'08 Jet Black BMW 535i Automatic Car Wash Damage Repair

[Richard Grasa]

The owner of this Jet Black 535i was unfortunate enough to have some damage inflicted onto his paint by an automatic car wash. The car wash was under new ownership, with brand new equipment and promised that no damage would occur to the car. After bringing the car through the wash only 3 times, the entire lower section of the car was very badly scratched up as you can see in the pics. I believe these nasty scratches were caused by the wheel brushes spinning against the lower sections of the car. The rest of the car was also badly swirled from the other brushes. I see this kind of damage from car washes all the time, but this was by far the worst I have ever seen. We decided to go with a 2-step compound/polish on the entire car to fix the damage. I ended up doing some extra work on the front and rear bumpers because of how bad the scratches were there.

The nasty scratches on the rear bumper from the tire brushes. This was my initial test spot to determine which compound I would use to correct the damage. This 50/50 test spot shows the scratches on the left and the corrected paint on the right:





Another 50/50 of the swirls on the fender from the wash brushes:



And the after pics:







If you're in the CT area and need any detailing, paint correction, Opti-Coat Pro or Americoat services, please let me know.

Rich Grasa
Explicit Details Auto Appearance
www.explicitdetails.com

[John in VA]

The owner must have been thrilled with the results. Nice work!

[dreambig]

I know someone that works for a car wash company, he says so many people sue them for the cost of repairing or respraying the car its ridiculous. Did an awesome job man

[bkats]

Most automatic car washes scratch or swirl the paint. It's just the nature of them. I find that they're not worth the time. Even if my car is dirty and it's got contaminants on it, I can fix that. I'd rather wait to do it myself, because I can't afford the time to fix NEW scratches ALL OVER the car, like the OP. This is especially of the newer, harder clear coats which are harder to correct.

Excellent job, btw. Black is a beast to fix.

[sawan20]

Automatic wash the car is good idea to save the time but it could be damage. So, you should need to repair it. See more cars on http://www.gari.pk/cars-motors/

[bkats]

I feel like someone just said this ^. Also, please don't pitch your weird forum link on here, per the forum rules.