Jmorris22

HELP!! I just bought a brand new white 2024 GLS less than two weeks ago. I purchased it at 10pm and was not worried about not examining the paint before driving off as it was brand new and this particular MB dealership includes a ceramic coating on every new car so it should be perfect right?! Anyways fast forward to her first handwash by my husband and he points out to me that there are small brown and yellow specs all over the entire car. I let the dealership know right away and bring her in. They're saying oh maybe the coating needs to be removed and redone but after researching, it seems that could be incredibly dangerous as you could actually remove paint so now I'm super worried.. Can anyone give me any sort of insight as to what these spots could even be? Could they be factory paint issues?? The car is Polar white btw and looks like vanilla bean ice cream up close!

nc211

Grab one of those thin plastic grocery bags, put your hand in it, and gently rub your finger tips over the paint. If you feel bumps, then they likely did the coating without doing a full clay bar prior to. It could be from the sticky parts of the shipping material (if it was wrapped for shipping), or rail dust if by train, or road / trailer grime if by convoy. I would suspect some type of road debris before factory paint defect. The question will be - was there before or after the ceramic coating?

Me personally, one of the first things I have always done with buying a new car is spend a weekend doing a full clay bar, then polish and now using ceramic myself (used to be wax back in the day). You would be amazed at how much gunk is in the paint from shipping.

If you feel bumps through that plastic bag, you have gunk on it. If you don't feel bumps, then perhaps it is a paint defect from the factory.

Also, I would ask exactly what type of ceramic coating they used. I doubt by default that they go with the kind of stuff that is hard to remove. That costs hundreds if not thousands to do correctly. Willing to bet it says "ceramic" on the bottle from Autozone. If that's the case, then a full clay bar will be fine to remove it, and the gunk (assuming not paint defect) and then start over. I have yet to see one of these 5-year ceramics actually last that long. I use something called Black Ice from a company called Last Coat, and it lasts realistically about 2 years max. But even then, road grime, pollution, and just life in general gets stuck to the car. I did our GLS back in 2020 when we got it, and just did it for the second time about a month ago. The clay bar was filthy, but the paint remains perfect.

nc211

To give you an idea what the clay bar does - this is a 10 year old VW that I recently purchased for my son as his first car. Lived in an apartment building parking lot, doubt it's seen a wax job beyond the gas station its whole life. This is after the clay bar, polish, ceramic. The clay bar is the key to all of it. Without that step, then it's a waste of money and effort in my opinion.