First attempt at Polishing my 2006 Evo

[captainsquirts]

So my 2006 Lancer Evolution never has been polished. First washed and clayed with Nanoskin. I attempted the front doors(didn't have enough time to do whole car) with 3 sets with 4-5 passes. Product I used was HD Adapt with Buff and Shine Orange pad for first two passes and White pad for last pass on HF DA Polisher. I applied HD Poxy as well after. Reason why I went with 3 sets was because I still had some imperfections after the first set and the second just gave it that extra oomph to remove a little more. Then I accidentally turned off the polisher while it was off the car when it had a lot of product on it due to car alarm going off(doh) which caused compound to fly all over the door... So I used a white pad with Adapt to remove the residue(probably did a fine cut as well?).

Here are some shots of the other panels with swirls(didn't really get shots of the panels I worked on)


Here are a couple shots after the polishing(still have some deeper scratches and rock chip marks).

This one has like these weird circles on the inside right side of the light.

One with a couple of deeper scratches.


Whats the best way to tackle around the door jamb? Having a hard time at the top of em so I didn't get to hit them well, just by hand which didn't do to well.


People that have used adapt. When do you know when the compound is broken down? I read about flashing but I dunno, didn't really understand it. Also I had issues with orange being hard to remove but I asked and peeps were saying using to much compound and maybe speed was to high(was running 6k). So I dropped it down to 5k and only did 3 pea drops. It wipes off pretty well(unless the sun is shining on it then I have to use AOI cleaner). But I was having issues here and there with the white pad. Whenever I would try to wipe off it was harder than the orange. I was following same steps as my orange so not sure why wiping the residue when running the white pad was harder? Any thoughts on that? My guess is maybe I have to do more passes?

Anywho hopefully in the next couple of weeks I can have the whole car done. Holy smokes polishing takes a long time, props to everyone that does this all the way. But overall lots of swirls are gone but still have some deeper scratches and things here and there which I don't think cutting would fix.

tl;dr: First time polishing. Having hard time hitting above door jamb, would like some tips on hitting that with DA polisher. Also residue left over using white pad is harder to remove? Not sure why.

Oh here's picture of car(prior to polishing).