03 Dodge (Double Passes)

[HUMP DIESEL]

Hey guys and gals if there are any on here. My and a close friend are working on one of his work trucks. He owns a Landscaping business. The truck is an 03 Dodge 2500 four door. We washed and decontaminated the truck this past weekend, and he started the cutting process yesterday. The truck has some heavy swirls, but not a lot of bad scratches. We have a Griot's polisher with 5" pads. We have one yellow foam cutting pad and two micro fiber cutting pads. He started on the hood to take some before and after 50/50 shots. We are using Menzerna FG400 with the cutting pads. We have had to do two passes on each panel to get the level of cut that is satisfactory, and even then there are still some areas that have light swirls, so I would say 75% corrected.
My thought is that we just to not have enough machine. The Griot's worked great on my wife's Camry (Black), and on two other vehicles that we have worked on, one was the Porsche that I posted the other day. I do have a Dewalt DW849 rotary that I pulled out of storage, and I am thinking we need to use it to get the cut down to at least a one pass for cut.
Any thoughts?

We were hoping that because this is a work truck that we could do one good pass with the FG400 and then seal with a high quality long lasting sealant, but it looks like (2) passes is going to have to be the way even if we use the rotary.

HUMP

[lawrenceSA]

Well for what its worth, I have a locally branded 'Shield' Dual Action polisher (I am based over in South Africa) and I guess it is sort on par with the Megs DA.

I am not sure where the griots machine fits in, in terms of compartive power.

What I can say is that I tend to work on mostly VWs, SEATs and AUDI's, mostly with harder clears, and FG400 is my go-to compound, and even with something like a Orange LC pad, I have been able to get away with (mostly) 1 'pass' with FG400 to remove sufficient damage.

I have only recently started using MF pads, but can attest to the fact that they do cut a lot more than foam pads. So FG400 and MF should be a pretty 'strong' combo, and as such, you are probably (IMO) dealing HARD paint, or very deep damage.

I recently detailed a Phantom Black A4 Audi, and had to make 2 passes with the FG400/MF pads combo to get the kind of results I was looking for, but the paint was really trashed.

http://www.autogeekonline.net/forum/show-n-shine/73776-phantom-black-pearl-audi-a4-detailed-lawrence.html

How often were you cleaning out the MF pads?
How big a section were you working?

[HUMP DIESEL]

That is what I was finding last night, this is a white truck, but you can see the difference in a two pass versus one pass, and we only wanted to use the FG400, and then seal it out.

HUMP