How to Fix Ceramic Coating High Spots

What a high spot actually is

Coating is applied wet and then leveled. A high spot is the part you missed: a ridge, streak or smear where the product sat thicker than the film around it and cured that way. It is not a coating failure, and it is not dirt under the coating. It is thickness, and thickness is why it catches light from one angle and disappears from another.

That also explains why they are so easy to miss during application and so obvious the next morning. You are usually looking straight down at a wet panel under a work light. The high spot shows itself at a low angle in daylight, hours later, when the product will no longer move.

Four windows, four different fixes

Every honest answer to this question starts with a question back: how long ago did you apply it? There are four answers, and they get more expensive as you go down the list.

If it is still wet

This is the cheap fix and the reason experienced installers keep a stack of towels rather than two. Take a fresh, dry towel and level the area again, working across the high spot rather than along it, and then check it from a low angle before moving on. A towel that has already taken up coating stops leveling and starts smearing, which is how one high spot becomes three.

The Rag Company’s suede cloths are $7.00 for five, sized 12 by 12 inches. Worth knowing: their own listing sells them for optics, electronics, chrome and jewelry, and does not list paint or coatings, so treat the suede as the leveling tool many installers use rather than as a manufacturer-blessed coating towel. The application guide covers the towel rotation that prevents this in the first place.

If it has cured

Once the coating is hard, nothing wipes it off. The fix is abrasive, and the goal is to remove the proud material without cutting through the film around it. That means the least aggressive thing that works: an ultrafine polish, a soft pad and a machine running at a moderate speed.

RUPES UNO Pure is $12.99 for 8.5 oz and RUPES state it is compatible with rotary, random orbital and gear-driven machines alike, which matters when you are polishing one small area and do not want to buy a product per machine. On a dual action such as Griot’s G9 at $179.99, with its published 9mm throw and 1,000-watt motor, an ultrafine polish on a finishing pad is usually enough to take a high spot down without stripping the rest of the panel.

Wipe with a panel prep afterward and look again. CarPro Eraser, $22.99 a liter at Obsessed Garage, is sold for exactly this: removing oils so you see the real surface rather than a polish-oil flattered one. If the spot is gone, re-coat that panel. If it is still there, it is thicker than one polish pass and you are into compounding, which is the same job as removing the coating from that panel and starting again.

Preventing the next one

• Work panels smaller than you think: half a hood, not a hood.
• Keep a light at a low angle beside you, not above you, and check each panel before the next.
• Rotate towels early. A towel that has taken up coating smears instead of leveling.
• Do not coat in direct sun or on a hot panel; the flash window collapses and you lose the chance to level.
• Walk the whole car at a low angle before you leave it to cure, not the morning after.

Panel prep before the coating matters as much as leveling after it. The panel prep roundup covers what actually strips polish oils, and layering covers what happens when you put a second coat over a first.