10 years car - never been polished
temp was about 90F - I'm in S. San Jose
tnx
If the paint is in severely neglected condition, it's going to decrease the working time of any product as compared to paint that's smooth and shiny to start with.
The worse the condition the paint, the smaller the area you work for your first step product.
2" square sections are too large for most people using a DA Polisher, I think I type chopping your work area down to about 18" to 20" squarish or so... the big picture is don't try to tackle too large of an area at one time, which is the norm for most people new to machine polishing and why I listed it as one of the top 3 most common problems in an article I wrote in 2007 here,
Mike Phillips said:
Tips & Techniques for using the G110v2, G110, G100, G220 and the PC Dual Action Polisher
(These are all similar tools)
After teaching hundreds of classes here at Meguiar's, there are some common mistakes most people make when trying to remove swirls and scratches with a dual action polisher. Most of them have to do with technique.
Here's a list of the most common problems
- Trying to work too large of an area at one time.
- Move the polisher too fast over the surface.
- Too low of speed setting for removing swirls.
- Too little pressure on the head of the unit.
- Too much pressure on the head of the unit so the pad quits rotating.
- Not keeping the pad flat while working your product.
- Too much product, too little product.
- Not cleaning the pad often enough.
Here's a list of the solutions in matching order,
- Shrink your work area down, the harder the paint the smaller the area you can work. The average area should be and average of about 16" by 16" up to 20" by 20" or so. You have to do some experimenting, (called a Test Spot), to find out how easy or how hard the defects are coming out of your car's paint system and then adjust your work area to the results of your Test Spot.
- For removing defects out of the paint you want to use what we call a Slow Arm Speed. It's really easy to move the polisher too quickly because the sound of the motor spinning fast has a psychological effect to for some reason want to make people move the polisher fast. Also the way most people think is that, "If I move the polisher quickly, I'll get done faster", but it doesn't work that way.
- When first starting out many people are scared of burning or swirling their paint, so they take the safe route of running the polisher at too low of a speed setting, again... this won't work. The action of the polisher is already g-e-n-t-l-e, you need the speed and specifically the pad rotating over the paint as well as the combination of time, (slow arm speed), together with the diminishing abrasives, the foam type, and the pressure to remove small particles of paint which is how your remove below surface defects like swirls or scratches. It's a leveling process that's somewhat difficult because the tool is safe/gentle while in most cases, modern clear coat paints are harder than traditional single stage paints and this makes them hard to work on. This is also why people get frustrated, they don't understand paint technology, all they know is their paint swirls easy and getting the swirls out is difficult and thus frustrating.
- For the same reason as stated in #3, people are scared, or perhaps a better word is apprehensive, to apply too much pressure and the result of too little pressure is no paint is removed thus no swirls are removed.
- Just the opposite of item #4, people think that by pushing harder on the polisher they can work faster and be more aggressive, but the truth is the clutch in the tool is a safety mechanism to prevent burning and will cause the pad to stop rotating, thus less cleaning or abrading action and once in a while this will lead a person to then post on the forum something like this, "Hey my pad doesn't rotate". There needs to be a balance of enough pressure to remove defects and keep the pad rotating but yet not too much pressure as to stop the rotating action. This balance is affected by a lot of things, things like type of chemical, some chemicals provide more lubrication and the pad will spin easier, curved surfaces or any raise in body lines will tend to stop the pad from rotating. This is where experience on how to address these areas comes into play or you do the best you can and move on. It's not a perfect tool, nor a perfect system, but it's almost always better than working/cleaning by hand.
- Applying pressure in such a way as to put too much pressure to one side of the pad will cause it to stop rotating and thus decrease cleaning ability.
- Too much product over lubricates the surface and this won't allow the diminishing abrasives to do their job plus it will increase the potential for messy splatter as well as cause pad saturation. Too little product will keep the pad from rotating due to no lubrication and there won't be enough diminishing abrasives to do any work. Again it's a balance that comes with experience, or another way of saying this would be it's a balance that comes with hours of buffing out a car to learn what to do and what not to do. Information like what you're reading here is just an edge to decrease your learning curve. Hope this is helping.
- Most people don't clean their pad often enough and most of the time the reason for this is because they don't know they're supposed to clean their pad often and they don't know how to clean their pad. Again, that's why this forum is here to help you with both of these things. You should clean your pad after every application of product or every other application of product, your choice, most of the time cleaning your pad after every other application of product works pretty well. It enables you to work clean and enables the foam pad, the polisher and the next application of fresh product too all work effectively. How to clean your pad will be addressed below sooner versus later, but not at the time of this posting. (Sorry, I'm behind a keyboard, not a video camera
The first 4 are the most common.
I started from 3 and then moved to 6.
I just didn't what to expect ...
based on videos I saw I see compound leftover on pain, while in my case it started kind of drying and then dusting - so I stopped to check.
No video I've ever been involved with recommends or teaches to use anything slower than th 5 setting when using a compound or polish to do "correction" work. It's not going to work and the pad probably isn't rotating well on the 3 setting thus it's not working or agitating the product enough to keep it liquid on the surface.
This article explains what's going on...
Mike Phillips said:
Tips for working in warm/hot weather or direct sunlight
excerpt...
Shrink your work area down to a smaller size...
Anytime a product becomes difficult to work with, one tip you can try is to shrink down the size of your work area.
This means you spread the product out over a smaller area and because you're engaging the working film of product over the area more quickly as you move the polisher there's less time for the product to dry.
Clean your pads often or switch to a clean dry pad...
It's vitally important to work clean and this means cleaning your pad often and often can mean cleaning your pad after each Section Pass no matter which type of polisher you're using.
The entire article is filled with good information that will help you, I would recommend clicking the above link and give it a good read-through...
Then I wiped out and applied more UC to pad and did another horizontal and vertical pass and it was dry ...
When I wiped out it was like haze after wax
I was expecting UC to be oily vs dry
Not sure I explain it right.
No car was not been driven before, engine was cool and it was inside garage - no direct sun.
Work small sections at a time. Buffing a car out using a DA Polisher is a matter of working small sections at at time and then when moving onto a new section, overlapping a little into the previous section.
You slice up your car mentally into sections, this picture is an example of slicing up a car hood...
Then watch this and copy the techniques...
How to do a Section Pass
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q70g83mnTn4]YouTube - How to do a "Section Pass" with a Porter Cable 7424XP[/video]
:buffing:
