FA22raptero
08-04-2016, 09:20 PM
Hi All,
I would like some advice and appreciate any help that I can get.
I have a 2015 Civic SI sedan in black. Twice, now, I have 'polished' the car. The first time was after I purchased my porter cable 7242xp polisher, using polishing pads bought from the department store. Obviously, I stopped a quarter of the way through because I was unable to get any cutting power out of it and saw no results. I smartened up, and bought an array of Lake Country thin foam pads in a variety of colours; black, white orange and yellow, all in 5.5" (The yellow one was actually a 6.5" CCS pad because they had none of the flat ones I wanted in stock) along with an appropriate backing plate. I had substantially better results and was very happy. Following the advice of everyone on the forum, I started test spots with the white pads, and ended up moving up to the yellow and orange pads to get the cutting power I needed to see a marked improvement. While I managed to get rid of most of the swirls that existed (tragically I wasn't so fanatic about detailing my car when I first bought it to tell them not to wash it, which is where most of the damage is from), there are still quite a few "deep" swirls that don't seem to want to come out. They are all over the car, and they are not quite like swirl marks, but they don't seem to be full on scratches either (if you believe pictures will help, I'm washing the car tomorrow and bought a nice lights, I can attach some pictures). In addition to this, there are a handful of spots on the car that are quite a bit more damaged, which I would like to try and remove the next time I want to spend an entire day with my car again. This leads me to the question:
Considering that my paint appears to be quite 'hard', what type of pad should I move up to to address the issues I've outlined?
For clarification, I have watched the Autogeek videos on using the PC polisher, and followed the method as best as possible. I also have done tones of reading, and although I'm certain my abilities will improve over time, I'm not convinced that I can't fix these defects because my technique is exceptionally poor. I've outlined 3 possible options, and was wondering what people thought. What would you do to get better results? From least to most aggressive, here are my thoughts:
1. Buy 5.5" thin flat yellow pads. Because they are lighter, I feel that I might see more cutting power out of these as opposed to the 6.5" CC S ones I was using. Because I cheaped out and bought an introductory polisher, I find it struggles to keep up with the bigger pads. One of the things I don't like about this approach is that I find my foam pads combined with the PC 7424xp get 'heavy' with material quite fast, and very quickly lose their cutting power. This means I would have to buy quite a few pads... leading me to think of options 2 and 3
2. Buy a thin LC microfibre cutting pad, like the meguiars 5.5" microfibre cutting pad. The microfibre pad should provide good cut and work quickly enough. Additionaly, I'm hoping that the microfibre material is less prone to holding so much material (yes, I know these pads gum up more and that residue control is more important, but I'm hoping that by cleaning them regularly they are prevented from getting really heavy. The foam ones seem to hold the product so deep that even when cleaning on the fly every time I can't get rid of all the excess)
3. The one I'm leaning to most is the LC 5.5" thin wool pad. This should provide me with abundant cut so that I can get even the worst scratches on my car while still being able to limit my defect removal process to two steps; cutting and polishing.
Anyone have thoughts? Ideas?
Thanks a tonne in advance!
-Nicholas
I would like some advice and appreciate any help that I can get.
I have a 2015 Civic SI sedan in black. Twice, now, I have 'polished' the car. The first time was after I purchased my porter cable 7242xp polisher, using polishing pads bought from the department store. Obviously, I stopped a quarter of the way through because I was unable to get any cutting power out of it and saw no results. I smartened up, and bought an array of Lake Country thin foam pads in a variety of colours; black, white orange and yellow, all in 5.5" (The yellow one was actually a 6.5" CCS pad because they had none of the flat ones I wanted in stock) along with an appropriate backing plate. I had substantially better results and was very happy. Following the advice of everyone on the forum, I started test spots with the white pads, and ended up moving up to the yellow and orange pads to get the cutting power I needed to see a marked improvement. While I managed to get rid of most of the swirls that existed (tragically I wasn't so fanatic about detailing my car when I first bought it to tell them not to wash it, which is where most of the damage is from), there are still quite a few "deep" swirls that don't seem to want to come out. They are all over the car, and they are not quite like swirl marks, but they don't seem to be full on scratches either (if you believe pictures will help, I'm washing the car tomorrow and bought a nice lights, I can attach some pictures). In addition to this, there are a handful of spots on the car that are quite a bit more damaged, which I would like to try and remove the next time I want to spend an entire day with my car again. This leads me to the question:
Considering that my paint appears to be quite 'hard', what type of pad should I move up to to address the issues I've outlined?
For clarification, I have watched the Autogeek videos on using the PC polisher, and followed the method as best as possible. I also have done tones of reading, and although I'm certain my abilities will improve over time, I'm not convinced that I can't fix these defects because my technique is exceptionally poor. I've outlined 3 possible options, and was wondering what people thought. What would you do to get better results? From least to most aggressive, here are my thoughts:
1. Buy 5.5" thin flat yellow pads. Because they are lighter, I feel that I might see more cutting power out of these as opposed to the 6.5" CC S ones I was using. Because I cheaped out and bought an introductory polisher, I find it struggles to keep up with the bigger pads. One of the things I don't like about this approach is that I find my foam pads combined with the PC 7424xp get 'heavy' with material quite fast, and very quickly lose their cutting power. This means I would have to buy quite a few pads... leading me to think of options 2 and 3
2. Buy a thin LC microfibre cutting pad, like the meguiars 5.5" microfibre cutting pad. The microfibre pad should provide good cut and work quickly enough. Additionaly, I'm hoping that the microfibre material is less prone to holding so much material (yes, I know these pads gum up more and that residue control is more important, but I'm hoping that by cleaning them regularly they are prevented from getting really heavy. The foam ones seem to hold the product so deep that even when cleaning on the fly every time I can't get rid of all the excess)
3. The one I'm leaning to most is the LC 5.5" thin wool pad. This should provide me with abundant cut so that I can get even the worst scratches on my car while still being able to limit my defect removal process to two steps; cutting and polishing.
Anyone have thoughts? Ideas?
Thanks a tonne in advance!
-Nicholas