Trouble removing swirls on white porsche boxster

[d-day]

Hey all,


I recently picked up a 2013 Boxster S. Overall the car is in very good condition aside from some previous owner/dealer installed swirl marks. Now, My cars in the past never really had bad swirl marks because I aways bought new. The car is white so swirls are hard to see from a distance but very clear up close.


I tried removing them using a PC 7424XP with Orange Pad and Menzerna Super Intensive Polish. While it minimized the swirls some many remained. With that I have a few questions.


1. The menzerna SIP i used is about 4 years old. Would that have anything to do with the issues I had?


2. Did I just not work the product long enough? I tried to focus on areas a good amount of time until the product started to almost clear up and haze.


3. Is it just not abrasive enough for what I'm trying to do?


4. Something else?


Thanks in advance for any help.

[shadwell]

Its clearly not abrasive enough as its not removing the damage.

You will have to step up your pad and compound until you improve to the level you are targetting.... test spots until you find what works...

You may need MF pad..... and a compound with a good working time...

Personaly i just grab the rotary and a wool pad with diminishing compound... this used correctly, lightly and carefully gets the jobs done in a quarter of the time......

[osiapstndp]

You mentioned an orange pad. Which brand and model is it? A Lake Country CCS pad, a Chemical Guys hex logic pad, or something different? Also, I'm not familiar with the Menzerna product to which you refer, but as you mentioned it may not be aggressive enough. A heavier cutting compound may be appropriate, like the Griot's Garage Fast Correcting Cream. Just a thought.

Is it your goal to remove swirls marks from the whole vehicle, or are you just treating certain spots? If your car's paintwork is very hard the Porter Cable tool may not have enough "umph" to do the job quickly, so it may require more working time and elbow grease - it may work just fine, but it may take more effort.

Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk

[d-day]

You mentioned an orange pad. Which brand and model is it? A Lake Country CCS pad, a Chemical Guys hex logic pad, or something different? Also, I'm not familiar with the Menzerna product to which you refer, but as you mentioned it may not be aggressive enough. A heavier cutting compound may be appropriate, like the Griot's Garage Fast Correcting Cream. Just a thought.

Is it your goal to remove swirls marks from the whole vehicle, or are you just treating certain spots? If your car's paintwork is very hard the Porter Cable tool may not have enough "umph" to do the job quickly, so it may require more working time and elbow grease - it may work just fine, but it may take more effort.

Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk

Using orange pad from detailersdomain it's a medium polish pad. The whole car has swirls so def a lot of work to do. I have been looking into getting a Rupes instead to help speed up process.

[tenblade2001]

You might try an Orange LC hybrid pad. Also, how many pads did you use? Ideal world, one per panel but you can get a little more life out of the pad if you're cleaning on the fly. Otherwise, the pad might be spent. The new formula for the Menz SI is supposed to be more aggressive. I'd try that combo.

[d-day]

You might try an Orange LC hybrid pad. Also, how many pads did you use? Ideal world, one per panel but you can get a little more life out of the pad if you're cleaning on the fly. Otherwise, the pad might be spent. The new formula for the Menz SI is supposed to be more aggressive. I'd try that combo.

Started on trunk area with one pad and wasn't seeing results so didn't bother moving on. Pad def wasn't overloaded. Sounds like I just need a more aggressive combo.

[Mike lambert]

Meguiars d300and micro pad, followed by your polish, works every time provided you use correct technique

[d-day]

Meguiars d300and micro pad, followed by your polish, works every time provided you use correct technique

Would my existing porter cable do the job with that combo or would I need to upgrade machine as well?

[Kamakaz1961]

IMO try FG400 for compounding and SF400 or SF4500. As for Pads The Orange Lake Country Pad is fine for compound and the White for Polishing. The Boxter is very curvy so you may have some difficulty in compounding/polishing with the PC. It can be done. I recently used fg400 and SF4500 on a Porsche Boxter and it went fine. Porsche Paint is generally "soft" and should be easily correctable.

Your weakness is the PC for that car as there are too many curved panels and most free floating DA's have some issues with curved panels. But you may want to go to 4" Pads with the PC. IMO you will actually get the job done faster with the smaller pads as you will not have to worry about curves as much and the smaller pads make the PC more powerful. That is what I would do. This is from 1st hand experience with my PC. My main DA is the Flex 3401. Here are some pics of a Boxster I worked on a few months back.

I used Menzerna FG400 for compound and SF4500 for polish. I used Lake Country Orange Pads and White Pads and a Red Pad for LSP

[Mike lambert]

Your OC will do just fine, that's all I used for years, the Meguiars products and pads were designed for the da.