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I have a few of these surface scratches on my gas tank of my motorcycle. So far I have tried Meguir's Ultimate Compound with a microfiber towel by hand with no success. The scratches do not catch with a fingernail. I have a neighbor with a Porter Cable DA polisher that I can borrow to try if needed. Is there a better product that would be recommended? I read the "how to remove scratches" faq but wondering if I need to get into wet sanding?
TIA
How deep are those? Can you feel with a nail? Is that Yamaha paint? I just did a 2020 R1 and without extensive sanding, the best I was gonna get was 90% eliminated (as in, 90% of angles; hidden). The Yamaha clear is real soft...the sratches almost feel like compressions, not material scraped out. I used a paint gauge to benchmark the thickness before starting and was careful not to take too much off. I'll try and upload some pics, but I did a combination of 3000, 5000, compound, polish, coating. The wet sanding was easy with the 3m discs and doing it by hand. I used Rupes compound and polish along with my (newly) purchase iBrid. I was looking for something to test it on. It'd be just as easy to do it by hand too, but with the area you're looking at, I'd use a conventional buff unit. That's a large area which should make it easier. I'll upload pics shortly (I hope).
This is probably gonna take a lot of work. It may even need a rotary , sanding and a wool pad, if you’ve never done this before, don’t even bother, take the tank off and take it to a body shop. They’ll get them out for 100 bucks or so
From what I can see in the pics, I think most of those blemishes can be removed by hand with Meguiar's Ultimate Compound. A couple look deep enough that you won't get them 100% without sanding first. Before sanding though, you need to assess the risk.
I see no need for a rotary, or any other machine polisher, to remove the majority of those blemishes 100%, and to do so completely by hand. Even if you opt for wet-sanding first, the sanding scratches are easily removed by hand considering they are such small areas.
My suspicion is that you just haven't been aggressive enough with your hand polishing attempt. I've found that to be the case for many hobbyists and beginners.
Get rid of the microfiber towel for your hand polishing and use a more coarse cotton terry towel. Then put some real elbow grease into your initial polishing, lightening up as you finish. The number of hand strokes necessary will likely be in the hundreds, not the tens. This is where beginners tend to expects results too quickly and give up thinking that what they're doing isn't working... It just takes more effort than those without a ton of experience will ever realize.