Paint 'feeling' coarse?
 

My hood and front fenders don't feel as smooth as they used to. When I'm drying them with a towel, my towels used to just slide over them, but now when I'm drying the hood it feels like it's still dirty, when it's not. The rest of the car's paint feels fine. I'm not obsessed with touching my 8 (lol), but I'm wondering what's going on.

The paint looks as smooth and glossy as ever though. Any ideas? I got a couple coats of Zaino on.

Time for a clay bar day.

I repeat this suggestion. Drive liquid ice or meguiars clay bar.

But but I just Zaino'd my car two months ago =/

claybar and re-zaino. ;) you know you want to...

raptor: what kind of soap have you been using to wash your car? possible that some of the zaino has been stripped and that's why your towel isn't gliding off like it used to.

Claybar does wonders

The clay won't remove your Zaino.
Just reapply one layer after you are done.

I guess I'll try that when the weather gets better over here

jedi: eagle one car wash, I've always been using it

no zaino Z8?

Tried Z6, didnt help

any luck with this Raptor?

School's pwning me, barely have time now to wash the car these days, I'll shoot for this weekend

have u tried using a porter cable to do a light full body polish? after i do that and apply wax it feels slippery again usually.

Not recently. I used the PC last year to get rid of some swirls though. It does help a lot.

An issue I have with all these waxing and washing desires is that my driveway sits wide open to the sun in the afternoon all the way to 6-7 pm. So I don't get the hours of shade I need for claying/waxing/drying unless I wake up early on a Saturday or Sunday - which isn't happening either.

hmm, u can't leave the garage open and work in the garage with a couple of halogen lamps? i have to do that sometimes.

I could, but it's not easy. Our garage has a thin wall column that splits our garage to have two garage doors as opposed to one large one - retarded house builders. And half of the garage is filled with storage that we have to keep there at the moment, so that leaves me with really little space to work with. I'm not a little guy either.

I could wash the car, park it inside and clay, bring it out to wash, bring it in to dry and wax, but it's just too much hassle and annoying squeezing myself in. Best bet is getting up early so that the driveway is shaded or having free time on a cloudy day.

Finally clayed today...interesting. It easily picked up a lot of this red powdery substance on every spot of the hood and front fenders. Not sure what it is. Paint is smooth as ever now, though.

Someone been using read spray paint near your car? If you use spray paint within about 20 feet of a car, the fine mist (which you would think was dry) will stick to your paint. You cant see the color, but you can feel the pebbly nature of the dried mist.

Do you live/work anywhere near a rail yard or a mill? (Within 6 or 8 miles)

God dammit, good catch. Next time I'm using a paint brush or something of the sort for those brake calipers....