Menzerna Powerlock Prep

[Paul A.]

My short answer to your question is, in MY opinion, yes, its ok to just lay down some winter protection.

Do the baggie test and see if it needs to be clayed. If it does, clay it. I ALWAYS machine polish after clay but in your case and seeing as you're doing it by hand just clay (if it needs it) and lay down some Powerlock.

You can always catch up with machining it in the Spring.

[5js]

Polished and sealed my boy front end (hood and fenders) yesterday. Note, his paint does have many defects that I knew we wouldn't be able to take - but he wanted to get rid of the fine scratches. This was a 20" x 20" test we did first to (a) practice and (b) test/prove out method.

We started with a car wash then dried the car. Next we clayed the front end. Now we had the surface ready to polish. The first product was Menzerna HCC400 using an Orange Lake Country Pad, followed by Menzerna SF3500 using a White Lake County Pad, and finally the Menzerna Powerlock applied with a Black Lake Country Pad.

He was quite happy with end result. After we "proved our process" we did the entire front end. Ran out of time - but we will finish the rest at opportunity.

I did learn a few things - watch the heat of the pad. We broke the hood into 6 sections. We did 5 section passes for each polish cleaning on-the-fly after each pass. However, when cleaning on-the-fly the orange pad "puffed" up in the middle and seemed to separate from the backer. I stopped and it seemed to reseal onto the backer.

Also, seemed to produce a fair amount of dust. I had "primed" the pad and put an "X" of product onto the pad - not sure if I over applied. (For the sealant I only used three pea sized drops and "KISSED" the hood in multiple spots before working the product in).

Lastly - I have watched many videos on this site of polishing a flat surface (hood) but would like to hear hints on working areas that have bends and concave areas (such as found in the fenders).

[SWETM]

Nice save on your sons car.

Proberly it's the high amount of HC400 you used often it's enough to apply 5-6 pea sized drops on the first section. Then after you clean the pad 4-5 drops on the next section. Also on the first polishing step with a compound you abrade off more paint and also cleans old dead paint aka oxidized paint off and to ad to that some dirt build up that the decon didn't get off. So it's more important to have enough of pads when you polishing the first step than the followed step. And when you get the pad saturated with all this the temperature gets a lot higher and dries out in the pad and gets to fling out dust from it. Sometimes though it's needed to be be useing a little higher amount of compound if you have a very neglected paint or it soaks up and gets too dry when you polishing with it. Not much to do than switch to a fresh pad or you offering the pad you are useing to not be used anymore. With a more saturated pad you have less cut than you often gets from it. So you save much to have enough of pads when you polishing even if it's costly when you starting out.

I like how Kevin Brown sees on how to polishing on curves and edges and such. Here on the AMMO NYC he describe it some of it.

YouTube

[5js]

Nice save on your sons car.

Proberly it's the high amount of HC400 you used often it's enough to apply 5-6 pea sized drops on the first section. Then after you clean the pad 4-5 drops on the next section. Also on the first polishing step with a compound you abrade off more paint and also cleans old dead paint aka oxidized paint off and to ad to that some dirt build up that the decon didn't get off. So it's more important to have enough of pads when you polishing the first step than the followed step. And when you get the pad saturated with all this the temperature gets a lot higher and dries out in the pad and gets to fling out dust from it. Sometimes though it's needed to be be useing a little higher amount of compound if you have a very neglected paint or it soaks up and gets too dry when you polishing with it. Not much to do than switch to a fresh pad or you offering the pad you are useing to not be used anymore. With a more saturated pad you have less cut than you often gets from it. So you save much to have enough of pads when you polishing even if it's costly when you starting out.

YouTube

I think you are correct with both. I likely was using way too much product and there was an awful lot of oxidized paint to get through. I’m going to try to use a pad conditioner to prep the pad in the future, and use less product. Hoping with the pad conditioner the polish won't fill the pad so much. I am also going to order more pads. I have used two of the orange pads with the HCC400 on the hood and front fenders, which should have been adequate if I had used less product.

I like how Kevin Brown sees on how to polishing on curves and edges and such. Here on the AMMO NYC he describe it some of it.

YouTube

Thanks – that makes sense. I haven’t started my new RAV4 but I have looked it over and it has a lot of different lines. Wasn’t sure how I was going to approach it, but the video certainly gave me some ideas.