Truck paint correction by hand

[JD3020]

Back in January a friend and I bought "new" trucks on the same day, mine being a 2014 tuxedo black F-250 and his is a 2005 F-350 King Ranch. My truck had been babied by the PO and only has some light swirls, while his truck came from Texas and was obviously worked hard. It has some pretty severe swirling and deep scratches/chips throughout. So far on my truck i've hand washed it 8 times(once a week), 2 coats of Jetseal which have been wore off by long trips in the snow/salt, clayed it, and tonight applied a coat of 845. I haven't done any polishing yet as it still looks great, and i haven't felt the need to spend $$$ to polish it. While i was waxing my truck he came over and i walked him through a 2 bucket wash, which he had never heard of. Once he saw my truck with the 845 he got extremely jealous and wants me to make his truck shine.


So i'm now starting to think about how i want to attack it. I know i could clay and wax it which would work quite well, but i'd love to clean up some of the swirls. For now i'm doing all work by hand, have a long list of mods for my truck right now so a nice DA isn't in the budget for a couple months. He'll be supplying beer and we'll be working in a heated shop so it doesn't bother me to spend some time on it. And depending how well it works on his truck i may do my Jeep and F-250 as well. Are there any polishes or AIO's that will work well by hand, or would i just be wasting my time on vehicles this big? First time venturing outside of the wash and wax world so complete newb to this.


BTW this is what his truck looks, although his doesn't look nearly this good.

[VISITOR]

if you do it by hand you'll essentially be just waxing because your hands aren't going to be able to be consistent in putting pressure down to remove defects around the whole car like a machine would. a great option that isn't as expensive as the other DA's is the HF DA which can be had for under $60 especially if you use a coupon...

[dlc95]

Meguiar's White Wax has a pretty potent abrasive in it, but best results are going to be realized by machine.

Even one of those 6" orbital buffers would be better than going at it by hand.

[The Guz]

Have some Advil ready for those shoulders afterward. That's a lot of surface to do by hand.

White wax is good stuff but the limitation is going to be what visitor stated.

[Mantilgh]

Sounds like a pretty monumental task on such a large vehicle.

Here's some info from Mike on the subject.

Tools for polishing paint by hand

I think of it as like trying to cut up a fallen tree by hand vs by machine. Sure you can do it with hand tools but it's going to go a lot quicker, and be much less physical work doing it with a machine.

I'd go with Visitors recommendation for a cheaper solution. You'll still need to get a 5" backing plate and some pads too. Don't use their pads.

[JD3020]

I'm not opposed to buying a HF DA, although i would go ahead and buy a Porter Cable. But since i have 0 pads that would be another good chunk of change, ontop of buying whatever compounds or polishes i would need it adds up fast. It looks like once i buy everything to work on 2 trucks i'll be in the $2-250 range, which id rather not spend on more detail tools right now.


And i understand i won't get a perfect finish by hand, but i'd at least like to knock down some of the light scratching before i wax it. BTW i've grown up on a farm and in the construction industry so not afraid of some manual labor, doing this sort of stuff is like going to a gym for me.

[Eric@CherryOnTop]

The short answer to your question is: No.

[vobro]

I understand the budget issues and it isn't about shying away from manual labor. My take on it is you were asking to rub on a few isolated scratches then I'd say go for it but you say that it has severe swirls and scratches and I'd wait until you have the da. You're talking about working on a lot of real estate on that truck, have you considered cleaning the paint,clay then follow up with a glaze and seal it with wax?

[custmsprty]

To kind of put things into perspective for you, it took me 8-9 hours of non stop polishing to do this Chevy and that was with a Rupes 15. By hand you will never get the same results. It's all about the polish, pad and machine combo that brings out the brilliant shine.

I'd just wash it and apply some 845 to it and be done. That in itself is a multi hour job by hand.

Major oxidation before:



After machine polishing with Menzerna FG400:



The hood was trashed with bird poop:







This is what came off the paint!

[Mike Phillips]

So i'm now starting to think about how i want to attack it. I know i could clay and wax it which would work quite well, but i'd love to clean up some of the swirls.

For now i'm doing all work by hand, have a long list of mods for my truck right now so a nice DA isn't in the budget for a couple months.

Hi JD,

I saw your thread posted last night and am just now remember it to post to it.

Sure you can work by hand but like others have said, it's not going to be easy to actually "remove" swirls and scratches by hand. The reason for this is because the paints have changed.

Old school solvent-evaporation paints like single stage lacquer and enamel paints are generally speaking much softer and that's why back in the old days we, meaning you and I, could hand apply rubbing compounds and polishing compounds and remove oxidation, swirls, scratches and water spots.

Then starting in 1980 car manufacturers started the switch over to basecoat/clearcoat paint systems and the PRIMARY difference between basecoat/clearcoat and old school single stage is that basecoat/clearcoat paints tend to be much harder but still scratch very easily.

Thus it's really difficult to buff out entire vehicles by hand and try to get the type of results you can get even from the simplest of dual action polishers like the Porter Cable, Griot's Garage 6" DA or the Meguiar's MT300. These three polishers are all what I call "Entry Level" dual action polishers because they are not expensive compared to FLEX or RUPES and they are so safe and easy to use that anyone with any level of experience including ZERO EXPERIENCE can learn to use one.

I don't normally recommend the Harbor Freight DA polisher because it's not sold on the AG store and last I checked Harbor Freight doesn't have a car detailing discussion forum where their paid staff shares "education and information" on how to use their tool unlike Autogeek does.


That all said...

If you want to work by hand there's two approaches...

The two-step approach
This requires a ton of elbow grease because you're going to have to go around the truck at least twice, once to apply and work a compound and once to apply either a cleaner/wax or a finishing wax.

For this you could use Meguiar's Ultimate Compound followed by any quality cleaner/wax or a finishing wax. In most cases a compound should be followed by a less aggressive polish but today, modern compounds actually finish out like polishes. So I would test and see if the paint looks good if you apply a finishing wax over the results of the compound. If not, a QUALITY cleaner/wax because it will abrade a little, will tend to clean up any haze left by a true compound and thus the final results will be clean, shiny paint.

Note:

A cleaner/wax can include abrasive technology to actually remove a little paint and thus remove swirls and scratches.

A finishing wax also called a show car wax is NON-cleaning. This means it has no cleaners or abrasives but only offers pure protection.


The one-step approach

This also requires a ton of elbow grease because when applying a one-step cleaner/wax (and also a compound), you don't merely wipe the product over the surface and then wipe it off.

YOU WORK the product as in rub hard and rub fast and ONLY work a small section at a time.

The way you remove swirls and scratches that is defects BELOW the surface of the paint is to REMOVE A LITTLE PAINT. Thus you must PUSH the abrasives over the surface and force them to take little bites out of the paint.

You must also have some finesse as you must do this in a way that does not merely scratch and scour the paint. It can be done but it requires,

1. Skill
2. Patience
3. Time
4. Energy
5. Products that use GREAT abrasive technology
6. Quality foam or microfiber applicator pad

From my experience, and I taught hand polishing at Meguiar's corporate office for 7 years, most people don't possess the skills, patience or even muscle to properly work either a compound, polish or cleaner/wax by hand and this is key... get great results.

I can do but then I've been doing this a long time.

Try to get an answer like that that's also formatted on Facebook.


Hope that helps...