Swirls won't polish out

[rhavyn]

Hey everyone,

I recently purchased a new VW GTI. This weekend I broke out all the gear to fully decon, polish and protect it. Friday night I washed, Iron-X'd and Nanoskin'd, toweled it mostly dry and parked safely in the garage. Saturday morning I got everything taped. Right after lunch I started on a test spot. I'm using a Rupes 15 mark II, and a Rupes 75e for the tighter bits. I first tried Sonax Perfect Finish with a Rupes yellow bad, but that wasn't doing the trick. Jescar Correcting Compound on a Rupes medium wool pad followed by Perfect Finish on yellow foam seemed pretty good (75%+ correction, which is really all I was looking for since this car will ultimately be kept outdoors and commuted in, it will definitely experience wear and tear). I got 80% of the compounding done Saturday, finished it up Sunday morning and was making my way around the car, spot checking my work every now and then when I ran into my problem.

The large C pillar on the passenger side was still covered in swirls. Not as bad as when I started, but still really obvious under a Scangrip. Next I tried bumping up to a coarse wool Rupes pad with Jescar Correcting Compound and finally a Megs MF cutting pad with D300. Still swirls.

I've gotten to the point where I've hammered on the paint enough and don't want to go any further without some additional help. Can anyone think of what could be going on? I was thinking these may be bad sanding marks that I'm just going to have to live with. Any other ideas?

I can try and get a good picture to attach later, if anyone thinks it would be helpful.

I appreciate any help you can provide.

[rmagnus]

Pictures are always helpful.

“C” Pilar is it clear coated plastic or painted metal?
Do you know how thick the clear is?
What about sanding with 3000 grit to get uniformity then remove with the buffer.
Smart move not going for 100% correction on a daily driver. I like using wool pads on forced rotation buffers, foam and microfiber pads on DA’s.

Let us know the number of passes you used for the 75% correction and what size your test spot was. Off hand I’d say you’re using too much product on the pads and getting more hydroplaning than correction.

[rhavyn]

Pictures are always helpful.

“C” Pilar is it clear coated plastic or painted metal?
Do you know how thick the clear is?

Painted metal. I don't have a paint thickness gauge so I don't know how thick the clear is. It is a brand new car from the dealer that I know they didn't do any detailing to besides unwrapping and prep, so it should be whatever the factory thickness is. Since I only do my own cars and this should be the only time this car is compounded while I own it (except for a little spot treating as necessary) I've never felt the need to buy a paint thickness gauge.



What about sanding with 3000 grit to get uniformity then remove with the buffer.


That's definitely beyond what I'm comfortable doing :)


Smart move not going for 100% correction on a daily driver. I like using wool pads on forced rotation buffers, foam and microfiber pads on DA’s.

These Rupes wool pads are designed specifically for their DA machines and are supposed to provide cut similar to microfiber but generate a lot less heat so I thought I'd give them a shot.


Let us know the number of passes you used for the 75% correction and what size your test spot was. Off hand I’d say you’re using too much product on the pads and getting more hydroplaning than correction.

Original test spot was about 12 x 12 inches. But the results of that were fine, the majority of the car looks great. It's really just this C pillar and a bit of the passenger side doors that still look bad.

With Jescar and Sonax I was doing 4 passes per section (2 right/left, 2 up/down).

For the foam pads I was priming by putting 5 pea sides dots on the pad and then running it at speed 2 for 30 seconds on a 10 x 10 area. After priming I'd use 2 or 3 pea sized spots per section, speed 4.5. I'd clean the pad every 2 sections and replace the pad every couple panels (except the roof and hood, each of which I only used 1 pad).

For the MF pad I primed the pad by coating it with a thin coat of D300 trying to make sure the whole thing was pink, then used 2 or 3 pea sized dots at speed 4.5 for polishing.

It is definitely possible that I had too much product for that spot since I noticed it at the end of the day yesterday (and I was already irritated because I wanted to be done polishing this weekend and I still had the front bumper to do when I noticed the swirls), so I was rushing when I pulled out the MF pad and D300.

[Bruno Soares]

VW has hard paint so you'll need to be aggressive to clean up the swirls. I would think Jescar with wool pad would work but maybe you need something with more cut like M100 or perhaps light wet sanding as suggested above.

[rmagnus]

Painted metal. I don't have a paint thickness gauge so I don't know how thick the clear is. It is a brand new car from the dealer that I know they didn't do any detailing to besides unwrapping and prep, so it should be whatever the factory thickness is. Since I only do my own cars and this should be the only time this car is compounded while I own it (except for a little spot treating as necessary) I've never felt the need to buy a paint thickness gauge.


That's definitely beyond what I'm comfortable doing :)


It is definitely possible that I had too much product for that spot since I noticed it at the end of the day yesterday (and I was already irritated because I wanted to be done polishing this weekend and I still had the front bumper to do when I noticed the swirls), so I was rushing when I pulled out the MF pad and D300.


Your process sounds methodical and sound. IMO you're using way too much product like twice the amount needed. As suggested you may need a compound with more cut but I think the tools you have should get the job done. If you are going to compound cars even your own you should have a paint thickness gauge. Factory paint is well factory paint. My daughter turned my Mercedes CLS 550 into a Ford Explorer (that's a long story but involved my insurance company) my point is one of the Fords door jambs has 1.0 mil paint thickness and it's factory paint. I won't even breath on that section! All the exterior sections are 4.7-5.8 mills. Without a gauge you just never know what you're dealing with.

The C pillar on the CLS550 was coated plastic. Plastic is difficult to work on because heat affects it differently. Even with a soft pad I burned through the clear chasing swirl marks. I'm an experienced painter so that was an easy fix. My gauge doesn't measure plastic. When you burn through it happens fast. Learning to custom paint you had to learn wet sanding, buffing and burning through clear - most of the time as a learning experience. Most of the time, lol.

Actually block sanding with 3K grit is very safe because it's uniform and temperature cooler than machine compounding. Don't practice on your driver but rather get a scrap panel from a junk yard or better yet they usually are free at an auto body shop.

For now I recommend a glaze. That should hide the swirls for several days.

[custmsprty]

Mike P just posted recently how he uses 8-10 passes and wide open :buffing:

See post #5 in this link.

https://www.autogeekonline.net/forum/2009-to-2017-how-to-articles-by-mike-phillips/122038-cbeast-battery-life-aka-flex-cordless-3401-mike-phillips.html?highlight=#post1613782

[DaveT435]

Where do you live? Maybe there is a member close by that can help you out, or at least measure the paint thickness.

[dlc95]

Sometimes when the paint is very resistant I add a little more compound than I normally would. Not enough to hyper lubricate, but more than my normal 2 - 3 dots (microfiber).

This puts more abrasive grains into action, and can extend the working time a little bit. It also helps the abrasives "floating" in the liquid, instead of getting bound up by abraded paint, and drying out before they have a chance to work.

Obviously I like when everything works when using the factory recommended settings, but that's not always the case.

I've also ran into issues where my pad would be clogged after just one pass. That happens to me a lot with the Rupes Zephir/(original) Blue microfiber discs. I'll do one pass, look at the pad, and see the pad fibers shine! This means that the combination is cutting faster than I anticipated. I refer to this as the compounding process "tripping over" itself. Backing off on cut to the UHS system remedied that situation. The UHS liquid stayed wetter, the reduced abrasive cut a ltiile slower, and the foam pad allowed for an "escape route" for abraded paint/exhausted polish.

That might not be your issue, but it threw me for a loop when I experienced it.

[Mike Phillips]

Where you at with this?


:)

[rhavyn]

Sorry, I got busy with regular life and never closed out this thread. I was able to get through those swirls. I think, as suggested, I was using too much polish. I went back with a MF pad with Jescar, but I didn’t prime the pad this time, just used 3 drops of polish. 4 passes later and I had basically knocked out the swirls. A yellow Rupes pad with Sonax Perfect Finish cleared up the DA haze nicely.

Now I just need more practice (this is the 4th car I’ve polished), keeping the polisher flat and consistent is so much harder than you’d think. The parts that look good are great, but there are still bits here and there that I seem to have just randomly missed. And since I was being extra careful around edges, the ench or so next to them is particularly bad.

I really appreciate everyone’s help!