New Member-Am I ready?

[JKL1031]

Finally my account is activated! Im the MAN

So Ive been doing alot of research and began practicing on my Mazda protege. I have an infiniti that needs some DISO uninstalled. Ive done the trunk and one section of my roof on the Mazda. Unfortunately Ive come to find that this car has been resprayed with single stage paint as Im getting alot of paint left on my pads, but good results with no visible swirls under halogen, sun, or LED using IPA wipes before polish.

I'm using a Chicago electric DA, Harbor freight orange pad, Meg. Ultimate compound, ultimate polish and NXT tech wax.

Before any flaming, Im curious to know if Im ready to open up the good stuff: Wolf gang siwrl remover and finishing glaze. with Lake county Orange and white pads. :props: Still gonna use the Meg. NXT wax, tho Ive been eyeing the Fuzion wax. After more reading I've been thru the 20 pages on Wolfgang's sub forum and got lots of confidence and found I may be able to just use the white pad. Ive even seen this combo can/was worked by hand before.

Ive come to realize of course I should have been practicing with actual conditions and products, but I only wanted to get a feel for handling the buffer on the Mazda hence I used poor stuff. So I plan to do either 1 of two things now: open the goods and move to a section of the car that has 3 stage paint with a clearcoat, or go ahead and test spot the roof of the Infiniti and get started. The Mazda-red, Infiniti-Black:o

The concerns/ questions:

1. I know sliding grit across paint can cause scratches, but I notice after results on the Mazda trunk, If i swipe my hand across the dirty trunk, I easily create fine shinny holographic scratches on the surface and I would hate to have the paint so soft/sensitive on my good car. I dont think if I did this on another dirty car it would scratch so easily. Its pretty much if someone brushed up against my car while it was dirty, BOOM, instant hologram. Why am I getting this? Improper sealing/protecting? The roof slightly does the same thing before polishing. This is the main thing holding me up.

2. Is there any difference in polishing three stage vs single stage?

3. Is there anything I'm missing?

4. What exactly causes holographic polisher traces?

[mwoolfso]

Document the process you used from wash to polish, include the specific product and pad type used with the polisher as well. I have a good idea what you did but want the response to be as complete and accurate as possible.

[Pureshine]

Welcome to AGO :)

[vet]

Welcome! You'll get the answers here from someone who knows.

[JKL1031]

thanks for your reply in wolf I did cut you short on my technique. I wash with a turtle wax wash n wax in orange the orange bottle, no where near as much wax as in the meguiars yellow stuff. I should probably use a waxless soap next time? After I let that air dry, I did three passes of the Meg UC removed with microfiber and wiped it away with alcohol/water. I didnt want to dampen a microfiber so I wiped with the disposable blue shop towels. I will need to get more micro fibers. I applied the ultimate polish by hand with foam applicator, buffed it out with microfiber. Applied the NXT wax by applicator pad, let it dry and removed with micro fiber.

[JKL1031]

Ultimate compound with orange pad BTW.

[JKL1031]

Heres a pic. From light pressure of the hand..
http://imageshack.us/a/img36/8839/e1a8.png

[mwoolfso]

Finally my account is activated! Im the MAN

So Ive been doing alot of research and began practicing on my Mazda protege. I have an infiniti that needs some DISO uninstalled. Ive done the trunk and one section of my roof on the Mazda. Unfortunately Ive come to find that this car has been resprayed with single stage paint as Im getting alot of paint left on my pads, but good results with no visible swirls under halogen, sun, or LED using IPA wipes before polish.

I'm using a Chicago electric DA, Harbor freight orange pad, Meg. Ultimate compound, ultimate polish and NXT tech wax.

Before any flaming, Im curious to know if Im ready to open up the good stuff: Wolf gang siwrl remover and finishing glaze. with Lake county Orange and white pads. :props: Still gonna use the Meg. NXT wax, tho Ive been eyeing the Fuzion wax. After more reading I've been thru the 20 pages on Wolfgang's sub forum and got lots of confidence and found I may be able to just use the white pad. Ive even seen this combo can/was worked by hand before.

Ive come to realize of course I should have been practicing with actual conditions and products, but I only wanted to get a feel for handling the buffer on the Mazda hence I used poor stuff. So I plan to do either 1 of two things now: open the goods and move to a section of the car that has 3 stage paint with a clearcoat, or go ahead and test spot the roof of the Infiniti and get started. The Mazda-red, Infiniti-Black:o

The concerns/ questions:

1. I know sliding grit across paint can cause scratches, but I notice after results on the Mazda trunk, If i swipe my hand across the dirty trunk, I easily create fine shinny holographic scratches on the surface and I would hate to have the paint so soft/sensitive on my good car. I dont think if I did this on another dirty car it would scratch so easily. Its pretty much if someone brushed up against my car while it was dirty, BOOM, instant hologram. Why am I getting this? Improper sealing/protecting? The roof slightly does the same thing before polishing. This is the main thing holding me up. Based on the information you provided the odds are good that the areas that were resprayed will be wacky to deal with. I suspect that the paint job is subpar for multiple reasons so in terms of "honing your technique" you should avoid these areas for now. Second, the paint is probably littered with embedded contaminants and you will need to clay the paint to remove them, then polish and seal. For single stage paints Mike Phillips has a good article about that using among other things Megs #7.

2. Is there any difference in polishing three stage vs single stage? Yes, all other things being equal there is less room for error on single stage.

3. Is there anything I'm missing? A process and some experience.

4. What exactly causes holographic polisher traces? Polishing and not keeping the pad level, moving the DA too fast across the paint, generally speaking improper technique.

OK, thanks for the information. You are jumping around a bit but overall I have a good sense as to what you want and where you are going.

First off, some generalized answers are above in blue. Next, you probably want to use the Mazda as a test bed and lock in a process and polishing technique. Your basic process to perform a full detail w/ correction on your paint is as follows:

1- Wash & strip the paint of any protection layers
2- Decontaminate the paint
3- Clay the paint
4- Compound
5- Polish
6- IPA
7- Seal
8- Wax

#1 can be accomplished with a basic car wash (without wax), a little Dawn Ultra and some APC. While there are numerous approaches out there, this is what I do.

#2 is optional depending on what you need and how far you want to go (Wolf's, CarPro and Finish Kare have decontamination products; most peeps around here have talked about IronX more than any other product

#5 and #7 can be either two separate products or one product. The single product is called an AIO. You have MUC and MUP, so you do not have an AIO. Megs ColorX could be considered an AIO. Alas, I digress.

#7 and #8 can be mixed and matched. You can do 1 or both but if you seal and wax then you must seal first.

In terms of you locking down a process with your products you simply MUC first, then MUP, then TechWax. Depending on the condition of the paint you may not need MUC at all. So you lock in a process by using test spots.

Here is a URL to a bunch of articles Mike has in one place. Read, learn, ask more questions and enjoy.

http://www.autogeekonline.net/forum/ask-expert-featuring-mike-phillips/23722-articles-mike-phillips.html

Regarding your last question, "are you ready for more"..... that is entirely up to you and your wallet. Personally, I would recommend you get used to the products you have. You won't be able to address every swirl, RID or DISO but you should be able to do a good enough job to see a huge difference and increase the amount of TLC provided to those vehicles. Good luck.

[JKL1031]

Thanks mwoolf. Think I will add claying.

[mwoolfso]

Good luck!

[JKL1031]

Yea it looks like whatever this dust is is pretty tough. Infiniti does the samething. Looks like someone at the house tried to wipe at it and I see the same scratches on it. I decided to step down from orange n white to wht n blue pads for the wolfgang duo.

[JKL1031]

Well enough of my blabbering. Here's a 50/50 with a wht pad for the swirl remover. Really all I have with my poor camera. Excuse the shotty wiping.Left over polish can look like holograms.

http://imageshack.com/scaled/large/818/7jq6.jpg
Before
http://imageshack.com/scaled/large/547/58f9.jpg

After, If this angle really means anything. I checked it out at a gas station and it looks pretty legit.
http://imageshack.com/scaled/large/833/32mg.jpg

It was pretty straight forward. After the first section I added more polish( a mistake I was able to identify thanks to Junkman's explanation of over-saturating and loosing cut.) And didnt get good results as the first half. So I did the "clean pad on the fly"(Thanks to Mike) which actually hurts like a mofo or either I'm doing it wrong, and got the next section worked out. I can now gauge when I'm using too much polish by the thickness of the DA traces and by how easy my wipe off is.

[Radarryan]

Thanks mwoolf. Think I will add claying.

I don't think the decontamination is an optional step. If you're going to be polishing, then some sort of decontamination needs to be done. Since I'm not a professional that does dozens of cars a month, I stick with clay, but there are several other options available to you, such as the nano scrub pads, etc. If you choose a product like Iron-X, I don't think that would eliminate claying, just help to ensure that more of the above surface contaminants are removed.

[JKL1031]

I did rubbed across my roof with my hand but I lied, I still skipped claying. I only washed with dawn soap. I should go ahead n get a bar for the rest because I got a feeling ill be doing my dads car next which I can count on my hand how many times we have washed it since we got it in 04.

None the less I would be very happy to get the same results all over tho I am curios about the fuzion wax now.

[Radarryan]

I did rubbed across my roof with my hand but I lied, I still skipped claying. I only washed with dawn soap. I should go ahead n get a bar for the rest because I got a feeling ill be doing my dads car next which I can count on my hand how many times we have washed it since we got it in 04.

None the less I would be very happy to get the same results all over tho I am curios about the fuzion wax now.

The purpose of claying, besides increasing the clarity, and therefore the gloss, of the paint, is to prevent contaminants from becoming stuck in your polishing pad (foam or microfiber), which would get spun around the paint, possibly causing swirls and scratches - the very thing that you are polishing to remove!

You will always hear Mike Phillips and the other members talk about "working clean" with everything you do. In fact, I'm sure Mike has written an article or two on the subject. While all the steps taken by most of the detailers may seem excessive, especially for someone just starting out and a weekend warrior, they are there to prevent additional damage from being caused. For everyone, time is money, and sometimes doing something right the first time can save in both time spent, dollars spent, and frustration saved (maybe the biggest of all!)

Good luck with your dad's car and, as always, happy detailing!