Paint correction is basically when you take your car to drive through car washes like Costco in Ventura, and they have that spinning device. Those collect dirt and the dirt sticks to them. Even people that don’t have what’s called a grit guard in their bucket get sand that collects at the bottom of it, then it gets on their wash mitt and when they wash your car it scratches your paint. The scratches are very light and it ends up giving it like this cobweb effect so when you look at it in the sun tiny scratches are visible. That’s what causes those scratches. Other things that cause such scratches are scraping by a bush and using those California Dusters which are like a big duster. Dust is dirt, or tiny rocks and all you’re doing is sliding the rocks across your paint it’s scratching it.
The process for auto paint correction is it has to get waxed. Paint correction is probably one of the longest processes in detailing. It must first be washed thoroughly to make sure there’s no dirt on it and any tar must be removed. Clay bar treatment is done to get all the overspray and oxidation off of it. After that, any intakes, where it sucks in air, must be taped so when use compound, the compound dust doesn’t enter the intakes. Nothing critical happens if compound were to enter the intake, but we try to do everything that we can to take care of it.
Following clay bar treatment we’ll go over it with a rotary buffer with a wool pad and that will get out more of the deeper scratches. Not all scratches will come out of the paint. Some are too deep, but we’re going for a glossy look. Following the wool pad, rotary buffer, and compound, we actually use more compound on it with an orbital polisher and a microfiber pad because it’s less aggressive than the wool pad. Next, we’ll polish it with the same machine, the six inch orbital, then we’ll go through and use the three inch and get all the little spots like the front bumpers and all the spots the six inch orbital won’t reach. Next, we wax it with a finishing wax and we’ll go over it with like a last touch quick detailer. The tires get dressed and all the plastics get dressing on them. The windows are also cleaned.