Polish VS Clear Coat

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drivemax

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Hi Guyz,

How many time we can polish using Optimum Hyper Spray Polish with LC White pad on "PURE" OEM paint ? Just estimation before it hit the base coat...Feed back please

P/S :- Still at the middle of saving some buck for Thickness Gauge reader :xyxthumbs:

BR
 
Here is a recent thread all about your question.

http://www.autogeekonline.net/forum...-times-you-can-compound-polish-clearcoat.html

And here was my post in that thread.

" Here is my answer.

A lot.

I bought a 1992 Explorer and for the first 8 years I used Meguiar's Cleaner Wax by hand.
Then I got a Porter Cable and used Meguiar's #84, #83, & #82 exclusively. Right up until the clear coat started to fail. Right on the spot I had tried to get rid of bird bomb etching. Just a slight pale spot at first, but now I have clear coat failure over most of the upper surfaces of the car.
So a relatively thin Ford Clearcoat lasted almost twenty years. And (I'm guessing here) appx 80 corrections with various products.
So if you only keep your car three to five years. Go ahead and polish away! I doubt that you will go through the clearcoat. But just remember to use the mildest product you have"
 
But Oldmodman, how many of those 80 times was with the Meg's cleaner wax by hand? You probably didn't remove hardly anything doing that.

This is something that was discussed a bit when products like M105 and the Flex and PFW became available. In your 3-5 year ownership scenario, how many times, in the old days, would the car be seriously compounded? Probably only when it got traded in. If an Autogeekian owned it, he would probably just use a PC and fairly mild polishes, as you did.

But in today's world? We've got really aggressive machines and polishes that are in common use by the "weekend" detailer, and that car might get hit with M105 and a Flex twice a year...would the paint last 20 years of that?

I'm not trying to be perjorative, I'm just interested in the answer. My friend Jr. got some stuff on the horizontal surfaces of her car that was some sort of oily brown stuff that was difficult to get off. We noticed this when washing yesterday, and since we were trying to get a coat of winter wax on before it got dark, instead of just looking for the individual spots (which were hard to see, dark car), I just decided to hit the whole thing with the Meg's MF DA system.

I started with the D301 on the finishing pad (1st gen PC), but it wasn't really taking the stuff off...so I went to the D300 on the cutting pad. Afterwords, I wondered about how much paint I took off, since I was using a "rotary replacement" method, and her car is already 8 years old, dark color and is outside 24/7. If I had thought about it I might have tried to dig out my crappy PTG beforehand.

I just worry that "our" ability today to very easily do what only a few years ago was a rotary-only level of correction will lead to premature paint failure. Maybe not in 3-5 years, but in 8-10?
 
Mike.Phillips@Autogeek said:
If you're working on a new car then how many times you can polish or abrade the surface would be the least of my worries...
Click to expand...

Mike, the logic behind that is that you can't have a new car that looks terrible, so you HAVE to correct it?

In line with my previous post, with the tools/chemicals we have today, the trend seems to be towards more and more correction on DD's. You might do a serious correction when you get the car to remove the DISO, and simply because it is so easy now, you might go after all your DD wash swirls 2 or 3 times a year.

I mean, if you or me or Oldmodman would hit the car once or twice a year with M83, or M80 with a G100 to deswirl it, how does that compare to 2 or more times a year with a G110 or GG using D300? As I said, yesterday I tried with D301 but I quickly stepped up to the D300...in the old days I might have gone from a light polish on a white pad to a medium polish on an orange pad...but today I jumped right to "compounding". Maybe it's not fair to call the D300/MF step compounding, but that IS how it's being marketed, I think.

I love the MF system, and I'm excited to try the Optimum version(s), but it seems to me if it's easy to take off a lot of paint...people are going to take off a lot of paint.
 
Setec Astronomy said:
But Oldmodman, how many of those 80 times was with the Meg's cleaner wax by hand? You probably didn't remove hardly anything doing that.

This is something that was discussed a bit when products like M105 and the Flex and PFW became available. In your 3-5 year ownership scenario, how many times, in the old days, would the car be seriously compounded? Probably only when it got traded in. If an Autogeekian owned it, he would probably just use a PC and fairly mild polishes, as you did.

But in today's world? We've got really aggressive machines and polishes that are in common use by the "weekend" detailer, and that car might get hit with M105 and a Flex twice a year...would the paint last 20 years of that?

I'm not trying to be perjorative, I'm just interested in the answer. My friend Jr. got some stuff on the horizontal surfaces of her car that was some sort of oily brown stuff that was difficult to get off. We noticed this when washing yesterday, and since we were trying to get a coat of winter wax on before it got dark, instead of just looking for the individual spots (which were hard to see, dark car), I just decided to hit the whole thing with the Meg's MF DA system.

I started with the D301 on the finishing pad (1st gen PC), but it wasn't really taking the stuff off...so I went to the D300 on the cutting pad. Afterwords, I wondered about how much paint I took off, since I was using a "rotary replacement" method, and her car is already 8 years old, dark color and is outside 24/7. If I had thought about it I might have tried to dig out my crappy PTG beforehand.

I just worry that "our" ability today to very easily do what only a few years ago was a rotary-only level of correction will lead to premature paint failure. Maybe not in 3-5 years, but in 8-10?
Click to expand...

I really enjoyed reading this post of yours!! Excellent sharing of your real-world experiences.

Since you've no doubt "abraded" SS and BC/CC paint systems...This alone should make folks sit up and take notice to what you're trying to communicate, IMHO.

[The clear-coat paint just keeps getting thinner and thinner. :( ]

:)

Bob
 
Setec Astronomy said:
Mike, the logic behind that is that you can't have a new car that looks terrible, so you HAVE to correct it?
Click to expand...

All I was trying to say was that as long as no caveman detailer has hacked on the paint with a caveman compound there's really nothing to worry about as long as a person uses common sense and by this I mean using the least aggressive product to get the job done.

The other important point is this, after a person polishes out their car's paint, the idea is to do everything you can to avoid re-instilling swirls and scratches so you don't have to do a heavy correction again, just light polishing.


:)
 
drivemax said:
Hi Guyz,

How many time we can polish using Optimum Hyper Spray Polish with LC White pad on "PURE" OEM paint ? Just estimation before it hit the base coat...Feed back please

P/S :- Still at the middle of saving some buck for Thickness Gauge reader :xyxthumbs:

BR
Click to expand...

No way of giving you a pat answer, like

7 times


Too many factors, like how much downward pressure, how many passes per section, etc.

That said, Hyper-Polish is a fine cutting polish and as long as you're using good technique and common sense polishing through the clear coat to the basecoat would be the least of my worries.


:)
 
Setec Astronomy said:
But Oldmodman, how many of those 80 times was with the Meg's cleaner wax by hand? You probably didn't remove hardly anything doing that.
Click to expand...

I bought my original Porter Cable DA polisher back when they were normally used for sanding wood.
So I probably used the PC from 1996 forward. And I never used it with the cleaner wax.
Maybe Mike remembers when Meguiar's had there big forum computer failure, I'm fairly sure it was before 2000. When all the posts were lost. I had been using 83 for about three years at that point.
And the clear coat failure didn't appear until fall of 2010. And I was using the Meguiar's maroon pad for all my first passes. I remember it being called "the scouring pad". Then switched to #82 with the middle pad.

But since about 2006 when I started coming on here, but before I joined. I switched to much milder pads and compounds. Mostly Menzerna and Lake Country pads.
 
Setec Astronomy said:
Mike, the logic behind that is that you can't have a new car that looks terrible, so you HAVE to correct it?

In line with my previous post, with the tools/chemicals we have today, the trend seems to be towards more and more correction on DD's. You might do a serious correction when you get the car to remove the DISO, and simply because it is so easy now, you might go after all your DD wash swirls 2 or 3 times a year.

I mean, if you or me or Oldmodman would hit the car once or twice a year with M83, or M80 with a G100 to deswirl it, how does that compare to 2 or more times a year with a G110 or GG using D300? As I said, yesterday I tried with D301 but I quickly stepped up to the D300...in the old days I might have gone from a light polish on a white pad to a medium polish on an orange pad...but today I jumped right to "compounding". Maybe it's not fair to call the D300/MF step compounding, but that IS how it's being marketed, I think.

I love the MF system, and I'm excited to try the Optimum version(s), but it seems to me if it's easy to take off a lot of paint...people are going to take off a lot of paint.
Click to expand...

Another excellent, informative post!:dblthumb2: (Keep 'em coming)


If I may:

Over the years, going from SS paint systems to today's BC/CC, I was fortunate enough to be taught that one couldn't 'correct/refinish' BC/CC the same as SS. The precious clear-coat is thin, thin, thin. And getting thinner and thinner every chance the OEM's can get!

And only through 'not-so-carefully-thought-out', and sometimes 'deliberate' personal-hands-on have I experienced how easily..."burn-through", swirling, marring, inflicting blemishes...could occur by using the old methods/abrasives/tools, and even with the "new methods/abrasives/tools", that I backed-off on doing so many paint 'corrections/refinishes'...on either mine or others' vehicles.

To be totally honest....On my vehicles (DD's, garage/car-port/driveway Queens):

I do not use a wool pad, rotary, rocks-in-a-bottle or other types of aggressive compounds, or wet-sand the hell out of the orange peel, to try to have a show car finish.

Instead: I'll plug in the halogens,and the swirl finder lamp; give it a go with the PC, mild polishes/pads, and finishing waxes/sealants; ask the Wife if it looks good; be done and get out and enjoy the rides, scenery...life.

In perhaps my perverse way of thinking about my vehicles BC/CC paint systems....I have then: "Use(d) the least aggressive product to get the job done" ~ Mike Phillips [as usual,great article Mike..my (d)]

Sure, I like my vehicles to look nice. But I'm not going to risk removing more clear-coat than I feel is absolutely necessary...some blemishes I've learned to live with...doesn't make me happy to have them.....just learned to live with them...life's too short.

I guess I'm getting older and crankier...and in today's hard economic times, springing for a re-spray is the last thing I want. That, and buying any more vehicles! Or, someone telling me they see a "scratch/swirl" on my vehicles. :bash:

Yes, the Wife and I both enjoy having "clean and shiny" vehicles. We also enjoy attending car shows/cruise-ins and even "showing" our vehicles....But we both know that our vehicles do not have "show-car" paint corrections/refinishes. But, as Alabama used to sing: ".... Close enough to perfect for me".

BTW:{One of my favorite things you said about these car show situations was (and I paraphrase): "How many people bring their halogen lights for inspection to car shows?"} LOL



Thanks again for your sage advice and insight!

:)

Bob
 
I definitely think that you would cause premature cc failure if you practiced bad technique and/or compounded your car once or twice every season.

case in point, W&W got almost 100% correction on 23 yr old swirls in soft honda paint with D300 and a flex in one pass. That the system is that aggressive is fine b/c it just gets you to the end goal (level paint) faster than if you took power finish to it for 4-5 passes.

The problem occurs if you just kept working the D300 b/c you are used to doing x number of passes (I think it could happen quite easily if someone wasn't very experienced or had just watched a few videos). Each pass would take off more and more clear so the finish would still look great once you were done, but you just took off another few microns of clear you didn't have to.

I agree with others who have said you don't have anything to worry about if you practice good wash techniques and use a mild polish to take out marring once or twice a season.

It's the compounding that you have to watch out for. When I was researching this stuff I found a few articles where a guy did his best to measure points on a car before/after compounding using a laser to keep track of his before/after measurements. On average, the 2-stage polishing removed 3-4 microns of clear. Considering that the clear layer on a car is approx 50 microns and manufacturers recommend you do not remove more than 20%, this gives you about 10 microns to work with. Not a lot if you are compounding every season.

I'm not sure how accurate these numbers are and they are obviously different for different manufacturers, but it's enough to make me wary of going straight to the most aggressive combination I have in the interest of saving time.
 
embolism said:
I definitely think that you would cause premature cc failure if you practiced bad technique and/or compounded your car once or twice every season.

I agree with others who have said you don't have anything to worry about if you practice good wash techniques and use a mild polish to take out marring once or twice a season.

It's the compounding that you have to watch out for. When I was researching this stuff I found a few articles where a guy did his best to measure points on a car before/after compounding using a laser to keep track of his before/after measurements. On average, the 2-stage polishing removed 3-4 microns of clear. Considering that the clear layer on a car is approx 50 microns and manufacturers recommend you do not remove more than 20%, this gives you about 10 microns to work with. Not a lot if you are compounding every season.
Click to expand...

But that's just my point....I used to use a PC7424 and other than really long swirl removal sessions, there just wasn't a good way to remove a lot of paint (except with a 4" pad if you were working on a small defect). So you left the deep stuff and just glossed it up with a medium polish on an orange or white pad or a fine polish on a white pad, because it took too much pressure and time to do anything else. Then I got a Flex 3401 and because of the forced rotation, I could easily do more correction than with the 7424 without having to apply so much pressure and take so much time. Because of that I might skip the orange pad and stick with a white (although a tangerine is sweet!) and still use a fairly mild polish, and a lower speed than on the PC.

Fast forward to today, where I really like the D300/301 with DA system on my old PC7424. It doesn't fight me on weird body lines like the Flex, and just somehow seems more fun to use. Maybe I'm just infatuated it since I only started using it recently, but that's what I went for when I needed to quickly remove staining yesterday before it got dark. Unfortunately, the D301 wasn't "cutting" it, and lacking anything in-between (like Hyper Polish spray), I went to the cutting disc and D300...and there I am...COMPOUNDING. I really don't know how much paint I took off the trunk lid that I did, but after it was too late (when we were waxing) I saw that there were some spots on the hood, also...so if I can catch some temperate weather I will work on them and try to take some PTG readings before/after.

Maybe I just haven't been paying attention, but has anyone done this? Measure how much clear you can take off with the MF system? It's just really easy...but not much different than M105/205...in the old days we would do 3 steps, compound/polish/finish polish...but now these systems are 2 steps, so you kind of have no choice but to "compound" if the "finish" doesn't have enough cut.
 
Thanks everyone and Mike ...

My car have been compound and polish once with Meg DA system...It did remove 95% defect except RIDS ...Didn't plan waste clear coat for those RIDS because is daily drive car ..

Because it white color ...I always have yellow tree sap,bug and tar...Sometime I can feel gritty at the finish at the end of the month ...

I use un-diluted OPC to clear my car but clay bar still picking some dirt even the finish look very very clean ..

Planning to get a good paint cleaner or AIO for my car...with white or black for DA..

Any good advice for my issue?

BR
 
what kind of lsp do you use?

Unless you have a coating, using OPC to clean your car every month will strip the lsp.

Do you use IronX or TarX?

I'd recommend a sealant like WGDGPS, Menz powerlock, Blackfire WD, Klasse, or Duragloss 105.

In fact, for a white car, I don't think you can do much better than DG501 as your paint cleaner, and DG105 for your sealant. Throw in the DG601 bonding agent and you are good for at least 6 months, provided you stop using OPC to wash your car (maybe switch to DG901).
 
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