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Well I haven’t ever had a chance to work on gm paint from a car made in Germany before so this interesting for me. At any rate if you think your paint is good or even great because the Buick is new, that may well be, but it isn’t perfect and it probably has some swirls/defects in it. My vehicle has approx 300 miles on it and I have no history on any washing or any wax/sealant that was applied to the vehicle before I obtained it. Any before photos I show below were after a wash and dry.
At a minimum get your paint clayed because for whatever reason there was a significant amount of surface contaminants in the paint. It could be that they had to sit in a boat coming to the US, or they sat in the rail yards/shipyards a long time, or who knows why but the paint had a lot of surface contaminants in it. If your dealer put a wax, sealant, or whatever multi year product on the vehicle there is a good likely hood your vehicle still has those contaminants. No wax or sealant is going to remove surface contaminants; as a matter of fact it just locks them into the paint more.
The paint is of a medium hardness for a gm product approx a 5 on a 1 to 10 sale. The scale with the number 1 being the softest and referenced to a GTO. Number 10 being the hardest paint and referenced to a corvette.
The paint thickness seams to be a little better then average for GM product, it was between 10-11mil. It was also very uniform throughout most of the panels.
I only have a few shots to show today, as so far I only clayed the vehicle, did a test panel for cutting/polishing on the trunk lid, and did cutting/polishing of the areas I was applying clear bra too. I probably won’t have time to do the complete detail till the middle of next month. I’ll update the thread as I move through the process.
Surface contamination. Inside door ledge no less-
Swirls-
Before and after cut/polish- Test panel which is the trunk lid. The top part of the photo above the blue tape shows the original state of the paint. The bottom part of the photo below the blue tape shows the polished/cut side-
At a minimum get your paint clayed because for whatever reason there was a significant amount of surface contaminants in the paint. It could be that they had to sit in a boat coming to the US, or they sat in the rail yards/shipyards a long time, or who knows why but the paint had a lot of surface contaminants in it. If your dealer put a wax, sealant, or whatever multi year product on the vehicle there is a good likely hood your vehicle still has those contaminants. No wax or sealant is going to remove surface contaminants; as a matter of fact it just locks them into the paint more.
The paint is of a medium hardness for a gm product approx a 5 on a 1 to 10 sale. The scale with the number 1 being the softest and referenced to a GTO. Number 10 being the hardest paint and referenced to a corvette.
The paint thickness seams to be a little better then average for GM product, it was between 10-11mil. It was also very uniform throughout most of the panels.
I only have a few shots to show today, as so far I only clayed the vehicle, did a test panel for cutting/polishing on the trunk lid, and did cutting/polishing of the areas I was applying clear bra too. I probably won’t have time to do the complete detail till the middle of next month. I’ll update the thread as I move through the process.
Surface contamination. Inside door ledge no less-

Swirls-


Before and after cut/polish- Test panel which is the trunk lid. The top part of the photo above the blue tape shows the original state of the paint. The bottom part of the photo below the blue tape shows the polished/cut side-
