Originally Posted By: 440Magnum
Wash the bird poop and bug guts off, and forget it. Modern paints will outlast modern cars- the days of 'clear coat cancer' are long gone. Clean regularly, wax maybe once per year if at all. My daughter's '99 Cherokee never saw a garage or wax until 2008, and only rarely since then. Except for some bug/bird etchings the previous owner let happen, the paint is nearly perfect anyway. That whole appearance products aisle at the parts store is pretty much a wallet-suck and little more. If you want to take care of your car, do it with wrenches not rags.
Not entirely true. While today's paint coatings are certainly more advanced. In some cases like Infinity you have self healing paint, Mercedes has Ceramiclear, and GM's better cars use a special two-step clear. Each is very durable. And yes as long as you keep it clean it will last likely the life of the car. But keep it waxed and clay it regularly and you'll better protect yourself from the possibility of paint "cancer". The caveat with these newer harder clears is that they are applied very, very thinly. So regular waxing is still a great benefit to protect what's there even if what's there is already very good. You can't fall into the line of thinking that your clear coat is maintenance free, that's actually the exact same line of thinking when clear coats were originally introduced in the 1970's clear coat's were assumed to be the new "maintenance free" paint, no more oxidizing and turning your rags colors when you polished them. But they eventually succumbed to the weather and would peel. Even worse was the late 1980's to early 1990's on the first round of VOC crackdowns. In my memory the early 90's gold and teal Chevy Silverado pickups were just so prone to this type of early clear coat peeling.
If you've seen some of my posts you'd notice I always make a big stink about not polishing paint too much and it's because paints are getting thinnner and thinner from OEM's. So regular waxing is definitely good, regular finish polishing on the other hand not quite as good but not all that bad for paint. And forget about seasonal compounding to remove 100% of swirls. Your paint may look good but I can pretty much guarantee it'll fail if you compound on a regular basis.
http://www.bobistheoilguy.com/forums/ubb...nt.#Post3326840
And if you think clear coat "cancer" is a thing of the past. This is not exactly a vintage car.
And I see it all the time with Honda's in particular. In fact all of my high school friends bought Honda Civic's and all of them to this day have clear coats that failed even the ones that waxed regularly. My Ford Focus of the same vintage as my friend's though had paint that was darn near immaculate when I sold it. Only lost about 4-6 microns in thickness in the clear over the course of the 8 years I've owned it. And that's pretty much due to me just wanting to keep it shiny and relatively swirl free. Not perfect mind you because I'm very well aware of the issues of thin paint.
