ghostwrench
New member
- Aug 17, 2019
- 14
- 0
I am a hobbyist working on my technique and acquiring products. After getting some confidence in polishing when I polished the haze off my headlights - I was quite proud of the results, I decided to try polishing paint. As I am responsible for 3 cars in my garage, 1 of which belongs to my mother in law, I decided hers would be the car I would practice on because she would never notice disappointing results.
Her car is a white 2008 Honda Civic that has been garaged its whole life but cleaning it has mostly been by her (using drive through car washes). After she returned from a road trip a few months ago, I washed her car. I use the 2 bucket method and her paint turned my wash mitt black! It was odd, her paint really didn't look that dirty. It was then that I taped off half the hood of her car, clayed and polished it using a PC DA polisher with a white pad and an orange pad with Meguire's Ultimate Polish that I've had for years.
The result was surprising. The half of the hood I didn't polish looked greyish next to the polished side. I did some research and learned about paint staining. Even though it's not my car, my knowing that I could improve the paint that much made it imperative that I do it. I ordered more pads and a few weeks later I got to it. I clayed the whole car and used the same polish with my new white LC pads and one of my used white pads (hex logic).
I used my new pads on all the panels except the roof where I used that hex logic pad. In just polishing the roof, it literally turned my pad black! I don't know why that was the only pad to turn black, whether the roof was that much dirtier compared to the rest of the car or because the pad had been previously used and perhaps I didn't clean it well enough.
After polishing, I topped it with WGDG paint sealant. The paint isn't perfect and swirl free but it's a huge improvement and MIL is impressed.
Does anyone have any idea why that pad turned black? I want to use those pads to polish my cars now but if the community concludes it turned black do to my poor pad cleaning, I've got to rectify that first.
Her car is a white 2008 Honda Civic that has been garaged its whole life but cleaning it has mostly been by her (using drive through car washes). After she returned from a road trip a few months ago, I washed her car. I use the 2 bucket method and her paint turned my wash mitt black! It was odd, her paint really didn't look that dirty. It was then that I taped off half the hood of her car, clayed and polished it using a PC DA polisher with a white pad and an orange pad with Meguire's Ultimate Polish that I've had for years.
The result was surprising. The half of the hood I didn't polish looked greyish next to the polished side. I did some research and learned about paint staining. Even though it's not my car, my knowing that I could improve the paint that much made it imperative that I do it. I ordered more pads and a few weeks later I got to it. I clayed the whole car and used the same polish with my new white LC pads and one of my used white pads (hex logic).
I used my new pads on all the panels except the roof where I used that hex logic pad. In just polishing the roof, it literally turned my pad black! I don't know why that was the only pad to turn black, whether the roof was that much dirtier compared to the rest of the car or because the pad had been previously used and perhaps I didn't clean it well enough.
After polishing, I topped it with WGDG paint sealant. The paint isn't perfect and swirl free but it's a huge improvement and MIL is impressed.
Does anyone have any idea why that pad turned black? I want to use those pads to polish my cars now but if the community concludes it turned black do to my poor pad cleaning, I've got to rectify that first.
