First time using PC, couple of Qs afterward, Long (sorry)

[01SVTvert]

I just used my new PC with XMT2 on my wifes 2001 Infiniti QX4 in pearl white. I laid the hood out into four areas that I wanted to polish at a time. After a quick wash, the hood looked decent. That is, until I put on all the flourescent and the halogen in the garage on. WOW, hood was covered! in fine spiderwebs, heavy scratches and some imbedded dust in the paint.

I need to clarify that the hood was repainted at some point close to when the car was new. The color matches very well and has slightly more orange peel than the factory paint has.

On with the story. I first used Mothers clay and Mothers detailing spray as a lubricant which worked well, removing quite a bit of contaminants. After claying the hood felt very smooth.
I then put a Wolfgang 5.5 inch orange light cutting pad, spritzed it with XMT pad conditioner and added a quarter sized blob of XMT 2 to the pad. XMT was worked into a section about 2 x 2 on speed 3 and then the PC was kicked to 5 and slowly moved back and forth, overlapping every path by 50%. I only ended up working this for about 2 or 3 minutes before I couldnt tell if any XMT remained so I added a couple pea sized drops and continued buffing the section. I put downward pressure enough to compress the pad about 1/2 way and slowed my passes as I "learned" the machine.
I ended up sectioning the hood into about 6 areas and when using the PC the XMT was throwing tiny particles of what looked like dried wax. I was slowing the machine to the point that I could see the semi circular mark left by the compound and each "circle" was about 1/8 of an inch away from eachother as I traveled back and forth. I began using mostly my hand that rested over the pad for both direction and pressure. My other hand mainly stabilized and barely guided the machine. The speed maybe was close to 1 inch per second or slightly slower. The hood felt really, really smooth after polishing much better than after just claying.

On my last section I cranked the PC up to 6 at the end and VOILA! hand irritating vibration disappeared and after about an extra minute on 6 the paint was reflecting a MUCH clearer reflection of the overhead light that the other panels I had done. At this point I ran out of time to use the XMT glaze so I just gave the hood a once over with the Autogeek german foam applicator and Meguiars Gold Class liquid wax which was on hand. This added some depth to the paint. Overall most of the fine spidewebbing and scratches are gone but some of the larger stuff remains. Expected as XMT2 is not going to remove bigger imperfections.

Now the questions,
Guess I did not work the paint for long enough at 2 or 3 minutes a section? Hard to tell as I could not tell if anything remained on the surface at first or if it was being dried out or absorbed into the pad.
Should I work the paint at 6 mostly or 5? 5 seemed to really vibrate matched to 6 which felt great and on the last section rellay showed a visible improvement
The "dusting" of the tiny specs, what was it and should I just continue over them as i work? I tried adding some pad lubricant at one point but couldnt tell if it helped. Did I add too much XMT? the pad was really discolored at the end but it appears to be from the XMT in the pad, not sure though.

Thanks to this forum I had bought the PC and the CCS pad special along with XMT 2 and 1 and glaze. The wifes car being white is a "tester" for my red mustang which will be next hopefully


and much appreciated.

BTW, no pics, learned my digi doesnt like closeups and every pic is blurred except for one which I will try and post shortly

[img]http://www.mustangmods.com/ims/u/2672/9284/160520.jpg[/img]

[sparkie]

Sounds like you are doing right. The more you play with the PC the better you get. As far as the dust are you saying it dose it a lot or just very little? XMT has very little dust to almost none, and it could be because the hood was painted before, I'm guessing on that.
The hood looks awesome!

[alban61]

Don't apologize for the long post. It was very informative about your process. I enjoy reading posts like that.
Love the hood reflection! How did you get that car thru the door??

[01SVTvert]

lol thanks on compliments on the pic. The hood does look good and cant wait to do the rest of the car now. Think I am going to buy some XMT 3 for the deeper swirls and scratches and some decent wax also.

As for the door, it is an optical ilusion, that is actually a 112" wide hinged door









HONEST!!!!