New Mazda with appalling paintwork - anyone else had this?

[johne53]

A year ago I bought my first ever Mazda - a one year old Mazda 6 TS automatic. I can't remember the precise colour shade but it's a speckled blue pearlescent-like finish. I bought the car from a dealer.

After a couple of months I started to notice thin scratches appearing in the paintwork. Not deep scratches like you might get with a shopping trolley. Just small, hair's breadth scratches all over the place. Sometimes they'd appear after parking in a supermarket car park, so I assumed they were due to people squeezing past the car and brushing their coats, zips or buttons against the paintwork. They'd even appear when my car was just parked in my driveway - when the only things that could possibly be touching it were leaves and twigs blown by the wind.

A few months ago I had to drive on the motorway in cold weather, just after the gritters had been out. By the time I got back home there were dozens of scratches in the paintwork.

6 weeks ago, out of sheer frustration, I paid for the paintwork to be thoroughly re-touched and I paid 200 extra to my Mazda dealer for a 'Supaguard' treatment that was supposed offer protection for up to 3 years. But only 6 weeks later, it's now worse than it was before I started!!

Has anyone else had this problem? Or are there any rumours of a batch of cars with shoddy paintwork? I really can't believe how easily the paintwork degrades - even when the car is just parked in my driveway!! I've been driving for 25 years but I've never owned a car with a problem like this. :mad:

 

[NCZ13]

where do you take the car to get washed?

that paint stuff the sell at dealerships doesnt do s***. there isnt a product on the market that provides protection like that.

what you have on the car is marring. and probably alot of swirls, and because of the color, you can probably see alot of them. the only way for them to come out is for it to be machine polished out. the clearcoat needs to be leveled. polishing will make your car look 2000x better than the day you picked it up from the dealer.

if you feel this is something you want to do yourself, theres a ton of websites for you to visit. autopia.org, detailingbliss.net autogeek.net

other than that, use the regionals section on autopia, and try to find someone on that forum to do paint correction for you...

 

[johne53]

where do you take the car to get washed?

I always wash it with a pressure spray. It's never been into a car wash (at least, not while I've had it) and I don't use cloths or sponges except on stubborn dirt.

Also I'm not talking about swirls (in fact there aren't any noticeable swirls in the paintwork). I'm definitely talking about scratches. Very thin scratches - almost as if a thin hair was under the paintwork and now got pulled off. They can vary in length from about 2 inches to about 5 inches.

The situation isn't helped by the fact that the car has a very light undercoat which really shows through the dark blue top colour.

that paint stuff the sell at dealerships doesnt do s***. there isnt a product on the market that provides protection like that.

Yeah - I accept that nothing can guard against deep contacts - but these scratches keep appearing even when there can't be anything touching the car apart from wind-blown stuff such as dust and leaves etc

 

[NCZ13]

theres your problem right there.

pressure washing a car isnt the way to clean it. and i guarantee under proper lighting, like the sun or under halogens youll see the swirls. wiping away dirt with a cloth or sponge is not they way to do it. youve probably done more damage to your paint by doing that.

paint needs a lubricant medium to remove dirt safely off of a car. car wash is that lubricant.

its likely that the clear is just soft, and its caused from people rubbing up against the car, but i think its more likely that your paint is the way it is because of your washing technique.

like i said before the only way to remove the scratches is for it to be machine polished. think of the clearcoat like a flat plane. and every scratch you see is like a valley in that plane. polishing levels the clearcoat to the lowest point of the scratch or valley in this case.

 

[johne53]

Thanks. I do appreciate your help but I don't understand why a pressure wash would cause this effect. And why would it cause the scratches to appear several days later when the car's just been sitting on my driveway overnight? In any case, I've washed all my cars the same way for 25 years and I never had this happen with any previous car. Have I just been extremely lucky for the past 25 years?

 

[B1GHAM]

without correct use, a pressurewasher works similar to a sandblaster using the water & dirt on the car as a medium.

I usually tell people to stay as far away from pressure washers on cars if they dont have extensive experience with them. its too easy to have the pressure just slightly too high to be used on automotive clear coats... as its washing the vehicle, its pushing the dirt not off, but into the paint. Alot of people think because a pressurewasher is "no-touch" that its not hurting the paint, but it easily can be the cause.

however thats probably just one factor in your issue. and its very easy to see scratches in on certain light - making it easy to see only during certain times of the day or under certain lights.

if you have any pictures of the scratches I would like to see them.

 

[johne53]

Thanks to you both, guys. I'll try to get some pictures but I'm not hopeful. Mostly they're thinner than a human hair so I doubt they'll show up on a photograph.

 

[johne53]

Here's a photo of one of the scratches. Approximately in the middle of the photograph you'll see a very fine, almost horizontal scratch (next to the curved bit of the plastic window trim). This one appeared about 3 nights ago when I left my car overnight in a secure company car park (i.e. with 24 hour manned security). It's very unlikely that this could have been caused by human contact. I'll try to get some more photos later.

 

[johne53]

Here's another example. Unfortunately, my remaining photos are out of focus - so the scratches look thicker than they appear in real life (they're actually the same thickness as my earlier example).

In the first photo, you'll see a reflection of me taking the picture with my mobile phone. Where my hands meet you'll see a very fine vertical scratch. The second photo is the same scratch viewed from a different angle.

 

[johne53]

And here's another example. You can see that it started raining by the time I got to this last one and my umbrella's reflected in the paintwork. About one quarter of the way down from the top of the photo (and in the left-hand side of the umbrella's reflection) you can see another small vertical scratch. Again, my camera's too close to focus properly - so in real life, it's much narrower and sharper than it seems to be from the photo.

 

[Jungldbll]

Looks like your car could have been painted prior. If not prepped right I'll do that. Do you know if it has? If it has, there's not much you can do to it now. Especially if it's in the base coat.

 

[johne53]

Thanks for the reply, Jungldbll. Can you explain what you mean by "painted prior"? I've never heard that expression before. Do you mean it was re-sprayed before I bought it?

 

[Jungldbll]

Real possible. I've been in the collision industry for a while now. I've worked at dealerships and the newest cars sometimes get repaired. Even the ones coming over on the boat, some get repaired at the port before they even get to the dealer. I would definitely have a good bodyshop look at it. It might save you some time with trying to remove the lines. Which might not be possible.

 

[johne53]

Thanks. The strange thing is that I had the old scratches re-sprayed only 6 weeks ago (though they weren't in the same areas as these new ones). It's almost as if the original paintwork has never hardened properly for some reason. Does that seem feasible?

 

[EDM6-zoom zoom]

Have you tried to buff out those scratches?

 

[johne53]

The whole car was 'Supaguarded' by my Mazda dealer just 6 weeks ago and I'd hoped that this might lead to a reduction (if not a cessation) of these mysterious scratches appearing all the time. But it hasn't. Hardly a week passes without me noticing a couple of new ones. I'm seriously thinking of selling the car because of this problem.

 

[gr-ms6]

I dont even have 8000km yet and I have a rust spot in the middle of my trunk lid towards the bottom, and mysterious scratches similar to these on my hood and doors - I havent ever been through a car wash ... Have you any news on the problems with your paint?

 

[Ozzker]

Do you both have the same colour? It may have been a bad reaction between the colour and the clear...just a thought!

 

[johne53]

Do you both have the same colour? It may have been a bad reaction between the colour and the clear...just a thought!

Good question - mine is called Phantom Blue. Maybe it's just a coincidence but I just checked Mazda's web site (in the UK) and I could only find one dealer with a Phantom Blue model for sale right now. I wonder if that's significant?

I dont even have 8000km yet and I have a rust spot in the middle of my trunk lid

Rust ?!?! That's all I needed to hear. Interestingly, some more small scratches appeared overnight on Sunday (and I haven't used the car since last Thursday). These new ones are short (about 20mm length) but there are 3 or 4 of them quite close together on the painted pillar at the LHS of the windscreen (viewed from the front). I tried taking some pictures today but they wouldn't show up in the bright lighting conditions. Might try again tomorrow. This is slowly driving me nuts.... :mad:

 

[Killer]

I would have to say the ONLY thing I dont care for on my MS6 is the paint quality.