help removing swirls from white paint

[DieselClown]

Hey all...I've been detailing my own cars and those of friends for over 10 years (but only in the past 3 have I really experimented with a lot of "better" products). Anyhow...I'd never owned a white car before this and for some reason, I just CANNOT seem to get rid of some horrible swirling all over the paint. There was a period of about 5-6 months that my herniated disc afforded me the pain of watching my pride and joy go through automatic car washes-thus leaving me with most of the swirling.

What am I doing wrong?

Here's what my full detail consists of..feel free to critique!

1) Wash with Meguires Gold Class soap

2) Dry with Cobra MF towels

3) Claybar with Magic Clay and QD (usually meguires, or whatever else I have at the momet)

4) Pinnacle Advanced swirl remover w/ PC set to about 2- then gradually to a max of 4.5 with about 3-4 passes.

5) Pinnacle Polish w PC set to 2- then gradually working to 5 with about 6 passes.

6) Poorboy's XPT sealant w PS set to 2 then to max of 3, let haze for about an hour, then buff with MF towel.

7) Pinnacle liquid Souverign w PS set to 2, let haze and immediately buff off.

The paint is smooth and extremely shiny, but in certain lighting, the swirling shows, and it's actually pretty bad. What's odd is that on cars that I've worked on, black, pearl red, pearl blue, I almost always got the swirls out. I'm beginning to think that because my car is white- I'm not noticing them as much during the detail so I might skip over them. Any pointers?

 

[scottgt]

what year is the car?

 

[DieselClown]

2005 Subaru WRX. Also, I posted about this before, but for some reason, my bottle of Liquid Souverign pours out extremely thin and doesn't stay on the car's paint at all! I called autogeek just a few minutes ago and they are sending out a replacement to me asap! How can you beat that level of customer service and product backing? I'm still in awe!

 

[DieselClown]

here're a few pictures of the car, although you can't see the swirls, you can clearly see that the paint is really glossy just from the Pinnacle polish!

 

[Nica]

First of all nice vehicle..looks good.

As for the swirls, I'm not to familiar with the clear coat on that vehicle but I wonder if you have a ceramic clear coat? I wonder if you need a stronger polish? Say Menzerna (sorry I'm a big Menzerna nut now) or even Optimum both great polish....just throwing ideas at you that's all.

The other question, is when you wash do you use the two bucket method? Do they have gritguard? I never washed my vehicles with the two bucket method ever and when I switched to the two bucket method it was incredable the difference oh and same goes for the grit guard. I'm assuming you use the two bucket method but just thought I'd ask.

It can be frustrating to try to remove swirls/scratches and not being able to remove swirls/scratches drives me bonkers.

Well like I said just tosing you some ideas/suggestions..nopefully they will help a little.

By the way in case you are new to AG....WELCOME TO AutoGeek.

 

[Sevenrd]

I have such a tough time detailing white cars simply because it is so difficult to spot the swirls. What I do is position the halogen at different angles until the swirls are revealed the best they can be. It just takes some trial and error repositioning the light.

 

[DieselClown]

Nica and Sevenrd, thanks for the suggestions...they're much appreciated! I've been a lurker of AG but registered officially last December. It's funny because we all hear stories of how difficult darker cars are to detail, but all of my darker colored cars have always seemed better maintained compared to my suby. It's a combination of a few things, and besides the fact that white cars are less prone to shine, I think not being able to 1) see the wax, polish actually going onto the car, and 2) having difficulty seeing the actual swirls makes it more time consuming and more difficult to achieve better results. I have to say though that the pinnacle polish really makes my car "glow" at night. I actually never used the two bucket method and only recently bought a grit guard. For regular maintenance, I use DG show and shine (I'm anal about this stuff, and constantly spray and wipe my car down every other day). I'm beginning to think that all this wiping is what's causing the swirling as well. Do you think guys think I need something like s100 on top of the liquid souvereign? Also, how do you really tell if a polish has "broken" down correctly on a white car? I usually run it over about 6 passes and just move on. are these things correct for each stage (speed, number of passes)?