Newbe here, need a little advice

[Richs66]

Not sure if in right place, but here goes, heres what I got so far, got that bad boy porter cable 7424 xp, came with a white pad, orange pad, couple red ones.

Tried Meguiars swirl remover, then Meguiars ultimate compound, then Meguiars fine cut cleaner.......then Wizards Final Cut, used a orange cutting pad, No matter how much I tried, I always ended up with fine scratches under a halogen light.

Now I don"t mind fooling around with the car, but I have near 8-9 hrs just on the hood and decklid...........so I assume I'm doing something wrong here. Think I'm using the right amount of stuff, going over 6-8 times with the buffer.

Threw some Mothers Briazilian carnabuba cleaner wax on it............looks pretty good, but still some fine scratches.

Need to order one of those swirl lights deal, but would like some advice on which pads, product to get..........and maybe anything I'm doing wrong.....which I assume is a lot. LOL

Thanks

Rich

[MattPersman]

Pics? What car what color paint. Could be deep RIDS on hard paint. could be orange pad too aggressive for soft paint ?

Need more info


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[Richs66]

Hey Matt, car is a 66 Gto, paint is about 20 yrs old, Dark Cloisnoone blue, got a couple of pics I just took, its dark in the garage now, so I assume the pics won"t show anything.

LOL..........I have no idea on what RIDS is...........all in all this paint looks great , just seems to have all these defects under a halogen light.

I'm gonna get this out in the sunlight tomorrow, and see if I can see all these problems then.

Other wise do I need to go to a more aggressive pad, or swirl remover.

Sorry for not explain this stuff better............way out of my league, that's for sure. LOL

Rich

[Richs66]

Ok, washed the car today, way to much dust from the buffing, you don"t seem to see that viewing the vids, thinking I'm getting way to anal, read Mikes book, and I'm cleaning the pad after every section, so this is adding to my time, oh yeah and the beer drinking is slowing me down some. LOL

Paint is looking pretty good, just some very small scratches, I'm hoping I'm not using too harsh of pad or compound, just doesn"t seem right to have to do the same section over and over just to get it up to par.

Gonna see if I can get someone over that has done this before.

Just wondering would I be better off say using the blue or red pad and the compound.

Sorry for the dumb questions, you can tell I don"t do this for a living. LOL

Rich

[pilotpip]

For a car with that much body, you need more pads. Clean, "fresh" pads are going to give more cut than stopping and cleaning really fast. If the budget allows, I would get 6 orange cutting pads, 6 white polishing pads, and 2-3 black or red pads for your LSP.

I use a PC, and recently started switching to the Lake County thin pros from CCS pads. They work much better with All-In-One products like McKee's 360 and HD Speed.

Take it easy. Don't go more agressive yet. You shouldn't need 5 steps. In fact it seems that a couple of those are completely offsetting the step prior. Try something easy to work with and forgiving like Ultimate compound with the orange pad, then ultimate polish with a white pad, then apply your LSP. If you use a clean pad on every panel (and maybe 2 on that monster hood as I do on my uncle's 72 Monte Carlo) there's no reason you shouldn't be able to do the entire car in a weekend if you're doing a full correction. Once you get a technique you like, go to a line that has more cut to improve your results.

[k20trick]

Your moving around to too many products, swirl remover to compound to fine cut. It should also be from aggressive to least aggressive. Compound is aggressive, polish is least aggressive. Orange pad is light cut so its more aggressive than the white pad. So orange pad to white pad.

Try compound to remove the damage and polish something like m205 or ultimate polish to remove the fine scratches with white pad and polish to perfection.

I really can't tell whats going on with the paint with the photos you posted, but I wouldn't start the whole car until you have the process dialed in.

You don't have to do this for a living, we all still had to start somewhere.

[Calendyr]

Very beautiful car, congrats!

Just a note of caution here. Don't work on the same section over and over trying to find what works best. We had a guy who did that last year and he went through his clearcoat. I am assuming you have a single stage paint on a car that old unless it was repainted with a 2 stage paint recently. If so you will not need super aggressive compounds and pads since single stage paint is much softer than 2 stage.

What Matt meant by RIDS is Random Isolated Deep Scratches. In essence, scratches that are deeper than the rest of the damage that was on the paint' Usually you need to sand those but on single stage paint Compound might be enough to remove them. Ideally if you had a second backplate for your polisher, you could use smaller pads to go after the RIDS. I use 3 inch pads for that.

[Richs66]

Hey,thanks for the tips guys, I can see I'm all over the place with what I'm doing. LOL The car was repainted 20 yrs ago with 2 stage, looks pretty good for its age.

I see you really can"t tell anything from the pics, cheap camera, bad lighting. I'm gonna tackle the doors today doing the above mentioned ideas..........was just getting frustrated trying to get out some small scratches, that's why I was throwing everything at it, with not much success I may add. LOL

Gonna get one of those swirl lights, and more pads, and give it another try.

Thanks again

Rich