Regardless of whether you’re a car fanatic or not, swirl marks are a problem for everyone. And let’s face it, there is nothing attractive about swirl marks in a car’s clean finish. They can be isolated on a certain panel or wide spread throughout the whole vehicle. Removing swirl marks is an important step to having your car looking it’s absolute best.
Swirl marks are very fine ‘spider-web’ like scratches on the car’s paint, that usually are seen in direct sunlight. These round, vertical, or horizontal scratches reside on the top layer of the vehicle’s clear coat, taking all of the glow and beauty out of your vehicle’s paint surface. Swirl marks stick out most on large flat surfaces, such as doors, hoods, trunk lids, and all other flat panels. Dark painted vehicles will show swirl marks the most over any other color, this is because the scratches reflect the light off of the dark surface. Dark paint doesn’t scratch any easier then any other color, but due to this reflection it will show more imperfections in the vehicle’s paint from certain angles.
It doesn’t take much to introduce scratches to your car’s clear coat. The most common cause of swirl marks is improper washing and drying techniques. Running your car through a car wash that is used by numerous cars a day will ensure that scratches show up on your cars paint. Also, using towels that have dirt and dust on them to dry off your car will rub scratches into your paint. Because it is fairly easy to mar paint surfaces, your wash tools are key to keeping your vehicle’s paint flawless.
Scratches are inevitable, you can’t completely avoid them. To remove scratches you have to correct the cars paint through the paint correction process. If scratches and swirls are heavy, you should first apply a cutting polish known as a compound, this eliminates most of the damage by removing a small amount of clearcoat. Following, you apply a polish which will remove the smaller defects. After the paint correction process, 95% of all clear coat damage will be gone! This is not a simple task and should only be done by a trusted detailer like VIP Detailing, a Utah mobile car detailing business. You can then minimize new scratches and swirls through proper washing techniques.