First shot at fixing the black Vette

[Y2KSVT]

Do you have access to the car? I know, it's your car, but I want to make sure it isn't in storage, 2 hours away or something. If you do, it wouldn't hurt to pick up a bottle of the Ultimate Compound and do a quick test spot. You won't get as much cut out of the Ultimate Compound as you would M105, but with soft clear, you may not need the cut of M105. Also, Ultimate Compound can be worked longer than M105, so it may take an extra couple of passes, but you should still get the same results. On the same shelf, you should find Meguiar's Ultimate Polish, which I understand to be close in the level of cut to M205. Now, M205 is amazing stuff, so I can't say I'd expect Ultimate Polish to compare to it, 100%. Either way, it's another $10 product, so if nothing else, you're out $20 and an hour of your time in going to buy it and do a test spot. If that doesn't work, you could order the M105. Personally, I think the Ultimate Compound will accomplish your goal, albeit with another pass or two compared to M105. But, M105 can be a little tough to work with, although, like Dave said, is still working even when you think the product is spent.

EDIT: Yes, use the Ultimate Compound with the same orange cutting pad. Follow that up with a finer polish with a white pad if you have one and you'll have some incredible results.

[Hoytman]

Here's something to take a look at for comparison.

http://www.autogeekonline.net/forum/...prise-you.html

http://www.autogeekonline.net/forum/...-products.html

One thing to note about the aggressive order photo's that Mr. Phillips supplied in the above links is that Meguiar's Ultimate Polish is not listed. I'm not sure why it's not listed and to be honest I'm not sure where Meg's UP would fall in the line-up. I can only assume it would fall to the right of M205, which would make it even less aggressive than M205. Again, that's just a best guess. As Y2KSVT suggested the difference may hardly be negligable between the two products.

Also, note that M95 mentioned in those articles is for use with a rotary. Just thought I'd mention that in case you skip reading the above links. You already have products that will work on a rotary, so you won't need M95.

[J S Machine]

Great info guys...Thanks. Just had a conversation with Hoytman about the M105 vs Ultimate compound. I am going to hit the same stores I mentioned tonight and see if I can find the Ultimate compound. I have an Advance near me as well, so I will check them out. They could have the M105..but they will probably have the Ultimate compound for sure. I'm coming home with one of them and will give it a shot.

Mark, the car is sitting in my driveway. I just haven't had a chance to work on it since monday afternoon because of Halloween activities with the family. More of that tonight, so it will definitely be tomorrow before I can mess with it.

[wheelman302]

for scratches that need to be sanded like that and you want to do it with a d/a try using ether 3m trizak 2000,3000, or 4000 depending on how deep they are. Marka form sand pads work great also. you can get them at any ppg auto paint supply house.3M at any Oreily's or Dupont place.

[Hoytman]

These guys have given you great advice John. I would read through this thread several times to digest the information.

I've taken the time to send you a pm with a list of products for sanding if you should decide to go that far. I think you're going to be surprised with the results you get after following the advice in this thread. You may not need to do any sanding and that is always a good thing.

[J S Machine]

Local Autozone had the Ultimate compound so I picked that up. I'll give that a shot tonight. If that doesn't appear to be working, I'll drop what I'm doing and head over to Advance in the next town over, and see if they have the 105. If not, I'll order it.

Let's hope the Ultimate compound will do some good

[tuscarora dave]

Did you look in the auto body section at the Advance Auto for the 105? They don't stock it in the detailing supply section. UC should work fine though.

[J S Machine]

Did you look in the auto body section at the Advance Auto for the 105? They don't stock it in the detailing supply section. UC should work fine though.

I have not been to Advance yet. In my previous post, I stated that I had found and picked up the Ultimate compound, and that I am going to try it this afternoon.

If the Ultimate compound doesn't work, I'll drop what I'm doing and head over to Advance tonight (it's about 20 minutes away in the next town) and see if they have the 105. In the event they don't, I guess I will have to order it.

[J S Machine]

Ok, time for an update. Yesterday, as promised, I tried the Ultimate compound. It worked out alot better than the TSR, but it still was proving to be a little tame for the small scratches.

Here are some shots of the work. I used a quarter in one of them after reading the thread Mike has about how to take pictures. That was good advice...It seemed to help alot in helping the camera focus.

This is the size of area for the test spot that I initially started with:



After some careful consideration, and given the number of defects I'm dealing with, I decided to split that in two and create a more managable size. See here:



I think I learned a lesson on this. That is: the reason Mike calls for a test area / working area to be no bigger than 20x20 is because of the fact that you will simply wear yourself out trying to maintain the uniformity, arm speed, technique, and pressure while working an area larger than that. In addition, the working time of your chemical will probably diminish, especially with more aggressive compounds. I'm just shooting from the hip here, but I think that is a big part of it.

After one step of the Ultimate compound, the scratches that are being stubborn (Let's just call them what they are from here on out - RIDS) still remianed, but I noticed feathering on some of them. This tells me that with enough passes, these RIDS will come out. Again, my fingernail will not catch on these. Matter of fact, they are so shallow it's difficult to even feel them. I cant sit and say that I actually have felt one all along. That is a good sign

Here are some of the RIDS I managed to get pics of-





Now for the results-

In this picture, to the left is the area closest to me (the smaller area I taped off above that has my whole hand in the pic) that has been worked with Ultimate compound. I made five section passes with it. To the right is the area done with wolfgang TSR. It is the other half of the intial bigger area I had taped off.



Now, at this point I stopped and decided that 105 would probably definitely be quicker. I ran to the Advance store near me and checked..no dice. I even went to the other one in that town (there are two of them), and they didn't have it either. As a last resort, I stopped by NAPA..they didn't have it. What I did find at Advance that I think will benefit this job greatly is a 3M 3000 grit Trizact pad. I can work these RIDS with this pad, and then the Ultimate compound will easily get the 3000 grit scratches out. It took care fo the 2000 grit paper scratches that I had done the other day, so the 3000 scratches will be much easier, and less abrasive on the paint.

If you look up to one of the pictures above with the RIDS, like say for instance the one with the quarter, I think you will see the remaining cobweb type swirls. I'm sure the Wolfgang TSR and polish (Wolfgang twins) will easily take care fo these. So, the plan for this afternoon is going to be like this:

For each area of the car,

1. Make five or six section passes of Ultimate compound and orange pad. This will expose the RIDS better. Work the RIDS with the 3000 grit pad, and then hit it again with about five or six more passes of Ultimate compound and orange pad.

2. Five or six passes with wolfgang TSR and orange pad (these are all Lake country flat pads)

3. Three or four passes with the Wolfgang Polish 3.0 and a white pad, PCXP speed down to 4 or so.

If I can get the roof done, and the above process works, I'll know what I need to do on the rest of the car. I may go ahead and order some 105, and just be using the Ultimate compound until then. After all, it works; it just may take a tad longer. It definitely works better than the TSR for what I'm dealing with though.

[J S Machine]

I got some more work done last night. Running out of daylight sucks. I wish I had a lighted garage of some sort; This type of work is just about impossible to do in the dark.

Again, the plan was to iron out the system in the test spot, and then move on and try to do the entire roof before dark. I got the test step done and it looked great, so I moved on to the whole roof. I didn't get good enough pictures of the test step, so I will post the other pictures I took when I started on the entire roof.

Here is a picture of the entire roof. In this picture, I have completed the testing on the part of the roof closest to me, wet sanded the light RIDS out with the 3000 grit trizact pad, and buffed again with about 5 section passes of Ultimate compound. The test section is no longer marked with tape, because at this point I had removed it and done the rest of the roof with about five section passes of Ultimate compound. I did do them in small sections, but I had chosen to do each compounding step entirely on each panel before moving to the next. I have wiped the entire panel here with IPA so I could see the true results.



After this, I took a good long hard look at each section of the roof, even the one I had already done (which was the test spot). I have basically divided it up into thirds, so there are three different sections. I found a few more small RIDS, so I sanded the small RIDS again with my trizact pad and moved across the whole roof.

Here is sanding after what I could reach from the driver's side.



And here is it finished after I had done the remaining roof area from the other side. I used a very bright light to pick the RIDS out, and simply wet sanded them until they were all gone.



The trizact pads are great. Much better than sandpaper ever was. The extra cusion in the pad makes them great for little touch up stuff like this. Again, I am simply amazed at how soft my clear is. It just doesn't seem normal for it to be as soft as it is. The RIDS were almost all very, very shallow. A couple of passes with the pad took care of most very quick. There were only a few that I had to hit several times before they disappeared.

After this sanding step was completed, I again buffed each of the thirds of the roof with about five section passes of Ultimate compund again, to clean up the rest of the paint and get the sanding hazing out. After this, the plan was to move on to a couple of section passes of TSR and then to a white pad with the Wolfgan polish, but it was just about dark. I took the little but of daylight I had left to do some inspection with my light. There was not enough daylight to do any good, so I was using my hand light. For those wondering, the light I am using is an LED helmet light that I built for riding mountian bikes at night, and it mounts on my helmet. It puts out about as much light as a car headlight, so it is more than enough to see the defects in the paint.

Looking at the roof, the Ultimate compund got about about 85% of everything out after this step, but I am still seeing a little bit of my scratches, and also just general swirling in the paint. It isn't much, but there is some there. It looks like very light cobweb swirls. In addition to that, I can still see holograms when I pull the light up and away from the surface. If I hold the light at about 2 feet from the surface and move back and forth, I can see them well. I am not sure if they were from the original hologram marks the car had or if they are something I am inducing. I was under the impression that a D/A was very unlikely to leave swirls, so I can't tell. I know there is a possibilty that the swirls induced by the hack detailers could be lower in the paint than what I am effectively working with my D/A, orange pad, and Ultimate compound.

I'm pretty confused at this point, but I will know more when I get home today. In the overhead sun, I should be able to see the whole story. One thing is apparent though, and that is even though the Ultimate compound is cutting, I obviously need something more aggressive than Ultimate compound. I think the consensus is that I can probably get all of the defects out with Ultimate compound, but I am going to have to do three times the work than what I would do if I were using M105. I'm going to do some calling around today, and try my best to locate a bottle of this stuff. If I can find it in the state, I'll likey drive to get it today or tomorrow.

I guess the number one question I have is this: Is it common to still see swirling after using Ultimate compound, and orange flat pad, and a D/A? At this point, I'm not sure if the defects are below the surface I am effectively touching, but it just seems to me that the Ultimate compound should be cleaning them up if they are near the surface. Since it is a MATS product, I'm thinking I should be seeing a near perfect finish when completed - one that will only be brought to a higher gloss once hit with the TSR and polish steps. After my first experience with the TSR, I don't think it will remove this swirling I'm seeing now if the Ultimate compound didn't get it out. .......In a nutshell, I'm beginning to wonder If I have leveled the surface enough tto get down to the defects that were originally there, which were the terrible holograms.