant or wax? Am I mistaken on that as well?



I was planning on using Klasse All in One than Klass HGS afterwards, there is something else I have too look into as a LSP??



Sorry to hijack the thread, just seemed similar to what I've been seing in my paint as well, it's barely 1 month old and 1k miles, but I can easily see the swirls. And that's how I ended up on here doing research.

 

[Accumulator]

What exactly is a halogram... I've noticed that being thrown around lately..

Holograms are the almost-invisible swirls that only show up under certain lighting conditions, usually only under natural sunlight; they look like faint rainbow-style shadows.



They're caused by rotary polishing, but there are also what I call "pseudo-holograms", which look about the same but are very light hazing from certain compounds (e.g., M105) or residual oils from certain polishes (e.g. M205).

.. I thought LSP ( last step product ) would be a sealant or wax? Am I mistaken on that as well?

Both sealants and waxes are LSPs.

I was planning on using Klasse All in One than Klass HGS afterwards, there is something else I have too look into as a LSP??

Not unless you want to put wax on top of the KSG to tweak the look, and I don't do that myself.