Harley Factor Bags - Paint Correction

I showed a friend of mine some before and after pictures of a Vivid black dyna that I did paint correction on and then opti-coated. He was quite impressed with how the bike turned out and now about 2 weeks later I have his Road King's bags at my place to see what I can do for them. They are heavily swirled, some scuffs from passenger boots, and some other odds and ends issues.

They look bad enough he was considering having them repainted but after looking at them, I think it looks worse then it really is just because it is black. Bags are marked with a build date of 2005.

But I have a couple questions before I tackle them because are many things I haven't experienced yet and these include a couple of those things:


The bags are ?fiberglass? (factory bags), any difference or things to be careful about compared to metal?

The bags have pinstripes, from what I can tell they are under the clear coat but you can feel them slightly. Should I tape over these when compounding? Would I need to worry about them when doing the final step with Final Polish and a black pad for shine?

Also, there are a couple spots on the bike side of the bags where it looks like the clear coat has been taken off. Assume it happened because they open away from the bike and you have to lift items over them to load up... Any special precautions on these spots? I don't plan on trying to do much with these area as when the lids are closed, you cannot see it.

Bump - high in the 30's today high of 62 by Tuesday!

Vivid Black. Looks great cleaned up but look at it and you scratch it. Very soft. I've heard two different stories about Harly
stripes; one story they are machine painted and another they are vinyl. Which is true I don't know. On myDeuce I can not feel
the stripes under the clearcoat.

Not getting as much correction as I would like but as bad as some of the swirls looked, they may have been deeper then a swirl.

Using Orange CCS and Tangerine Hydro Tech with Opti Compound - pads seemed about the same, but like i said, not quite enough cut or I need to crack out some new pads. Less dusting from the Hydro tech pad as they are easier to clean well.

Using Crimson Hydro Tech and White CCS with Polish II - Crimson pad was leaving hazing but the white pad is doing a great job.

Couple Pictures so far:

http://img853.imageshack.us/img853/368/picture3af.jpg
http://img269.imageshack.us/img269/5531/picture3bs.jpg
http://img857.imageshack.us/img857/7012/picture3c.jpg

http://img825.imageshack.us/img825/3953/picture5a.jpg
http://img809.imageshack.us/img809/529/picture5bp.jpg

Will get some more pictures and details up when finished...the stepped edge on the lid is quite a pain in the rear.

So as I walked past the bags off and on today, I debating how much more I was going to try to polish them...and got to wondering. Is there anyway to tell on a non-metal surface (plastic bumper, fiberglass....) how paint is left? I don't have a paint gauge even if they were metal but it got me wondering...

Overall, I think the owner is going to be quite happy, just not where I want them yet...