What would be a good polish to remove light marring by hand?

[BWG707]

I'm looking for a good polish that would help remove marring left by claying, and I will be doing this by hand. There's not alot of marring just several areas, nothing serious. Also this is on a pearl white Nissan. This will be my first time polishing a clearcoat and need advice on products. Any help would be appreciated.

[rfinkle2]

I have used Menzerna Powerfinish and Meguiar's Scratch X by hand with great results.

note: Powerfinish vs. Powergloss

[tw33k2514]

Ultimate Compound by hand should be sufficient.

[Danube]

UC or SwirlX

[BWG707]

Thanks for the replies. Could you use Meguiars UC on your windows also? Just wondering about using it for waterspots.

[Mike Phillips]

Thanks for the replies. Could you use Meguiars UC on your windows also? Just wondering about using it for waterspots.

M04 would work better. UC is a SMAT product, that means the abrasives are SUPER microscopic in size. What works best to remove the gunk off glass, gunk being road film and any contaminants left behind by water after it evaporates is something chunky. M04 uses a MACROSCOPIC diminishing abrasive and it is the chunkiness of this safe abrasive that works to cut the gunk off the glass.

I detailed cars in Oregon for years and almost all the daily drives I detailed had water spots on the paint and on the glass and because I was predominantly a Meguiar's user back then I used what I had in my arsenal of products and one of those products was M04 Heavy Cut Cleaner and it always worked pretty well for removing water spots off glass by hand or with a rotary buffer. There's even a thread about this on MOL that goes back to 2006.


The UC will work but I see people asking this question a lot and I think the reason why is because most people equate a "compound" with grittiness and that's just not the case with SMAT products.

Will it work? Sure. You're just going to have to put some passion behind the pad.


From my article list....


The SMAT Pack - Everything you ever wanted to know about Meguiar's SMAT products...


Put a little passion behind the pad - Mike Phillips

[Mike Phillips]

I'm looking for a good polish that would help remove marring left by claying, and I will be doing this by hand. There's not alot of marring just several areas, nothing serious.

Also this is on a pearl white Nissan. This will be my first time polishing a clearcoat and need advice on products. Any help would be appreciated.

The secret to working by hand is to use products that have the ability to remove scratches out of scratch-sensitive clear coats without leaving scratches behind at the same time.

It's the "Abrasive Technology" that determines a good polish or compound from a bad polish or compound.


The Meguiar's Ultimate Compound and ScratchX are both SMAT products and work really well by hand on clear coats but it still requires some skill to polish or abrade paint by hand with the end results a nice looking finish.

I always tell people that it actually takes more skill to work by hand than it does to work by machine.



Here are some articles on the topic of hand polishing from my article list. Check out the 2nd, 3rd and 4th articles in the list below and the rest if you're interested.



Polishing Paint by Hand

Foam Applicator Pads at Autogeek.net

Priming your pad when working by hand

Removing Scratches By Hand

How to use a hand applied abrasive polish or paint cleaner by hand

How To Remove Paint Transfer

How to clay, clean and wax paint by hand with Pinnacle Paintwork Cleansing Lotion and Pinnacle Signature Series II Carnauba Paste Wax

1-Step versus 3-Step Process by Hand

Man versus Machine

[Mike Phillips]

Just realized we just brought in this brand new product for removing water spots off glass... Mother's makes great products, I'm confident before they launched this product they filed tested it and proved it would perform as advertised.

Mothers California Gold Water Spot Remover for Glass