Swirl Marks, Spider Webbing, Tiny Scratches...

There are many ways to describe micro marring, and the unfortunate reality is that most cars have it. Micro marring, is nothing more than thousands of tiny surface scratches in the clearcoat. The most common cause of these scratches is improper washing. With the common use of coin operated and automatic washes the problem only seams to get worse. While this is not a problem for someone buying a brand new car who knows how to wash their car properly, those of us who want an Integra and can't buy a new one (not manufactured anymore) have to find some way to get rid of them.

Why would we want to get rid of them? Well if the appearance under direct light doesn't bother you, they take away from your cars overall reflectivity and shine. The light will complement your car much better if you have a flat, level surface rather than the peaks and valleys of a swirled paintjob. The best wax in the world will not return the original shine to car that is heavily swirled.

If you were to look at a cross section of a paint job right from the factory, it would look similar to this. There are three layers to the paint job, the clearcoat, color coat, then the primer. If you have ever gotten a deep scratch, a noticed a white color exposed, the scratch has gone through the clear and color coat.

Most of the tiny scratches you seen in your clearcoat, are not as deep as they appear. You can test this, by lightly dragging your fingernail across a small area of your paint. You will probably notice that your fingernail does not ketch any of the scratches. If it does ketch on most the swirls, unfortunately you may need a new paintjob in the near future.

The modern day clearcoat, is actually very thin in itself. In most situations, OEM clear coats are only 1.5 -> 2.0 millimeters thick. Beyond that, only the top .5 millimeters of the clearcoat dense, the rest is very soft. This is it is very important to try and prevent swirls, to minimize the clearcoat removed.

How To Remove Swirls

There are two methods, one is covering them up, and the other is buffing them out. While buffing them out does remove some clearcoat, it is much more effective and worth while than filling them in. At this point, you know how to properly wash and care for your car, so the recreation of swirls should be minimal. This means that once you buff them out, you shouldn't have to worry about them again!

Filler' up!

Filling them in is a good option for older cars with thin clearcoats. The most common filler products are glazes, which have silicones and oils which temporarily fill the swirls and mask them. The downside to this, is glaze products rarely last longer than a few weeks. They are a good product to use on show cars before a show, but hardly a long lasting solution. If you must use a filler product, I can not recommend a better product than Zaino Z5. Z5 is a polymer sealant (like the other Zaino polishes) designed to fill in swirls. So not only does it hide swirls, but it protects your paint as well. The advantage to Z5, is if your swirls ever start coming back, you can apply another coat regardless of what other Zaino product was applied last.

Who's Buff?

Polishing out swirls is the only long-term solution. Let's take a look at a cutaway of paint with swirls in it. As you can see, the swirls are lots of tiny scratches. What buffing the clearcoat does, is remove a little bit of the top to help level out the scratches. Scratches that are deeper, will have the edges rounded off so they are less visible in most lighting conditions.