Need help getting light swirls on black street glide

[Bobby05]

I have a 09 vivid black street glide and the paint looks flawless until the sun hits it just right and you can see light swirls. I was wondering if i could get some advice on removing the light swirls. I have a PC orbital buffer but never really used it but to apply wax. I would think the Pc would be too big even if you used 4" pads is there any way i could do it by hand? What products do i need to purchase that would work the best in my situation?

Thanks alot

[BobbyG]

Hey Bobby,

To Autogeek Online!!

Is this the machine you have?




Or does it look like this?




It makes a difference because you can get pads as small as 3 inches for the Porter Cable 7424xp style machines....

[Bobby05]

bottom one is the one if have but i need to purchase some new pads

[rbss]

I have a 09 vivid black street glide and the paint looks flawless until the sun hits it just right and you can see light swirls. I was wondering if i could get some advice on removing the light swirls. I have a PC orbital buffer but never really used it but to apply wax. I would think the Pc would be too big even if you used 4" pads is there any way i could do it by hand? What products do i need to purchase that would work the best in my situation?

Thanks alot

I did a cobalt blue FLHX with a PC. it was in rough shape I used 4'' orange ccs pad with megs 105 then polished with a white ccs and megs 205. The bike was swirl free

[BobbyG]

bottom one is the one if have but i need to purchase some new pads

Some suggestions that will work well for you...

Backing Plate

Hydro-Tech Foam Pads

4" Pads

Griot's Pads

3M Pads & Products

[dpk20x]

I did the majority of my Dyna with a GG6 and 4" hydrotech pads. 4 Inch pads work well and you could even drop down to 3 inch pads in certain spots if you felt like it. Of course there was a few spots the machine couldn't fit in and I did the best to get those areas by hand.

My bike is Vivid black as well and the combo that I ended up using was Blackfire Gloss enhancing polish on a cyan hydrotech pad. Now this a rather odd combination, super fine polish on a cutting pad, but it worked well. I got better results with the cyan pad than I did with the soft crimson pad. I think the blackfire worked so well in my case because it almost melts into the paint and there is almost nothing left to wipe off after.

If you use the search feature on this site look up vivid black and you should get a bunch of posts by tlmitchell with a ton of good info in there. Vivid black is super soft paint and can be a nightmare to get perfect as you may soon find out

One last thing, and maybe your paint isn't nearly as bad as mine, but almost any towel I use to remove wax or polish will inflict swirls back into the paint. I'm talking about my finest, plushest towels I have. Waffle weave towels seem to be ok though. So when wiped off the Gloss enhancing polish I used a waffle weave towel that I hit with a couple sprays of quick detailer and that seemed to work out well.

Good luck

[Bobby05]

thanks for he reponse i was wondering what pad and polish i needed to use i did some research and like you said the vivid black paint is super soft

[Bobby05]

I bought some blackfire polish and used a tangerine 3" hydro tech pad and used speed 5 on my porter cable da polisher. This is my first time polishing with it and im having problem with hazing. Its like a waxing film that wont come off I tried quick detailer and wax and still looks hazy. Any help would be appreciated

[dpk20x]

Sounds like you used to much product. The few times I've used it there was almost nothing to wipe off.

Also speed 5 is way too fast when you're using 3 inch pads. I would turn that down to 3.5 or 4.

Did you happen to buy any cyan pads?

[Evan.J]

Photo would greatly help

Did you happen to see any paint transfer (black paint) onto the pad you were using?