Trouble with MB S420 paint

[C30-Mike]

I am working on a 2001 Mercedes S420 black oem paint.
The paint suffers from heavy rids, marring, and some random deep scratches.

I am having a hard time removing the massive rids on this car. Perhaps the paint is very hard?

What I am using:

Flex 3401
LC CCS yellow cutting pad
LC CCS green heavy polishing pad
LC CCS white polishing pad
Surbuff pad
Meguiars M105, M205, Ultimate Compound, SwirlX

Techniques used and result:

Polish at speed 6 with yellow pad M105 4 pass - removed 70% of defect
Polish at speed 5 with yellow pad SwirlX 2 pass - removed NO defect
Polish at speed 5 with Surbuff pad M105 3 pass - added micro marring
Polish at speed 5 with white pad Swirl X 3 pass - removed NO defect

Used KBM method and used slow moving pass with polisher

Do I need to move up to rotary?
In the sun the paint looks good for most people
If I shine a Brinkmann light to it I see massive RIDS ans swirls

I gave up after 1 hour on a test panel

Any ideas?

[Munich77]

Is the paint cerami-clear? You can check by opening the driver side door and if it is there should be a C beside the VIN. Cerami-clear is hard to polish.

[C30-Mike]

Is the paint cerami-clear? You can check by opening the driver side door and if it is there should be a C beside the VIN. Cerami-clear is hard to polish.


It is conventional clear. No C besides VIN. Producted Sep 2001.

I say the paint is hard due to these reasons:
The trunk lid is repainted a few years back and is very easy to correct with M105. It finishes almost LSP ready.

When I polish the factory paint panel it does not budge much.
M105 with yellow cutting pad removed bulk of the defect (heavy RIDS, swirls, cobwebbing)

What remains are massive finer RIDS. I tried changing pad and polish combo to see what works and nothing seems to reduce the OVERALL remaining defect.
Surbuff just added micromarring. I followed up with lighter polish with foam pad and the micromarring from the Surbuff is gone but the RIDS still remain.

This is the most annoying paint. I do not have access to a rotary nor do I wish to experiment on this car with my lack of experience.