7/17/2017 Detail Day 7 - paint correctionLet me start by saying, I totally underestimated the amount of work a two step paint correction would be. I started very slowly and have been taking my time. I started by cleaning the panel with Optimum Paint Prep to make sure there was nothing on the panel that could get into a microfiber or foam pads and cause scratches. I then tested a white foam polishing pad with Menzerna SF3500 finishing polish. It took out a lot of the minor scratches, but was not taking out the bigger ones. After that first test, I felt confident I was not dealing with soft paint, so I went to a microfiber cutting pad with D300 compound. Meguiar's recommends using the D300 and microfiber pad at 4800 RPM and making 2-3 medium passes, and 2-3 light passes. I set my Griot's polisher to speed 1 to spread out the D300, then to 3.5 which is about 4,650 RPM. I then made two passes using the weight of the polisher, and the pressure required to handle the polisher, I did not make any effort to push down beyond that. After 2 passes, I did two fast and light passes. I then buffed the polish off the car. Due to the dry heat in my area, I used some distilled water in a spray bottle to help remove the polish because it was drying quickly.
I am very impressed with the results. There are still a few bigger scratches, but I do not want to aggressively attack them right now, because I am still new to using a machine polisher, and I will probably need to compound the car again when I retire it from daily use, so I don't want to take off too much of the clear coat. I would say using a very aggressive pad (microfiber cutting pad), and a compound (D300), but working at a lower speed with fewer passes is giving me about 70-75% paint correction on the hood, which has the most damage. On the doors, which have far fewer scratches, I would say I am getting the paint to 80-90%. The process is not very difficult, but it is very time consuming. I only managed to compound the hood, passenger front fender, and passenger door, before I had to stop for the day. The primary bottle neck is keeping the microfiber pad clean, I think I may have used a little too much product, because it got matted down very quickly, and I had to spend several minutes brushing the pad out between each section. Hopefully things go a little faster when I continue working on the car! Comments are closed.
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