Hi Mike,
I'm just working on my personal dd vehicles. I have a year old f150 in fairly good shape. It does have some light swirls which is what I'm trying to get rid of s well as some light rids. The other vehicle I have is a 4runner. It also has some faint swirl remnants here and there.
I just got my gg6 a few months ago, so really am new to machine work. I have up, uc, and d151 with cs white, and hex logic orange pads. I'm thinking of getting some cs yellow pads as well, if needed. I hope this gives ya better idea of my situation
Thank you very much
It gives me a much better idea of your situation....
This is a great thread with a great topic but it could wind all over the place and nothing wrong with that but in order help you we need to cut to the chase and figure out if you're simply working on your own cars or you need a "system approach" in order to do this every day for a living.
Since these are your own cars, the big picture is this....
Wash and dry
Chemically decontaminate = Iron X if you feel so inclined it's option.
Mechanically decontaminate = Clay or Nanoskin
(Iron X and the Nanoskin steps can be done during the washing step)
After these normal steps are completed then the next step is deciding what your goal is?
Do you want a show car finish?
Or do you simply want to clean the paint up on these cars to get it respectable and then moving forward take good care of the results so you won't ever have to do a heavy correction process again.
I'm prepping for my boot camp class this weekend so I'll take the risk of assuming that you mostly want to clean up your new truck and your older 4-Runner to make them respectable, that is look darn nice.
So again... big picture is this...
You have a GG6, some pads and some products...
You don't want to take forever to do the first step which is the step that takes the longest. Start by doing a Test Spot using the Meguiar's Ultimate Compound with either a foam cutting or foam polishing pad.
My guess is you will get the best results in the least amount of time by using a foam cutting pad with the Ultimate Compound. While this is considered an aggressive combo by most since it is a COMPOUND it's about as aggressive as you want to get but it's really not that aggressive because the abrasive technology used in the UP is SUPER SAFE.
So you can remove the swirls and scratches, get the paint back to great condition and then follow this with the Ultimate Polish with a soft polishing pad and then go to wax.
KISS or Keep it Simple Simon
Don't try to spend an entire day testing all types of pads and product combos when in the real world if you want to remove the swirls and scratches and do a great job in the least amount of time you're going to want to be practical and that means the foam cutting pad and the Ultimate Compound.
On the new Ford F150 you might be able to get away with the Ultimate Compound and a polishing pad but if you're going to follow the compounding step with the dedicated polishing step the speed of doing the work faster AND more effectively with the UC outweighs any real or perceived benefit by trying to decrease the aggressiveness of the foam type.
Plus when you take into account that any foam pad becomes less aggressive as it becomes wet it really becomes even less of an issue.
Most important things...
Mark your backing plate to make sure the pad is rotating. I have an article and a video on this, simply GOOGLE
Video: Mark your backing plate mike phillips
And it will pull right up.
Next most important thing.... have plenty of pads on had for the first step. I have an article on this too, can't think of the title but you can Google something like this,
How many pads do I need to buff out my car mike phillips
Back to work...
:d