Audi A8 as my first paint correction patient :)

jonohio

jonohio

New member
Joined
Apr 19, 2015
Messages
6
Reaction score
0
Hi Mike,

After using your products for years I finally watched your videos, bought your book and took my first try at paint correction.

Overall i'm quite happy with the results on the removal of swirls and surface scratches on my A8, but i'm fighting what looks like holograms from the DA.

I went to M205 polishing directly after fairly hard compounding with M105 and extra cut MF pads. I'm thinking I may have let the DA orbit too quickly.

I'm thinking I may need to go back at it with the M105 and regular cut pad for a second pass to see if that removes the holograms, but i really think these were induced when I polished, NOT compounded.

With hard paint i'm unsure how much pressure or speed to use in the process. It seems like I don't get any results without firmer pressure and higher DA speeds.

Maybe I should have gone to wet sanding first.....perhaps it would have shaved some of the 40+ hours I have into the project (much of which was spent using different compounds and pad combinations). In the end I settled on M105/M205 and Meguires microfiber pads.

Here are a couple videos to depict the situation:

YouTube
YouTube


Recommendations on where I go from here?

 
Those do not look to be halograms, but you might have overheated with too much pressure or dirty pads. Never do any wet sanding on factory paint is my suggestion for most general purposes. You can only do the two step process ONCE before you are going into the danger zone of being too thin on clear coat UV protection. Try some jeweling polish on those spots lightly to see IF on the surface or a lower surface defect. Otherwise it looks great on your first jump into the process.
 
Thank you for the input! Did you watch the video or look at the pic?

Most parts of the car have 4.5-5.5 mils on my thickness gauge so I have some to work with. The jambs have 3 mils.

I thought burn marks were fairly stationary? These marks move with the light, like a flashlight refracting on water.
 
Looked at the first video and the photo. Marks do not move, you light moves and reflections move but not the paint.

Your clear coat is less than the thickness of a stick-it note, that reading you quote is for all paint above the metal! Your paint (color layer) sit beneath the clear coat has has no shine, all of that comes with the clear coat. Perhaps Mike Phillips will be back in later this week and can look at the picture and tell you more. Your marks do not look like something from a rotary and DA with both oscillation and rotation should finish down nicely with the M205.

Others will review and give you opinion and experience with that Audi paint! The key is to keep the DA spinning without too much speed and avoid heat.

Kirby
 
You didnt mention which pad was used with M205 on the finishing step... It it were a black or red pad that is too soft and will not allow M205 to remove the hazing from M105.

Another thing, I would imagine you have good quality microfiber towels and not the ones from Walmart/Costco.

In the end of the post you mentioned M205 and microfiber pads. Thats too aggressive and looks like it marred the paint. I have a jet black BMW and a mild compound on a polishing pad will micro marr the paint. You should finish up on M205 and a polishing pad.
 
Thomkirby said:
Looked at the first video and the photo. Marks do not move, you light moves and reflections move but not the paint.

Your clear coat is less than the thickness of a stick-it note, that reading you quote is for all paint above the metal! Your paint (color layer) sit beneath the clear coat has has no shine, all of that comes with the clear coat. Perhaps Mike Phillips will be back in later this week and can look at the picture and tell you more. Your marks do not look like something from a rotary and DA with both oscillation and rotation should finish down nicely with the M205.

Others will review and give you opinion and experience with that Audi paint! The key is to keep the DA spinning without too much speed and avoid heat.

Kirby
Click to expand...

What's a good speed to generally keep in mind? 2 revs per second? I did put a big black sharpie mark on my backing plate so I can gauge the rotation speed.
 
Mike@DedicatedPerfection said:
You didnt mention which pad was used with M205 on the finishing step... It it were a black or red pad that is too soft and will not allow M205 to remove the hazing from M105.

Another thing, I would imagine you have good quality microfiber towels and not the ones from Walmart/Costco.

In the end of the post you mentioned M205 and microfiber pads. Thats too aggressive and looks like it marred the paint. I have a jet black BMW and a mild compound on a polishing pad will micro marr the paint. You should finish up on M205 and a polishing pad.
Click to expand...

Hi Mike,

I was using the meguires microfiber finishing pad with m205. I just received some Lake Country orange pads and Menzurna 3800 to try as well. I'll give the lake country pads a try with m205 next.

The funny thing is that I needed to drive the car and didn't want to do so without some kind of protection in the rain. So I did a quick adams detail spray on it yesterday and now those surface hologram things are basically gone or rather masked. But I still need to deal with the micromaring before applying CSL.
 
You didn't mentioned which pads you used with the M205. It's micro marring that's pretty bad in some places. One thing in the beginning that can be a little tricky. Is when you have done a cutting step and doing the polishing step. It can be little hard to see where you have been polishing your sections. So it may be since you don't have it uniform over the paint that you have missed polishing the spots. I sometimes need to be useing the inspection light to see where I have polished or not LOL. Especially when you can get a very good finish even from the compounding step these days.

The other thing would be that you used a too aggressive pad. Or that you didn't clean or used enough of polishing pads between the sections you polished the amount of pads to not get them saturated with old polish residue. How many passes per section did you do with the M205? If to few you may not got the micro marring corrected from the M105. And if to many you can get micro marring from that too.

Is their any chance of these scratches was on the paint before you started to compounding it? So when you did the polishing you where not able to correct them.

With a PC polisher you want it to spinning as fast as possible. When you put to much of pressure on it it bogs down to much and get it to not correct that much and it gets very time consuming to polishing. Most use it on the 5-6 speed setting on the polisher of these kind of polisher and with a little pressure they don't bogs down to much. 2 revs per second is very low spinning on a free spinning DA polisher. You want to have it so you don't even see the amount of revs it does if that makes sense. So way less pressure on the polisher and let it spinn and make for a great polishing.

On harder paints like the Audis has mostly. You may get a faster results with useing something like the Menzerna or Sonax or 3D ACA line of polishes or the pbmg own brands Blackfire and Pinnacle and Wolfgang polishes. They use the diminishing abrasives in them that's a little sharper abrasives for being better suited for the harder paints. Also in general as you noticed you need to be useing a more aggressive pad than useally. So if you are going to be doing more compounding on other vehicals. You would benefit from useing a wool cutting pad designed to be used with a DA polisher. Like the Lake Country low lint wool cutting pad or the purple foamed wool cutting pad or Buff & Shine Uro-Wool pads or Sonax Wool Pad for DA polishers. Combo that with the Menzerna SHC300 or HC400 compounds or Sonax Cutmax or 3D ACA 500 X-tra Cut Compound. And you reduce the cutting step time that you are haveing now. Finishing with a foam medium cut polishing pad or light polishing pad. With Menzerna SF3500 or Sonax Perfect Finish or EX 04-06 or 3D ACA 520 Finishing Polish. Think that the 3D ACA line of polishes uses non diminishing abrasives in them.

/ Tony
 
This may be way off, but it kind of looks almost like you didn't get all of the product off. Did you do a dedicated panel wipe after you polished?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top