Soft paint noob-need more abrasion?

You will indeed need more abrasion to remove or reduce the water etchings on your Subaru. I think a lot of people exaggerate about how soft Subaru paint is. On the softer side, sure...I've done lots of Subarus over the years and not one of them had incredibly soft clear.

This 93 Mazda Miata with single stage black paint had incredibly soft paint to work with. Take a look at this thread, read through it to see how aggressive I had to get to produce stellar results. This should give you some idea of how overly gentle you've been with your Subie. You'll need to take it up a few notches.

http://www.autogeekonline.net/forum...a-miata-paint-correction-megs-vs-mothers.html

Detailed By Lawrence has a couple of threads on black subies.
This one has water spots and Menzerna.

http://www.autogeekonline.net/forum...arl-subaru-impreza-wrx-detailed-lawrence.html

I'm not much of a Menzerna guy so I'm not sure of the numbers but something between a polish and a compound, but leaning toward a compound. A heavier polish if you will, would be the next step. Maybe it's called SIP..?.. Super Intensive Polish... Hopefully some Menzerna guys will chime in.

You can also step up in pad aggression too however, looking at the photo I doubt SF4000 is going to be abrasive enough.

Meguiar's Ultimate Compound would work well for a few cutting passes on a white polish pad for starters. If need be you could either step up to an orange light cutting pad, or if the white pad works, step back to SF4000 with a finishing pad. Ultimate Compound is pretty mild for a compound and is easy to use for beginners.

From my experience with Subaru's they are pretty soft. Not necessarily "the softest" paint ever, but softer than most. Regardless of which compound I use, I typically will use it in a polishing pad to help with how the product finishes. I have had great results with using FG 400, PF2500 with polishing pads on subies that had neglected paint.
To answer your question about removing the water mark etching, Yes I'd suggest stepping up your product aggressiveness. Just as Dave suggested, you could just grab some Megs UC and give that a shot on a polishing pad and it might surprise you.

Why not use the Menzerna you already have and go to an orange pad? Give it a shot and check the results.

I have indeed done a few Subaru's and in my experience, the paint is rather soft.... admittedly most of my work is done on harder VW and Audi type paint so perhaps my 'scale' is somewhat biased, but I still would classify their paint as soft.... that being said, it is all really relative isn't it...?

Anyway, being that I always try and use the least aggressive method first, SF4000 has pretty much been all that I have needed to rectify the paint on the Subarus I have done....I haven't ventured into more aggressive polishes with them, as I haven't needed to.

Water spots that have etched deeper into the paint will inevitably need something more aggressive though and my advice would be to look at (if you want to stay with Menzerna products).... look at something like PF2500 which offers a bit more cut than SF4000..... only if that is not working, would I step it up to something like FG400 (and you will then need to follow up with SF4000 to remove any marring which FG400 will inevitably cause on the softer paint).

Hope this helps a little....

I'm with Lawrence on the PF2500 which is by far my favorite go to. Test spot you paint, matching it with a soft pad to be less aggressive or go all the way to a FlashPad for more aggressive. If you don't have success with it then you obviously need to step up to a full fledged compound, but be prepared for a 2 step process to avoid DA haze/micro-marring (You can see examples of that in both my last Show and Shine)

I will be posting another Show and Shine next week in which I paired the PF2500 with a FlashPad..... but you may be done with your car by then

Clifford said:

Ordered a orange pad. Going to do the rest of the car with that for now. If it doesn't get out the spots I'll get a new cutting compound for a few months down the road. It's my first time doing it so Id like to take my time with it. Thanks for all the great suggestions!

Click to expand...

Nothing wrong with that plan.

A few thoughts I had...

If you do in fact have incredibly soft clear... You'll probably notice a significant amount of pad marring in the first few sections you work with your new orange pad. As the new pad begins to break in and soften up a little as you work with it, you could see this potential marring lessen as you go.

No cause for alarm if this does happen, simply switch back to your white pad and run a few passes to clean up the pad marring if there is any. If there isn't any marring present, then your clear isn't likely as soft as some have experienced with their Subarus.

Either way, I hope you'll post back to this thread your findings after doing your next round of polishing.