Not third gen specific, but body specific.

My wife backed into a pole last week with her car, and I picked it up from the body shop yesterday.

The repair to the bumper is perfect, the blended color match is perfect, to my standards.

However, I don't know what the hell happened but the clear is marred pretty badly. It looks like two things, one being a bunch of holograms from crap rotary work (why don't they ever just finish down with a DA as a last step??), and the other being that the direction of a lot of the swirls seem to be in the direction that one would dry the car, as they do when they wash the car before customer pickup; like the guy who dried it had no idea what part was worked on and dried it with some crappy filthy rag and dried it with a lot of pressure, further marring the brand new, still soft clear.

Needless to say, I'm bringing the car back in tomorrow morning to talk to them about it.

I don't know that I feel comfortable with just a buffing, since they will probably have to take a lot of clear off; I'd almost rather see them re-clear instead.

Since the paint match and body work are perfect, I don't want to disturb that, so I just want to verify that clear coat can be scuff and sprayed without breaking through the clear and into the basecoat, right?

I'm 99% sure you can (or actually have to after a certain time window depending on paint manufacturer), but I was also thinking on the other hand that putting clear over a sanded, hazy layer of clear may just result in permanently clearing in the hazy, sanded layer, with the fresh clear just acting as a window to the sanded layer below.

Assuming clear does get scuffed and resprayed, I'm going to tell the shop I want them to do that.

Thanks.

 

Buffing itself will not remove any clear. Its the sanding that removes clear. Sounds from the description that it may be swirl marks (buffing). An additional buffing step using "swirl mark remover" or equivalent may solve the problem.

Clear can be recoated after 6-8 hours, with sanding required (PPG DCU 2055). Would recomend no less than 500-600 grit.

 

It's as I expected. They are going to hit it with 3000 grit and do some 3M Trizact three step buffing/finishing process.

I'll see how it turns out. Apparently they use a "sun gun" instead of 1000W halogens...

It'll be flawless one way or the other.