I have a 1998 BMW M3 sedan in Alpinweiss(white). Those that know this car, it has a wide black trim along the body side and around the sunroof. I will be doing paint correction on this car next week and I need to know how to remove any white residue left on the trim from the compound, swirl reducing, polishing and waxing. Masking off this much trim would take days. I am using a Porter Cable DA with 3.5" backing plate and 4" Lake Country pads.
ANy advice and help will be great
Taping off the trim would be the safest bet. Even if its going to take you some time. It should only take you an hour and some to tape up the trim/ door handles if you move at a good pace, that number is purely arbitrary but it shouldn't take you days Id rather spend some time up front to tape off areas then after to have to clean up any residue you missed because you will be focused on the correction.
Ive also seen people treat the trim first with a trim sealant or trim coating. That will help wipe off any residue much easier. Dont let the residue dry and clean it up right away using a dedicated trim cleaner/ rubber cleaner or APC.
Again, your safest bet will be to tape all the black trim and anywhere else you dont want compound/ polish residue.
Other than that beautiful car! This and the E46 M3 are my two favorite BMWs.
Taping off the trim on that car should take less than 5min.
It's basically just 1 straight line along the side of the car, right? 2min. Lol.
If you want to see the kind of tape job that might take you "days", check out the video where Mike Phillips tapes off a black Porsche prior to buffing it. Now that's a major tape job!
Wow it's amazing how green the grass was back in those days before the water restrictions down here... That green grass is now nothing but a dirt patch today. It's so bad that I won't even wash a vehicle on it.
I removed that trim on one of those i did a while back. It's very easy to both get off and place back on after. Removing it takes away the headache of any staining or taping.
Taping off the trim would be the safest bet. Even if its going to take you some time. It should only take you an hour and some to tape up the trim/ door handles if you move at a good pace, that number is purely arbitrary but it shouldn't take you days Id rather spend some time up front to tape off areas then after to have to clean up any residue you missed because you will be focused on the correction.
Ive also seen people treat the trim first with a trim sealant or trim coating. That will help wipe off any residue much easier. Dont let the residue dry and clean it up right away using a dedicated trim cleaner/ rubber cleaner or APC.
Again, your safest bet will be to tape all the black trim and anywhere else you dont want compound/ polish residue.
Other than that beautiful car! This and the E46 M3 are my two favorite BMWs.
I totally agree 100%
What's the old saying: An ounce of prevention beats a pound of cure.
I learned this personally the hard way by not taping off some black trim. It took me way longer and much more effort to remove the polish residue.
2013 Genesis Coupe 3.8 Track Edition
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If you are trying to maximize your overall efficiency and correction time, I'd highly recommend investing in a rotary polisher. I use a dewalt 849x for ALL of my two step corrections and equip it with either a 3 inch or a 5 inch flexible backing plate and an orange buff and shine cutting pad. It gives me the precision I need to effectively correct as close to trim as possible.
For my second step I use my LHR 15 MKII with either HD Polish+ or HD Speed and even if I do accidentally bump the trim, neither of these water based finishing polishes seem to damage trim like the popular heavy cutting compounds from meguiars and menzerna.
Optimum's polishes are also known for being usable directly over trim. I've never taped trim or sealed trim before correcting paint and I've never once had a problem. To me that is why Rotary polishers still have their place in the industry and as the primary polisher in my arsenal.
I'll chime in having had a white '97 coupe (also had a white '90 M3), and working on BMWs for a living.
I personally wouldn't recommend taping off the rubber window seals- I did that on mine and it pulled some of the coating off and left them splotchy.
Taping off the side mouldings is easy enough, I would do that vs removing them (seen too many come in with broken clips and oblonged holes in doors and fenders so they don't clip back in well).
The bumper trims come off really easy, those I would pop off (I'm sure there's plenty of vids online if you haven't tried yet).
I've sold mine, but if I was to do another E36 I would probably try the approach RaydiantDetail suggested and clean all the Trim with an APC, hit it with some trim sealant, then just clean up as needed while you go.
If you do get staining, I've only seen positive things about the McKee's wax remover designed for just this problem.
Hope this helps!
Last edited by oneheadlite; 11-16-2016 at 09:12 PM.
Reason: McKee's plug
If you get compound, polish or wax residue into PEBBLE TEXTURED PLASTIC TRIM it's going to take some scrubbing to get it out. Luckily McKee's 37
If you're working on a car with plastic trim then it's faster and safer to simply tape it off to protect it. This allows you to work faster and even work more sloppy, (not that this is a good habit), than not protecting the trim.
This how-to article is about protecting PAINT but has some very good tips for actually applying tape.
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Id rather spend some time up front to tape off areas then after to have to clean up any residue you missed because you will be focused on the correction. 
Originally Posted by RaydiantDetail
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