The eraser or IPA wipe down is much easier after this process as you've already removed all or at least the majority of the oils remaining.
Every way of chemically stripping delicate, perfectly polished scratch-sensitive clear coat paints has it's risks. What I've posted is what I've seen happens when you wipe perfectly polished BLACK paint using some type of product like IPA in any dilution, or MS or Erasure or fill-in-the blank.
It's because the chemistry that makes these types of solvents useful for dissolving and stripping oils is the same chemistry that doesn't make them great lubricants to protect the paint at the same time.
I've shown this with pictures using black paint and the point I always make that because most cars have a clear coat, you're NOT working on a colored layer of paint but the top, clear layer of paint.
The lighter the color the harder it is to see defects. Black paint shows everything. So if wiping perfectly polished black paint induces marring I'd say chances are VERY GOOD marring happens to all colors it's just you're eyes can't see it.
Point being...
Every way of chemically stripping delicate, perfectly polished scratch-sensitive clear coat paints has it's risks.
From this thread....
Hologram Free with a Rotary Buffer
Now you can see some light marring, but that's because IPA isn't a very good lubricant, in fact it's a
horrible lubricant. I think of all the people that have been told by others to wipe their car down with IPA before going to the next step and it's pretty easy to understand that when they did this they likely marred their car's paint and this is called
working backwards.
It's also likely that if the people taking this advice were working on light to medium colored cars they never saw the marring.
I would not advise the use of dawn... it has been shown to leave many surfactants on the surface.
That's my point...
Every way of chemically stripping delicate, perfectly polished scratch-sensitive clear coat paints has it's risks.
Dawn is for dishes... not cars. A product like Iron X Snow Soap would be a better choice.
I agree with that... in the future, when someone asks how to chemically strip their paint without marring it instead of wiping it with some type of solvent I'll share the link to two of my favorite products.
Tornador Air Foamer & IronX Snow Foam
Love these two products...
We also use them in all my detailing boot camp classes.
Stacy's Honda had a lot of road grime on it and hasn't been washed in at least a month and I wanted to decontaminate the paint, so I used IronX Snow Foam in a Tornador Air Foamer, then washed with a Boar's Hair Brush plus various wheel and tires brushes to get the wheels, tires and fenderwells clean.
I had actually asked Mike what he thought because of the potential of marring my black paint and he said a very light dawn wash would be acceptable.
So I did that and then carefully 12.5 IPA and seemed to work just fine.
And the trick to using a detergent wash like Dawn to chemically strip your car's paint of any polishing oils or other residues is to above all, be smart about it.
Don't over use the detergent soap and above all.... make damn sure your wash mitt is clean and soft and then don't scrub the paint, just make a few soft, gentle passes over the paint and then rinse well.
Following with the IPA wipe would insure there were no trace chemicals left after the wash but now you're back to risking instilling marring.
One thing for sure, we have come to the point where we take something very simple, washing and waxing your car, and we've turned it into rocket science.
Rocket Science!
