Mike Phillips
Active member
- Dec 5, 2022
- 51,004
- 7
How to avoid haze and scratching when working on soft paint?
Anytime I get questions via e-mail, a PM or a FB message I prefer to invest my typing time where
A: It's easier for me to share links, pictures and videos.
B: More people can read and thus benefit from the information. (no just one set of eyeballs
So I get an e-mail asking,
Hi Mike, I'm so sorry to bother you as I know you'd be extremely busy and probably have hundreds of messages but I am at wits end with a job I've got.
A lot of searching keeps coming back to your advice.
I seem to have a car with really soft paint. Soft to the point that even wiping away residue can cause marking. I can't refine the finish to an acceptable level and no matter what I've tried I'm left with haze.
I've tried different pads, speeds and products. I'm out of my mind with this one. I've tried scholl s30 on different pads, menzerna fg500 (initial correction) and po85rd even some water polishing with no avail.
Would you have any advice mate?
Here's my answer...
The Cheater Technique
Sometimes you need to cheat. Here's how... use a high quality cleaner/wax also called an AIO.
After any and all correction and polishing work - finish out with a quality cleaner/wax that dries and apply a thin coat using a simple 8mm orbital polisher with a soft foam waxing pad on speed setting that maintains pad rotation but doesn't go too much over that. Also choose a one-step cleaner/wax that leaves a slick/slippery finish.
Why?
A quality cleaner/wax uses great abrasive technology so you have that working for you to perfect the paint after the last polishing step or at least to maintain the results created by the last polishing step.
Wax is a type of lubricant, a bad analogy would be Surfboard Wax or Snow Ski Wax, or how as a kid your mom would give you a piece of wax paper and you would rub this over the steel slide at the park and then when you went down the slide you would go 100 miles per hour.
The dried THIN layer of wax on the paint lubricates the process as you wipe it off. The wax can also fill any marring before and during wipe-off, that's the cheating aspect.
The results are a flawless finish assuming you do everything correctly.
Here's a real-world example of when I cheated to reach perfection.
Audi Soft Paint - Making Generalizations about Hardness and Softness
In the above article, I quote myself after a long-time forum world guy by the name of Accumulator asked me a question, here is my reply, note the portion I'm going to code in BLUE text.
My reply
Factory paint, I don't remember the make and year, I do remember spending a lot of time dialing in a system for the owner to use to achieve a flawless finish, his expectations are very high and the finish on his car was actually very, very nice, but not perfect.
We ended up finding the combination of M09 with a W-9006 finishing pad on a rotary buffer followed by M66 on the G100 with a finishing pad to produce optimum results.
End of reply
The paint was so soft that wiping it left scratches. I thought about it... and then chose to apply a one-step cleaner/wax by machine, that's what Meguiar's M66 is - a one-step cleaner/wax.
It worked. We were able to wipe off the wax and leave a perfect finish.
Now days I would choose a different cleaner/wax. Nothing wrong with M66 but it only comes in gallons and I think there are better options that wipe off easier.
Any of the above are light in cleaning (you don't need an aggressive cleaner/wax for this type of process), and can be left to dry to a haze. A thin application wipes-off easy and leaves a hard bright shine.
The above is off the top of my head but I'm sure there are other great light cutting one-step cleaner/waxes. I don't think I would use 3D HD Speed even though I really like this product or McKee's Jewelling wax as they tend to be very wet products that don't tend to dry and wipe off super easy.
Anyone that's used Meguiar's M20 Polymer Sealant knows what I'm talking about when I say IT WIPES OFF EASY.
Anyway, that's what I would do... I'd cheat. Then to maintain the paint I'd keep on using the same product. Always wash careful and when needed, buzz around the car using the product of choice, let it dry, wipe it off and then move forward with life.
Hope that helps...
Anytime I get questions via e-mail, a PM or a FB message I prefer to invest my typing time where
A: It's easier for me to share links, pictures and videos.
B: More people can read and thus benefit from the information. (no just one set of eyeballs
So I get an e-mail asking,
Hi Mike, I'm so sorry to bother you as I know you'd be extremely busy and probably have hundreds of messages but I am at wits end with a job I've got.
A lot of searching keeps coming back to your advice.
I seem to have a car with really soft paint. Soft to the point that even wiping away residue can cause marking. I can't refine the finish to an acceptable level and no matter what I've tried I'm left with haze.
I've tried different pads, speeds and products. I'm out of my mind with this one. I've tried scholl s30 on different pads, menzerna fg500 (initial correction) and po85rd even some water polishing with no avail.
Would you have any advice mate?
Here's my answer...
The Cheater Technique
Sometimes you need to cheat. Here's how... use a high quality cleaner/wax also called an AIO.
After any and all correction and polishing work - finish out with a quality cleaner/wax that dries and apply a thin coat using a simple 8mm orbital polisher with a soft foam waxing pad on speed setting that maintains pad rotation but doesn't go too much over that. Also choose a one-step cleaner/wax that leaves a slick/slippery finish.
Why?
A quality cleaner/wax uses great abrasive technology so you have that working for you to perfect the paint after the last polishing step or at least to maintain the results created by the last polishing step.
Wax is a type of lubricant, a bad analogy would be Surfboard Wax or Snow Ski Wax, or how as a kid your mom would give you a piece of wax paper and you would rub this over the steel slide at the park and then when you went down the slide you would go 100 miles per hour.
The dried THIN layer of wax on the paint lubricates the process as you wipe it off. The wax can also fill any marring before and during wipe-off, that's the cheating aspect.
The results are a flawless finish assuming you do everything correctly.
Here's a real-world example of when I cheated to reach perfection.
Audi Soft Paint - Making Generalizations about Hardness and Softness
In the above article, I quote myself after a long-time forum world guy by the name of Accumulator asked me a question, here is my reply, note the portion I'm going to code in BLUE text.
My reply
Factory paint, I don't remember the make and year, I do remember spending a lot of time dialing in a system for the owner to use to achieve a flawless finish, his expectations are very high and the finish on his car was actually very, very nice, but not perfect.
We ended up finding the combination of M09 with a W-9006 finishing pad on a rotary buffer followed by M66 on the G100 with a finishing pad to produce optimum results.
End of reply
The paint was so soft that wiping it left scratches. I thought about it... and then chose to apply a one-step cleaner/wax by machine, that's what Meguiar's M66 is - a one-step cleaner/wax.
It worked. We were able to wipe off the wax and leave a perfect finish.
Now days I would choose a different cleaner/wax. Nothing wrong with M66 but it only comes in gallons and I think there are better options that wipe off easier.
- McKee's 360
- SONAX Paint Cleaner - This is actually a LIGHT one-step cleaner/wax and not an actual "paint cleaner".
- Meguiar's M20 Polymer Sealant
Any of the above are light in cleaning (you don't need an aggressive cleaner/wax for this type of process), and can be left to dry to a haze. A thin application wipes-off easy and leaves a hard bright shine.
The above is off the top of my head but I'm sure there are other great light cutting one-step cleaner/waxes. I don't think I would use 3D HD Speed even though I really like this product or McKee's Jewelling wax as they tend to be very wet products that don't tend to dry and wipe off super easy.
Anyone that's used Meguiar's M20 Polymer Sealant knows what I'm talking about when I say IT WIPES OFF EASY.
Anyway, that's what I would do... I'd cheat. Then to maintain the paint I'd keep on using the same product. Always wash careful and when needed, buzz around the car using the product of choice, let it dry, wipe it off and then move forward with life.
Hope that helps...
