Karma Detailing

As long as we have a detailing expert on the forum, I would like to ask a question. About a week ago, when I as backing my car into a tight parking spot, a wayward column jumped out from behind another column and caused me to make contact with it. Fortunately I was creeping at extremely slow speed at the time and there was no damage. But I did pick up some paint from the column, which ran off by the way. What I would like to do is safely, and without damaging the paint underneath, remove the paint I picked up from the hit-and-run column.

What's the safest way to do that? I tried using a wet paper towel, and it helped, but I am concerned about leaving scrape marks on the car's paint. Here is a picture so that you can see what I am talking about. Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks Sigurd. If you're interested, I can post more pix of this Karma and other ones we have detailed.

Sigurd said:

Nice work. Thanks for posting the pictures. Kind of makes me want to detail my Karma.

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Whenever we hit objects with our cars, there are two issues at hand to contend with. First thing to do is determine how much damage is really there and how much is transfer. Transfer is the material of the object you have hit that rubbed off onto the paint. If you hit a white wall, you can expect to find white paint on your car. Once that transfer is removed which can be done with clay, mild solvents, or even some polishing, the next step is to determine just how much the impact affected the clear coat.

I always recommend customers to stay away from rubbing compounds as they are not intended to be used with today's modern clearcoats. Some people confuse the term "rubbing compound" with "polishing compound".

Meguiar's Scratch-X is a hand applied polish that can remove very light clear coat scratches but the problem is most people don't know how to define what a scratch really is.

There are light clear coat scratches that can be buffed out and there are scratches that go clear through the paint that need to be painted. This is why the initial analysis is so important.

My goal is always to fix what can be fixed through subtractive methods. Clean, polish, compound as needed, wet sand if needed then add paint.

Here is an example of common damage on the Karmas that I repaired through a combination of polishing and applying factory touchup paint.


Based on your photo, I think it's going to need some paint but it's still hard to tell. One tip that I can pass on is that if you apply water or some media reducer to the damaged area and it turns black (the damage seems to disappear for a bit until the reducer evaporates) then you have a chance at polishing it out. If not, it's too deep to be polished and needs paint. I always find it interesting that people will suggest on forums to just use some wax or polish to fix something when the problem has not even been diagnosed yet.

Fabulist said:

As long as we have a detailing expert on the forum, I would like to ask a question. About a week ago, when I as backing my car into a tight parking spot, a wayward column jumped out from behind another column and caused me to make contact with it. Fortunately I was creeping at extremely slow speed at the time and there was no damage. But I did pick up some paint from the column, which ran off by the way. What I would like to do is safely, and without damaging the paint underneath, remove the paint I picked up from the hit-and-run column.

What's the safest way to do that? I tried using a wet paper towel, and it helped, but I am concerned about leaving scrape marks on the car's paint. Here is a picture so that you can see what I am talking about. Any advice would be appreciated.

Click to expand...

Here are some paint reading thicknesses on one Karma...compared to other manufacturers, it's an "average" thickness similar to BMW paint which ranges from 4-5 mil. The thickest factory paints can be found on Lexus' and the thinnest are on Subaru's.


In some cases we got really thin readings as well


Unfortunately most of the Karmas that came to us looked like this to begin with



These are rotary buffer trails and overly aggressive polishing on relatively soft paint. We were never given enough time to correct these however for press events, etc.. In this case, we only had two hours to make the most improvement which really needed 8 to 10 hours.

This is what I call an evaluation spot where I tape off an area and correct on one side so the BEFORE state can be compared. The AFTER state is on the left if you can't tell.


Here is another example of that 50/50 process. The BEFORE state is noticeably more dull and hazy. The left side has been corrected but not finished yet.

We are authorized installers for OptiCoat Pro as well as CQuartz Finest, two of the more popular ceramic resin coatings on the market. OptiCoat Pro when applied to properly prepped paint is stunning and there is almost no comparable protection on the market.

OptiCoat 2.0, the consumer version of OptiCoat is also very good but isn't as thick, as long lasting, or cures as fast as the Pro version.

Here is a 2005 Porsche Boxster we recently corrected and OptiCoated.

How it arrived.


How it looked after full correction and OptiCoat Pro


We have coated a LOT of Tesla's but I would think those pix are probably not welcome here, so I will show other cars.

Here is a Jet Black BMW that was fully corrected and coated with CQuartz Finest

BEFORE
50/50 BEFORE/AFTER


AFTER


This Charger underwent major corrective work after it got rained on by a neighbors sprinkler for 3 weeks while the owner was out of town and was going to have a repaint, but we saved the paint and coated it.

MKaire said:

Have any of you tried opticoat? If so, what are your thoughts.

Thanks

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We always recommend to OptiCoat the paint first, do the film, and OptiCoat over the film as well. If you plan to remove the film in 3 to 5 years, you can probably get away from coating it first but in our experience of doing both OptiCoat and PPF, OC makes removal easier and safer for your paint.

We spent a week removing the film off a 10 year old AMG S55. The same happened to a 6 year old Audi. Film in good condition can be heated up and pulled off. Once it gets to a certain age, it leaves adhesive behind or shreds as you pull it and in the worst cases, pulls paint up. Most buyers of PPF don't know these risks.

Here is an Audi where the adhesive was left behind. During the removal process we tried heating it up with the sun, a heat gun, and a steamer, and nothing worked.

It came off in shreds




The best way to remove this was through physical means using a pin stripe removal wheel

As you can see from this 50/50 the paint was pretty torn up


The end result after correcting and OptiCoating but not applying film again




The bottom line is the right shop can remove the clear bra and save the paint but it can be very costly and time consuming and not to mention risky.

Richard

non sequitur said:

I'm looking into paint film protection, such as xpel ultimate (discussed in another thread). What are your thoughts on doing an opticoat process first: is this a wasted effort (since it's going to be covered up with film) or is it essential in facilitating removal of the film years from now (just spoke to someone experienced in 3m films who said they could be a nightmare to remove, making removal more expensive than application).

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