Car buffing is an important step in maintaining the long-term health and aesthetic quality of a car’s paintwork. It’s why many turn to the best car buffing in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth or wherever they live to ensure that their car’s paint endures and is always looking its best.
It’s not about vanity, though. There are all kinds of practical reasons that make car buffing a critical part of car maintenance and care. Below we’ll explore some of those and show you why this is not just something for pros and mega enthusiasts to do.
Background: What is Buffing?
Some people confuse buffing with polishing. While they are connected, the two actions are somewhat different. When cars are polished, the idea is to cover up large scratches with many smaller ones until none are visible to he naked eye. The main problem with the polishing approach is the limited scope to which it can be applied.
Buffing, on the other hand, makes use of polishing compounds to remove a wafer-thin layer of paint from the surface. As it does so, the scratches are removed along with it. You can’t easily buff out the more vicious and deep scratches, but it works on the more common and everyday scratches and microscratches and swirl marks that people get on their cars, sometimes acquired through bad washing practices or overuse of automatic car washes.
Buffing Helps More Than Just Your Car’s Paint
While buffing is primarily a key method for protecting your car’s paint, it can be used on other parts of the car too to restore the condition to like-new. For instance, you can use buffing on your headlights to remove the yellowish film that steadily builds up and accumulates on the surface. That yellow hue is usually a result of modern detailing techniques where they used products that cause oxidation on the surface over time, leaving a sometimes visibility-diminishing tint. Buffing removes it and gets your acrylic lights back to their former glory.
Buffing Helps remove the Effects of Etching
Etching refers to damage on the car that is caused by the effects of things like acid rain, bird droppings, and other acidic materials that get onto the car’s surface and then are not cleaned off right away. It’s normal for people either to procrastinate on these jobs or to perhaps not notice until it’s too late.
As the acid sits there, it causes etching, and the best way to remove this problem is a combination first of thorough cleaning and the use of detailing clay, and then a judicious application of good buffing techniques to work out the problem and restore the car’s looks.
Buffing Helps Your Car to Keep Looking Like New
Buffing is another important step to take if you want to keep your car looking like new in every part, which ultimately impacts the amount you can sell it on for. If you stick to a good buffing habit of at least once a year to work out the general wear and tear that occurs on the vehicle, you can keep the car at showroom quality.
The fact is that so much of the damage that can be buffed out of a car is not due to any accidents or vandalism against your vehicle. Tiny scratches, swirl marks, abrasions, etching and other damage can happen even to those who take extra good care of their vehicle.
You might wash and dry your vehicle carefully by hand, but those times you used an automatic car wash, the same can’t be said for the cleanliness of the bristles or drying rags. You might normally keep your car out of the sun, but when you’re parked downtown or at an event there’s nothing protecting it from UV or bird droppings. It’s just the way things go, and buffing helps restore the car to aesthetic health.
