First time waxing my car today. I washed it. Then I used zymol wax. As I was waxing I saw my applicator pad was getting red. My car is red. Is it removing the paint? What am I doing wrong? Thanks

Well this means that your car is not clearcoated. Nothing to worry about, just means you were using a cleaner wax with abrasives in it that made the wax come off. I hope you don't have an E46 M3 though.

so should I not use the wax anymore?

No I dont have an m3 I wish.

Using wax on your car should never remove the paint, if it does you are doing something wrong.

The idea behind waxing is to restore a layer of protection between your car's paint and the elements. The thiner you put it on the better that way you can put several layers.

Zymol has never removed paint from my car.

Brian

No, this is perfectly normal. In essence, it is like scratching your arm, dead skin is falling off. In this case however, it is merely a very, very thin layer of dead paint and exposing a fresher layer. You aren't going to rub the paint off or anything. You just have to be careful that you don't over polish your non-clearcoated car with an overly abrasive polish excessivlely which could lead to removing too much paint. A wax is never going to be abrasive enough to remove a significant amount of paint that would be problematic. Keep waxing, you're not doing anything bad.
Dallas- it is completely normal that wax is removing paint because I am assuming it is the cleaner wax that has some light abrasive properties, hence the reason paint is coming off. A non-cleaner wax should not however yield any paint removal. The reason that when you wax you don't have any paint come off is because your car is probably clearcoated.

if a wax has a cleaner or polish in it, it can take some paint off. if the finish is good, use a pure carnuba wax to simply put a protective shell on it...

cool thanks guys

It depends on what Zymol you are using. I'm assuming you're using the Zymol in a blue bottle from Pep Boys or somewhere like that right?

That wax has cleaners in it that will remove a little bit of paint, so if your car is older then your rag will turn the color of the paint. Nothing at all to be worried about. :cool:

If you were using a pure wax with no cleaners in it, then paint wouldn't be coming off.