Candleflame
Active Member
hard paint is not gonna protect you from the automated car wash brush haha.
but yeah teslas paint is very soft. have to be careful when you compound it as the clearcoat easily gets taken off.
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Before I screw up my Model 3 in the car wash...
- Thread starter MikeyC
- Start date
hard paint is not gonna protect you from the automated car wash brush haha.
but yeah teslas paint is very soft. have to be careful when you compound it as the clearcoat easily gets taken off.
rxlawdude
Active Member
Please provide a citation to back up "teslas (sic) paint is very soft" relative to other automobile manufacturers. VOC emissions are air pollution, and more informed jurisdictions have mandated lower VOCs in paint products.
Candleflame
Active Member
the guy who polished my Tesla (hes never seen a tesla before and didnt really know anything about them before) told me he struggled with the compounding a bit due to the paint being supersoft.
and hes clearly not the only one who noticed this as this is a reoccuring point which comes up
and hes clearly not the only one who noticed this as this is a reoccuring point which comes up
I detail my own cars. I have the M3 and my wife has a Subaru Crosstrek. I use the same silicone/wax on both cars and the same application process. It is so clear that the shine on the Subaru is so much better than the M3 and more resilient(holds up longer before re-applying). I would assume it has something to do with the paint process.
bo3bdar
Member
Just a thought- is it possible this situation was right after you got your car, and the paint had not fully cured? One thing that is weird with Tesla's is that we get them immediately after manufacturing, so I've always wondered if 'soft' paint people see is because it has not yet fully cured. For a regular car, it's going to be sitting outside for months before being bought, and thus fully cured.
TBrownTX
Active Member
Modern clear coated paints don't "outgas" or cure like old school paint. It's baked w/ light after being applied, and ready for whatever when it leaves the factory.
TIm
bo3bdar
Member
Source?
This randomly found data sheet is for acrylic urethane paint, and says that you should not wax the car for 30 days.
TBrownTX
Active Member
Paint from the factory is fully cured as it goes through a number of "ovens" to cure it. Paint used to repair parts by a repair shop (as linked above) can take 3 months to cure. Factories use electrostatic application techniques and heat. "Joe's paint booth" is not equipped with those things.
Should You Wax A New Car Right Away? | The Detailing Syndicate
Should you wax a new car right away? In this article The Detailing Syndicate - Salt Lake City, UT goes into the do's of waxing your vehicle...
detailingsyndicate.com
How long to wait before waxing my new car
How long to wait before waxing my new car
www.autodetaildoctor.com
Waxing a Brand New Car - Waldorf Honda Blog
Waxing a Brand New Car What all the fuss is about It’s shiny. It’s new. It gleams in the sunlight. Your brand new car. You have done hours of research to find just the right one, and now you have it. It’s yours. How do you keep it looking so nice? What’s all the fuss …
How long to wait before waxing a new car? - Car Detailing Experts
New cars smell amazing! Of course, you want to protect your newest asset and keep it looking brand new for as long as possible.
inmotiondetail.com
Tim
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So you have inspected every car that has ever used automatic (brushed) car washes and all of them have "intense scratches and swirls". Well, you missed one. Mine.
Attached. Taken with my S21 Ultra, flash on, original size so you can zoom in as far as you like. This is after about a dozen washes.
I've posted before: Tommy Wash. You can find info on them online. Basically a conveyor and it uses cloth strips.
Mike
Attachments
Candleflame
Active Member
the camera is focused on the paint coat not the clear coat, you need to redo the picture. and you need to have more diffuse light to highlight the swirls/scratches.
bo3bdar
Member
Paint from the factory is fully cured as it goes through a number of "ovens" to cure it. Paint used to repair parts by a repair shop (as linked above) can take 3 months to cure. Factories use electrostatic application techniques and heat. "Joe's paint booth" is not equipped with those things.
"Up until around the 1980s, inner layers of paint on brand-new cars would not be dry until a few months after the car was actually sold. But, this is true no longer”Should You Wax A New Car Right Away? | The Detailing Syndicate
Should you wax a new car right away? In this article The Detailing Syndicate - Salt Lake City, UT goes into the do's of waxing your vehicle...
"There is no reason to wait to wax your new car. Vehicle paint is fully cured when it leaves the factory. It is baked inside the paint booths at the automaker’s factory, so it’s ready to go as soon as it hits the dealership lot. Clearcoat is painted, and the paint needs protection. Always apply some sort of protection to your paint surface. Some local body shops, do not have paint booths that bake the paint once it’s applied, and some do have a “baker” but they do not all use the same process that the factories do. If you have a new car, it is safe to apply some protection immediately, and it’s highly recommended."How long to wait before waxing my new car
How long to wait before waxing my new car
"Back to the question at hand, how soon should you wax your new car? Anyone that tells you that you have to wait 2-3 months to wax a new car isn’t completely wrong, the advice is just old. Twenty plus years ago you did need to wait a few months to wax a brand new car. This is because the car paint needed time to cure (harden by heat) properly before you washed and waxed it or you risked messing up the paint job. Newer paint and spraying advancements have made it so that your new car arrives with that new coat of paint already cured in the factory. So if you bought a brand new car today, you can wash and wax it as soon as you want. In fact, it’s encouraged that you wax your new car as soon as possible to start protecting it from the elements right away."Waxing a Brand New Car - Waldorf Honda Blog
Waxing a Brand New Car What all the fuss is about It’s shiny. It’s new. It gleams in the sunlight. Your brand new car. You have done hours of research to find just the right one, and now you have it. It’s yours. How do you keep it looking so nice? What’s all the fuss …www.waldorfhonda.com
"Anyone that tells you that you have to wait 2-3 months to wax a new car isn’t completely wrong, the advice is just old. Twenty plus years ago you did need to wait a few months to wax a brand new car. This is because the car paint needed time to cure (harden by heat) properly before you washed and waxed it or you risked messing up the paint job. Newer paint and spraying advancements have made it so that your new car arrives with that new coat of paint already cured in the factory. So if you bought a brand new car today, you can wash and wax it as soon as you want. In fact, it’s encouraged that you wax your new car as soon as possible to start protecting it from the elements right away."How long to wait before waxing a new car? - Car Detailing Experts
New cars smell amazing! Of course, you want to protect your newest asset and keep it looking brand new for as long as possible.
Tim
Thanks for the links, but it's not very satisfying. Your random google search is not better than my random google search. Google will provide you with whatever you search, and provides no way of knowing what is true. It's the ultimate in confirmation bias. I can search for "tesla soft paint" and get thousands of links. I can search for "tesla soft paint is a myth" and get thousands of links. Unless you filter for quality, google searches are low quality information.
Your links are mostly from detailers. Maybe they know, maybe they don't, but I'm not happy that they have a financial incentive to tell you to 'wax right now.'
I'm interested from an engineering 'how does it work' standpoint, and these links don't add any new information, it's just advice. That's why I went to a data sheet- it at least is a technical specification for a given paint, not just Joe Bob's detailing shop. Although it's just Summit's paint and I have no way of knowing quality there either.
How do we actually find the real answer here? The internet is full of bullshit. Who would be an authoritative source that we could trust?
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bo3bdar
Member
Also those pictures are terrible, you need a real camera, not whatever you are using. When zoomed in there are obvious JPG artifacts, which makes it impossible to see anything subtle like a swirl or scratch. Something like an iPhone camera would be OK, but you have to not compress them down to nothing, or their usefulness is wrecked. JPQ quality level of 90% is usually the best spot when you need quality but can't afford to use giant files.
Candleflame
Active Member
He probably did it on purpose given that even the most polished showroom car wont be completely swirlfree.
You are spouting pure nonsense. You really think that changing the focal distance by 35 microns is going to obscure "intense scratches and swirls"? It didn't focus on the clear coat for a reason: because it is clear! And has no scratches to focus on.
And an iPhone? Really? I used a Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra and posted the original photos from the camera. They have minimal JPEG compression artifacts... unless this forum re-compressed them.
I didn't take the picture using my high end camera (Sony A7II) because I don't have a ring flash and I wanted the flash to be visible in the closeup shot. The focus is good enough to see the paint and even micro dust particles. Scratches on a layer of paint 35 microns higher than the basecout, especially "intense" ones would definitely be visible. So if you think I'm lying, you come take the picture you want. I'm not going to continue spending time on it because you are going to believe what you want to believe regardless of what I do!
In the mean time, I have no scratches after a dozen auto washes so I will not be a soy-boy and treat my car like some precious delicate jewel or act like I'm breaking some Tesla cult commandment. It is a car. I will treat it as such.
Mike
Candleflame
Active Member
if you drive your car and expose it to roaddebris/dust/littlestones etc and you wash it at all it will have some swirls. it wont be swirl free. this does not exist. stop trolling.
We're not talking about swirls and normal wear and tear that occurs even from the best 2 bucket washing technique. We are talking about your "intense scratches and swirls". Stop making stuff up and then stating it as if it were fact: like intense scratches on a clearcoat not being visible because a camera focused 35 microns behind on the basecoat. That is beyond laughable.
P.S. The forum did (badly) compress my images of the paint. So you can download the originals from here if you really want to. But again, it won't matter, because you are just going to push this narrative of "intense scratches and swirls" associated with carwashes.
Mike
Zcd1
Active Member
TBrownTX
Active Member
Here's the real answer. My Tesla was delivered on 3/19/21 and waxed on 3/22/21. I've waxed all of my new cars the past 20+ years within days of bringing them home. Never had any kind of issue at all. How's that for an authoritative source?
As for automatic car washes, at least the average ones will absolutely create gobs of swirls in your clear coat. Maybe there are some magical systems out there where this may not be a case. Like the Tommy Wash cars per some of the photos shown here, but I myself have never seen a machine washed car without them (in person). For reference, I am a certified national car show judge with the Mustang Club of America (MCA). I have judged thousands of cars at national level shows, and most machine washed cars stick out like a sore thumb.
So the formula is simple. Wax right away, clean your car often, keep a microfiber and a bottle of spray detailer in the trunk to immediately remove things like tree sap and bird poop, and above all else, avoid automatic car washes!
Tim
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TBrownTX
Active Member
I live in Texas, so this is basically Russian roulette. Some high school kid runs his pickup through after mudding, 30 minutes before I show up, and my clear coat needs to be buffed out. Those cloths don't clean themselves, at least not that quickly.
I'm an old fart who takes the time to properly detail his car. There's no way in hades I'd run any car I own through an automatic wash, of any kind. You don't have to be a latte sipping soy-boy to not want micro scratches in your clear coat.
Tim
I appreciate that: certainly don't want swirls or the like either. Having a shoulder injury that makes washing a literal pain, I've just found a solution that works for me. I'm not here to convince anyone: couldn't care less what other people do... but I do pay attention and find it interesting what other people have gone through with automatic washes. I accept that there are plenty of people who have gotten scratches/swirls after just ONE automatic wash. I can only assume they weren't Tommy Washes or they were improperly maintained, etc.
I can't really say I've been through the wash after a true "mudder" but I have been after some vehicles (police SUVs) that have had visible dirt, and I've not had any issues. If you watch how the wash works, it speeds up the cloth spinners in a rinse spray after each car and basically slings the dirt off before doing the next car. I think they must just be designed properly. I accept that there is higher risk than doing it at home, and some of it isn't necessarily related to the wash: some idiot could panic and run into you, etc. But I've not had a problem and to me, it's worth the small risk.
P.S. After the wash when I'm at the vacuums, it's not uncommon to see Huracans, McLarens, and other high end cars coming out of the wash. Some of them I recognize: I kinda doubt they'd keep coming back if they were getting paint damage each time.
Mike
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