2017 CX-5 Soul Red Crystal Metallic

I also had a lot of swirls in my paint, it took a fair amount of time with an electric buffer and polish to get them out to a satisfactory level. My guess is the "conditioning" was probably done on a timed basis and they didn't take enough time or care in producing the results you're looking for.

This picture is taken after a lot of hours of work between claybar, and polish. I'd say a solid 6 - 8 hours. It was as reflective in person as the picture suggests. Before that it had a lot of swirls and imperfection that you could see in the sunlight, before I did any paint correction.

MZZRNbb.jpg

What polish and buffer did you use? My black needs work...baaaaad.
 
I had clay bar done too, mostly in an attempt to get the orange freckles out of my white paint. I've honestly given up at this point. The next step is to wax it with Rejex and focus on preventing new damage. It's all been part of a larger let-down anyway.
 
Orange freckles are generally just IFOs from transport. Pretty typical to have to clay them out of a new vehicle.
 
What polish and buffer did you use? My black needs work...baaaaad.

For polish/wax I used Meguiar's Ultimate Polish/Ultimate Synthetic Wax.

As for the buffer, I used a 6" orbital buffer. Simoniz (Canadian Tire brand) is the one I have specifically. Was around $160 or something. Looks much like a grinder, but with a velcro pad on it for attaching the hex type pads to. I used a general polish pad (white in Simoniz brand) for both polish and wax. Generally the light polish pad works for just about everything unless you have bad scuffs that you really need to work, or bad clear corrosion. Then you'd probably need a compound and compound pad. But if that's the case, be VERY careful, as compound can quickly ruin your finish as well as it fixes it in more extreme finish conditioning applications (and you'll still need to polish afterwards in any case). If it's just light swirls and scratches for the most part (goes away when you pour water on it), polish is your best friend. And even some of the deeper stuff becomes basically invisible with a polish.
 
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They don't come out. I've been able to get about 1/3 of them out at best. Some of them are basically permanent. You can scratch them off with your fingernail, but the force required scratches the clearcoat too.
 
Yeah, that's because it's little bits of iron embedded in the clear. If you work them long enough with a clay bar they should come out if you can get them out with your fingernail like that. White is a b**** for IFOs, and it takes a lot of tedious effort to get every last spot.

My fiancee has a yellow Honda Fit, and even the bright yellow shows the little orange specks every year, all over the paint (especially after a dirty winter). Darker colors don't show them as much, but they're still there, and you can see them if you really look at the surface long/close enough. In enough quantity it dulls the finish and makes it look hazy and unreflective, and if left long enough, it can damage your clear and paint; although most people don't care enough about their vehicles for long enough to ever actually notice, or they just think it's normal wear an tear.

My silver Genesis Coupe looked like the day it came off the showroom floor, paint-wise (minus some rust starting to form in behind where the headlights were rubbing on the fenders & hood; not the greatest factory fit and finish), and it was 5 years old, closer to 6, when I traded it in. Silver also shows IFOs pretty bad, so every year at the beginning of the summer I'd do a major detail on it. I'd spend all Saturday and sometimes part of Sunday on that b**** doing everything inside and outside. Hahaha.
 
Can you tell me what the acronym IFO stand for?

I appreciate the input btw, it sounds like you have quite a bit of experience with this.
 
Industrial Fall Out. Realistically, it's probably rail dust or other contaminants from transport.
And no sweat! I've been doing detail work on my own rigs for a long time now, so it's good to be able to share helpful info with people. I don't have the time to sink into detailing as a job, but it's become something of a "professional" hobby, hahaha.
 
Just got my 2017 get back from being repainted. They didnt paint the whole car but only the problem areas (did a lot of blending). Im not a paint professional by any means, but I think they did a great job. I havent seen it in sunlight as its been cloudy here going on a month, but from what I can tell they did a great job. The only place I can tell its been repainted is when I pop the hood and see underneath a small line of where it was taped. Will follow up after I see the color in the sun
 
Just got my 2017 get back from being repainted. They didnt paint the whole car but only the problem areas (did a lot of blending). Im not a paint professional by any means, but I think they did a great job. I havent seen it in sunlight as its been cloudy here going on a month, but from what I can tell they did a great job. The only place I can tell its been repainted is when I pop the hood and see underneath a small line of where it was taped. Will follow up after I see the color in the sun

Good to hear. Just curious - what kind of warranty did the body shop give you?
 
Good to hear. Just curious - what kind of warranty did the body shop give you?

It dealership that I bought the car from has a chain of dealerships. They also have their own body shop. I have been working with the service director through this whole process, and he has been extremely helpful! He said that Mazda is not responsible for the warranty anymore and that his dealership is now liable. I asked him about the warranty, and he said that if there is any issue he will take care of it.
 
When you say "...Mazda is not responsible for the warrany anymore...", do you mean just for the paint, or the entire vehicle?
 
Dealer contacted me today, said next Mon or Tue. Start of week 7. I can't imagine Mazda being happy about the dealer taking their good 'ol time, if that is in fact what's happening. I'm wondering how many times the body shop had to paint the car to get it right :)
 
Dealer contacted me today, said next Mon or Tue. Start of week 7. I can't imagine Mazda being happy about the dealer taking their good 'ol time, if that is in fact what's happening. I'm wondering how many times the body shop had to paint the car to get it right :)

Is there a reason you didn't contact the body shop directly weeks ago to find out what the holdup was?
 
The "holdup" is that each SCR repaint involves four layers of paint, all of which have to be applied in the right amount for the finished job to have proper brightness of the color, and to get the level of metallic appearance consistent across all the panels. It is not easy. The paint has to be applied differently for metal panels and plastic because the paint settles at a different rate based on the differing temps of the panels to get similar appearance.

This stuff is programmed into the robotic paint process at the factory, it is much more difficult to do in the field.
 
These things don*t take a month and a half to get right. I*d prefer a response from SweetPete as to why he would settle for six weeks of second-hand information rather than going directly to the source to find out what*s going on with his $30k car.
 
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