spitpolish
10-08-2013, 08:47 AM
Trying to get my hands around products and tricks for some heavy compounding, hoping for some good tips or input.. here's the situation:
Car:
Vehicle is my 'test bed' beater - a 15yr old Audi wagon that was paint neglected most of its' life. Since falling into my ownership for the last 5yrs or so it's been treated slightly better - some super light polishing (aka some light-polishing cleaner wax products) and as I've gotten more serious about my detailing, it's gotten more modern technology treatments of glazes, sealants & waxes that really made a difference at least from 20 feet.
I always had written off doing anything more significant because the poor thing really needs a paint job, however, it does provide a perfect test bed for me to practice on since I don't care too much about the finish (and it's got lots of 'opportunities' to practice on!). I do plan on trying to polish out the spiderwebs in my 'nice' cars soon but wanted to get familiar with my tool and products first in a 'safe' environment.
Almost the entire car is covered with fairly large scratches from bad car washing and who knows what the previous owners were doing... your typical horribly washed horribly cared for paintjob. This is way past swirls & holograms. On the other hand, it seems this Audi paint is pretty hard from my limited experience.... but more on that in a sec.
Me:
Way back in the day I did do a bit of polishing on a few cars using really old-school compounds. Nothing that ever was show quality but I corrected a few old cars w/ bad scratches using a couple stages of really basic abrasive stuff. Probably those were all single stage paint I suspect, as well as old-school softer paints.
While I have only a little car polishing experience, I do have boat polishing experience, and own a big industrial strength rotary with wool bonnets. And I know not to take that near the cars, but just by way of saying I've done deep cutting before w/ a rotary and then had to work that back to a shine... However most of my experience is in the highly forgiving context of polishing gelcoat so I know I have to be 1000x more cautious...
So far:
So far I gave the roof of the car a series of passes w/ CG V-series of compounds on first orange and then white pads. I found quickly I could tell when the compound was broken down and stopped cutting, and that in fact that happened pretty fast - long before I got the deepest flaws corrected.
What was great was seeing how good the 'lands' between the worst scratches polished up and got really deep and clear, however the deepest stuff is still there though it has that "highly polished scratches" look to it. It was really clear the polish was doing it's job, but breaking down quickly and getting into polish vs. cut mode.
Questions:
Do I just need to spend more time w/ the V32 product - reload the pad and keep driving it when I can tell it's stopped cutting? Is the stuff I'm trying (V32 is the coarsest in that setup) just too wimpy for my job? Do I need to bite the bullet to a more serious cutting compound? For heavy correction like this should I be looking at a different non-DAT product? If so, suggestions?
Is this Audi paint (mid-90's...) known to be particularly hard or soft or thick or thin? (sure seems hard to me...)
Any technique tips / tricks for this kind of a situation?
Any other links or suggestions would be great, TIA
Car:
Vehicle is my 'test bed' beater - a 15yr old Audi wagon that was paint neglected most of its' life. Since falling into my ownership for the last 5yrs or so it's been treated slightly better - some super light polishing (aka some light-polishing cleaner wax products) and as I've gotten more serious about my detailing, it's gotten more modern technology treatments of glazes, sealants & waxes that really made a difference at least from 20 feet.
I always had written off doing anything more significant because the poor thing really needs a paint job, however, it does provide a perfect test bed for me to practice on since I don't care too much about the finish (and it's got lots of 'opportunities' to practice on!). I do plan on trying to polish out the spiderwebs in my 'nice' cars soon but wanted to get familiar with my tool and products first in a 'safe' environment.
Almost the entire car is covered with fairly large scratches from bad car washing and who knows what the previous owners were doing... your typical horribly washed horribly cared for paintjob. This is way past swirls & holograms. On the other hand, it seems this Audi paint is pretty hard from my limited experience.... but more on that in a sec.
Me:
Way back in the day I did do a bit of polishing on a few cars using really old-school compounds. Nothing that ever was show quality but I corrected a few old cars w/ bad scratches using a couple stages of really basic abrasive stuff. Probably those were all single stage paint I suspect, as well as old-school softer paints.
While I have only a little car polishing experience, I do have boat polishing experience, and own a big industrial strength rotary with wool bonnets. And I know not to take that near the cars, but just by way of saying I've done deep cutting before w/ a rotary and then had to work that back to a shine... However most of my experience is in the highly forgiving context of polishing gelcoat so I know I have to be 1000x more cautious...
So far:
So far I gave the roof of the car a series of passes w/ CG V-series of compounds on first orange and then white pads. I found quickly I could tell when the compound was broken down and stopped cutting, and that in fact that happened pretty fast - long before I got the deepest flaws corrected.
What was great was seeing how good the 'lands' between the worst scratches polished up and got really deep and clear, however the deepest stuff is still there though it has that "highly polished scratches" look to it. It was really clear the polish was doing it's job, but breaking down quickly and getting into polish vs. cut mode.
Questions:
Do I just need to spend more time w/ the V32 product - reload the pad and keep driving it when I can tell it's stopped cutting? Is the stuff I'm trying (V32 is the coarsest in that setup) just too wimpy for my job? Do I need to bite the bullet to a more serious cutting compound? For heavy correction like this should I be looking at a different non-DAT product? If so, suggestions?
Is this Audi paint (mid-90's...) known to be particularly hard or soft or thick or thin? (sure seems hard to me...)
Any technique tips / tricks for this kind of a situation?
Any other links or suggestions would be great, TIA