Baby did a bad, bad thing when washing his car.

Yes, I admit I just washed the car with a filthy wintery wash rag that was uncleaned since the last time and this is the result. Some parts of the car look great, others are a scratchy mess. I won't do it again.

Is this paint job screwed or can I recover it with polish or similar...?

Thanks!

 

Clay bar is like Christ himself cleaning the car. Takes a lot of elbow grease but is a magical, magical thing. However, I cannot clean out scratches. I'll give the Meguiar's Scratch X a try, thanks!

 

Well the thing I use is this really fluffy car washing mit. It's lovely. When it's not full of rocks from the previous wash

Much of the car does not look like this, I'd say most is scratch free.

I know that polish or compound does remove paint and there's only so much of it there, though. I may have to find a few hundred bucks and get it done properly, though I suppose that could wait since it won't get worse.

 

How do those little swirls get on there? Truth be told the ones near the beginning I have on this car as well. I am almost positive it was from waxing and when I rubbed the wax off it had hardened too much. Now it certainly seems that those incredibly fine swirls are absolutely part of the top layer and can be totally removed by a detailer, but they are only noticeable when the car is pristine clean and looked at from a couple inches away with the correct lighting; i.e. I don't care.

I had a first pass with the Scratch X last night but am reserving judgement until I can see it in the light of day

I was doing everything per spec in that vid other than the rinsing of wash mitt hehe

Did buy some more gear, though, so I'm not stuck using the same old wash mitt.

 

Well, all we've had last two days is rain and snow so I've not been able to reevaluate. I'm still cautiously hopeful that I can take the edge off with the scratch x but God knows when it will clear up enough to actually find out! My intent is to take the edge off the scratches with the scratch X so that only by knowing a scratch is already there could you see it, which will be good enough indefinitely. To get it perfect (assuming it's not down past top layer and I think it's not) I would need a pro for sure. I'll post fresh pics when I can get it washed in daylight, however.

 

I didn't use towels but rather microfiber wash mitt. I think it's a nice mitt and it's from the car care section but probably should have heeded better the hint given me by the little rocks in the bottom of the wash bucket

I can definitely feel the scratches, but this goes for all scratches even seriously minor tiny ones on the car.

I don't intend to have this solved with Scratch X. I just want something to soften it up so that only I will be able to see the scratches because I know where they are. The ones on the back I cannot retake a good picture--camera keeps focusing on anything but the surface of the paint because it's so clean. I did, however, get a pretty good before/after on a long scratch on the side.



Despite washing it right after there is some some hazing or sheen from the scratch x, so it might still be masking to some degree. I won't know for sure until I can get the rest of the soap off, but the weather outside is awful and I'm tired of working on it. Based on that pic, though, the scratch does look a lot better. I won't work on it further if it stays as is, at risk of spoiling the paint further. I'm using fine cotton clothes to rub it in per instructions.

An amazon reviewer said with scratch x to work it nice and wet and perpendicular to the scratch. I guess what it's doing is really sanding down the edges of the scratch so that light reflects differently. I suppose that's the entire point of all scratch products--that is, unless, you lower the overall level of paint down to the bottom of the scratch (which it's probably also doing to some degree).