Marring or Holograms? What to do? How to prevent?

[Billy Baldone]

A polishing step should clean that up. What polish do young
Have on hand?

[custmsprty]

No. That's just a pick I found online. The ones I did were way less.

I'd like to see the ones you did, can you post some pics?

[WRAPT C5Z06]

You cannot instill holograms with a DA. True holograms are left from a rotary. DA's leave marring, which can look similar to holograms. In any case, sounds like you marred the paint. Follow up with a finer pad and polish.

[cardaddy]

I'd like to see the ones you did, can you post some pics?

Yeah ME TOO!

No. That's just a pick I found online. The ones I did were way less.

All I can say is your uncle is ONE TRUSTING MAN!

To risk black paint to someone that hasn't done it before (paint correction), and doesn't know marring, the cause, buffer trails, the cause, holograms, the cause, DA-HAZE, the cause, and on a BLACK MERCEDES S500. WOW! The good part is Mercedes paint is usually leaning toward the hard side. Although... I'm thinking you might not know hard from soft paint either (at this point of your very early buffing experience).

The BAD part is it's a black car, it's a Mercedes, and it's not a cheap one at that. Cheap Mercedes...that's an oxymoron isn't it?

My suggestion would be to get Mike Phillips books. Read them, read them again, then read them the third time and highlight, markup, make notes of everything, EVERY SINGLE THING that is of interest. Use Post-It Notes, sticky pages, anything. Then go and watch the videos that Mike, (and others) have up. Actually, the electronic version of Mike's book(s) have live links throughout, which will be a great reference.

Still need photos of what you did.
I'm thinking it's more likely DA-Haze/micro-marring/tick's/etc.

Did you do your TEST SPOTS?
Did you try more than one pad?
More than one compound?
Go by the best thing ever told to anyone doing paint correction and use the least aggressive method ?

And this one is CRITICAL.....
Did you clean that microfiber pad with air? Lot's of air, and often.
Did you try and do the ENTIRE THING with a SINGLE PAD?


More importantly.... did you practice on your OWN vehicle first?
I'd never EVER suggest someone that hasn't put in dozens of hours on their own vehicles to go practice on someone else's. Especially if they've never done any paint correction before, and more importantly on a black Mercedes S500.

Hopefully it's not to the point where you can't fix it.
Depending on the speed you used, and compound along the way.... you may have one heck of a long week ahead of ya'.